Ask 30 questions, and walk out without buying anything. The owner will quickly realise the value of those price tags.
I would but I value my time. They’re gonna have to learn from someone else. Next time I need thread, I’ll drive to the suburbs and see if the stores out there are better.
Or just steal some stuff.
IMO, if there's no price tags, that means haggling is on the table. Me and the cashier are going to have a discussion about how much this doodad should cost.
If the cashier is also the owner, that might even work!
LOL...upvote this...
In some of these stores "if you need to ask you can't afford it", but in your expample that certainly doesn't apply lol.
Kinda the same story with only giving the price before taxes in the US, why would you not just tell your customer up front what they actually need to pay? Making price labels isn't actually hard, you don't need to have them shipped from the national headquarters.
Granted, I've never experienced either. At most, some stores are sloppy and don't label all of their items.
Yeah, when I shopped for embroidery stuff in Paris everything was clearly labeled with the actual full price because France is a real country with laws. So if a historical embroidery shop in Paris can do it then this neighborhood shop in Seattle can fuck right off.
Which shop? My partner does some embroidery, and it'd be good to know what to avoid.
Heirloom Designs. FWIW they do have nice stuff. But I can’t abide the price tag thing.
ETA the delightful place is Paris is Maison Sajou and they’re over 180 years old. Definitely worth a visit if you’re in Paris.
Shit, I guess they really are Seattle's only needlepoint shop, which must be why they feel they're able to get away with that shit.
I think they’re the only Seattle shop with high end needlepoint fibers and hand painted canvases. You can definitely get Anchor or DMC and various notions at Stitches or Acorn Street but the silk and merino fiber (thread? Floss?) is pretty niche. But I don’t want to totally beat on them cuz even if they have some annoying properties, they are still a small local business trying to foster local crafting and fiber arts.
I’ve sewn, knitted, crocheted, cross stitched and embroidered on and off my whole life and only just recently learned that needle point was its own separate thing and as I poke around it feels like a weird elitist corner of the fiber world. I saw someone comment once that they would love to get into it but it’s so expensive and I was confused because DMC floss is like 75 cents a skein and needles are like a few bucks. But some needlepoint stuff is like crazy expensive. Like I saw a series of videos on TickTock where people were making needlepoint brick covers, which is some kind of traditional thing where you encase a brick in needlepoint and then use it as a doorstop, and I thought it looked cute and fun and thought I might try it but when I looked up brick cover patterns they were like $150!!! Like WTF. You still have to get all the thread and stitch it. But I guess the canvases are often hand painted so there is a lot of labor. But still.
My local needlepoint/yarn store felt so snobby. I went in because I'd picked up cross-stitch and thought maybe they'd have something in that area. Nope. Totally different, wouldn't even give me the time of day or explain the differences.
Anyways, joke's on them. I'm an accomplished knitter with an expensive yarn habit and never went back. A year later the store closed. Rumor has it the owner retired, but I know the truth /conspiracy
I think there might be cross stitch beef because I saw this thing on TicTok where needle point people were arguing that stitch counting is theft?!? Overall it seems like needlepoint might be kinda low on the DIY scale for a crafting community. Like most people seem to only work from pre purchased hand painted canvases and they don’t sew so they send the completed needlework out for “finishing”.
Stitch counting is theft? That sounds ridiculous to me, someone who only does counted cross stitch (patterns printed onto the canvas or aids stress me because sometimes they can show through, or maybe there's a judgement call on if a stich is to the left or right. Plus, counting is fun and it's what I'm used to from knitting.)
Is the argument that you could make multiple copies of a object from one pattern? I do that in sewing, and knitting, why not in embroidery?
Absolutely bananas. I can see if you copy someone’s original design and then try to sell it as their own work but I can’t wrap my head around the entitlement in that community.
Top right one isn't even a complicated pattern from what I see, just a basic geometric one with some words on top. If I can chart it out myself I shouldn't need to hunt someone down to sell me a canvas with it printed on it.
Maybe there's nuance I'm not getting, but... Like, sure, don't copy a painted canvas to avoid buying it if it's something unique, but a geometric background I drew in middle school?
That one is wild. I guess that design is used by some high end fashion house and someone ripped it off and made a pattern that they sell and now they’re big mad that someone else made their own version for their own personal use. Some people just want to make their lives into soap operas. I’ll just hang with the crochet chicks. Those hookers are fun!
Kinda the same story with only giving the price before taxes in the US, why would you not just tell your customer up front what they actually need to pay?
you can thank corporations for this one – in several states it is actually illegal to show the full price
Holy shit!
My wife is exempt from paying GST, so to include it in the pricing would make it incorrect. She would need to pay pst though if applicable.
Things are more nuanced than it seems.
Not everything has pst, gst and/or hst added to its price either. It’s also easier to enter into your taxes when it’s a number on your receipt instead of rolled into a single price.
I’m not tipping food with gst/pst included, so there’s plenty of situations where it being automatically included doesn’t make sense either.
Kinda the same story with only giving the price before taxes in the US, why would you not just tell your customer up front what they actually need to pay?
In some cases, this maybe makes sense, because some purchasers are exempt from sales tax in some circumstances.
I've had tax exemptions in other countries. They can remove the tax at the register.
They slso can show both prices on the price tag
That still doesn't make sense. This is going to be a small minority, let them do the math.
Price before taxes in the US is because a lot of products have the price already printed on them, and are sold in many locations with many different tax codes. I live in Los Angeles where the total is 9.75% but often shop in Santa Monica where it's 10.75% for instance. If I buy a Hallmark card, from a company based in Kansas City Missouri (which apparently has several different rates because of tax overlay zones and counties but it's about 9.95% ish) it will have a price printed on the back which doesn't include any taxes. As a shopper I can still easily compare it to the price of a Papyrus card (owned by American Greetings, based in Westlake OH , total sales tax 8.00%) on the next shelf. I get a ballpark figure adding 10% and rounding. If I buy a soda there will also be a recycling deposit, which also goes to the state not the store. If I buy food, the register knows not to add any tax, unless it's hot and prepared. (Getting fairness for poor people using SNAP to buy a rotisserie chicken is a whole separate discussion!)
The store can program the register once when they need to change the percentages of federal, state, county and city taxes it will add to all the items, or to various categories of items. They won't have to relabel everything in the store if we pass another ½ cent/dollar to fund homeless shelters. The shop owner keeps none of the money and the register calculation makes their payment of those taxes practically automatic.
Printing prices on the item seems like a dumb idea when you're doing business in a country where two cities in the same state might have different sales taxes. My country has no regional sales tax variations and still doesn't do this.
It prevents stores from charging whatever they want…
Do you just not care about thinking about this beyond just how inconvenienced you are by doing some rather simple mental math….?
Fortunately there are pretty strict laws about displaying pricing here because that sounds really annoying.
I've never seen this either. I suppose it's from the US, where, typically, the end-consumer has no real rights anyway in most corners of the country (apart from getting cancer in California).
Pffff, what do you need those rights for, anyway? You have the freedom to choose any store you like in the marketplace. So don't try to infringe on the store owner's freedom to not have to display prices, you freedom hating commie! /s
One thing I really like in Asia is probably half of food places have signs outside with the prices or a menu or an app. No sitting down, looking at the menu and realizing you fucked up. It's more important when a meal can cost between 1 and 100 USD.
Dont waste your time ,just leave the shop
I already went there to get a few specific skeins of thread so leaving would have also been a waste of time. But I won’t return.
I've worked very high-end retail, and the only reason a customer would ever have to ask the price is if they were too vain to wear glasses so they could read the labels. Having done labeling, I can see that it would take a lot of time to hang tags on individual skeins of thread, but surely at least the peg they hang from could have a label. How does the person at the register know the prices, do they have everything memorized? Or is there a code label already on the item? If so is there a way you or your phone could decode that? Or could they hand you a scanner to use? Seems like they ought to be able to explain it, or demonstrate that they aren't just making up the prices based on the shopper's appearance. Most vendors even print the MSRP, so that shop might be removing them and upcharging.
What a stupid way to turn what could be a pleasant artistic introspective shopping experience into a stressful one. And I'm sure it cuts their sales because not only would I (politely) have them take back the $75 magnet before I paid, but also on any further visits I would stop myself from even touching anything other than the list I came in for, and they'd miss selling items which I might have impulse-purchased if I'd seen they were priced within reason.
Same with web sites. If I'm looking for something online and prices aren't listed I'm out.
Are there consumer sites like this? Feel like this mostly happens when it’s business customers.
I come across them occasionally. They try to force you to create an account and log in to see pricing and bullshit like that.
I see this as an issue of trust and reputability. Typically, items will have a UPC printed on them, a tag with a price on it, or in an area with a posted price. If I don’t see any of those, and especially if it is on something not easily found on the internet, then I see no way to know if what I am holding is worth what I am willing to spend on it. And more importantly, if the person at the register is ripping me off or not.
If the purse I pick up does not have anything on it that indicates it could be $500+, then I’m wasting my time by hunting someone down to give me a price check. This is especially true with designers that have low, mid, and top tier products, ranging from maybe $100-$3000+.
I’ve only encountered “no price tag” shops a few times. And each time, I’ve walked out.
Whether inefficient, lazy, or pretentious, it’s an insult to consumers.
American bullshit lmao
It is easy for sellers to charge more than the MRP by charging for 'services' on top of the item price, such as a 'cooling charge' for cold drinks, or by manufacturers setting the MRP at up to ten times the expected sale price. In Sri Lanka, it has been reported that the MRP for basic items at food stalls is circumvented by the operators charging separately for ingredients in the food, such as the eggs in egg hoppers.[7] The MRP also hurts consumers in rural areas because if retailers cannot charge a higher price to make up for the higher cost of transportation and distribution to those areas, they may simply not stock those items.
Maybe you could mitigate those issues with tighter laws and stricter enforcement ... but it really seems like MRP isn't a magic bullet solution here.
The solution is to mandate that shops have price tags that include all the costs. Like most of europe has. I visit Canada somewhat regularly and am always annoyed by prices not including VAT.
Oh I like that
No price tag? That must mean IT'S FREE, RIGHT?
HUAHUAHUAHUA
Having worked in retail, I hate you and everyone like you
Why are you going there. I turn around and am gone if things are not priced. I mean like a renfair stall with blacksmith I can forgive. Heck its all part of the experience. But like a normal shop. pass. heck if something I intend to buy is not labled at the grocery store I won't buy it. Ill stop somewhere else to pick it up on the way home.
I generally agree with you. I didn’t know until I got there. In this case I made a point of going there to get some thread and there were like 3 kinds that I cared about so I just asked about those items and bought what I needed. It would have been a pain in the ass to leave and drive to another store. But they missed out on me making any additional impulse purchases and I will not return.
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