Every day, I come across so many advertisements from retailers who say 80% off or 90%. What most of these 100% retailers bank on is customers who fall prey to their so and so offs! The big and bold letters attract the customers and the tiny letters which say “Up to” get noticed only while paying the bill or sometimes, after paying the bill. After spending a couple of hours in selecting the goods and then standing in queue for another few minutes, no one would like to leave the products behind despite realizing that it was not 90%, but Up to 90% and what we actually got is only 5% off!
Else we see most of the products which have great discounts are old stocks are somewhere very closer to the expiry date. If they are clothes, they are old stocks or if they are eatables, they are near to expiry date and funnily one should see the discounts they give for automobile ads. They look like offering great discounts, especially for cars. A few days before, newspapers were filled with huge ads telling Own a Chevrolet Sonic car for less than QR1,000.
“Nothing says more about you than your ride, so it’s got to be right. The 2012 Chevrolet Sonic has the energy to go up against anything else on the street: Cool, modern design, 115hp (net), and a seriously innovative interior. Put it all together and you’ve got a car that’s pretty much impossible to ignore.”
It goes on to say, “Safety: Chevrolet Sonic packs a stack of safety features designed to look after you if things get rough; Big on the inside: Massive side pockets, a huge glove box and available 60/40 split-folding rear seats give you plenty of options; and Motorcycle-inspired tachometer: Backlit in cool Ice Blue and integrated stylishly into the dash, the massive tachometer just begs you to put your foot down.
All it says is about the EMI and doesn’t mention anything about the down payment or the initial payment to be made. Not just automobile ads, even ads on plots and apartments are also greatly misleading. None of them mention about the huge down-payment to be made in the initial stage of purchasing!
Airlines slashing ticket fare is another thing which gets unnoticed. They mention only about the basic price of the ticket and customers don’t observe “conditions apply” at the end of the ad written in very tiny letters. They realize that the price of the ticket is almost double after booking the ticket, as the ad never mentioned about taxes and surcharges, which almost doubles the cost of the ticket!
Last week, we saw some great discounts offered by Fly Dubai and went to book tickets. Though we got some good discount, there too something was hidden. We could carry only 5 kg of handbag per person and the luggage would be charged QR12 per kg, so if we carry excess baggage, they would ask us to put it in luggage and we would end up paying 5 kg x Qr12= QR60! So again, there was a solution buy a discount coupon for 20kg by paying QR50, which we did of course, as there was no other go. So at the end of the day, when everything combined, we didn’t see that we actually got a discount, compared to other airlines.
And when I see some discounts for jewellery, I jump in joy only to discover that they have increased the making charges and pretend to slash in that which in fact is still more than the normal days. So, the retailers and advertisers find some or the other way to attract consumers and dumb people like me fall prey to them easily and more often!
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