A Small State Of The Union Rant

[kbobam]

Bought some coffee at the Dollar Tree.

Perhaps you'll notice the subtle change

between last week's bag and this week's!

It's sad to me that we have so many problems

now, almost all of them caused by people's greed.

And that no one's willing to put in enough effort to come

up with genuine solutions, choosing instead to counteract

the situation with more greed of their own. ) :

[Steph]

Same price?

[kbobam]

At 'The Dollar Tree'?

Or was that question like the 'blonde' joke?

[Steph]

lol ... I'm pretty sure I've been to "dollar" stores where not everything was a dollar. I don't know if I've been in a Dollar Tree.

..."dollar" is a pretty word. It's starting to do that losing-its-meaning-the-more-I-type-it thing. But it still has a certain pleasing quality.

[kbobam]

I never thought about it with this particular word.

But I have a vague recollection of seeing a study about nice-sounding words.

And people did seem to favor words with sweet and/or long 'L' sounds to them.

Like 'melody', 'lovely', 'lavender', 'belle', 'luscious'. Makes particular sense with an 'almighty' word! ( :

[I'llhavethat1]

How many cups do you really get out of a bag? The logo change on the second bag needs to be paid for somehow

[kbobam]

Well the other 'finer-print' change is the weight going from 7 to 6 oz.

(Does anyone here remember when all yogurt came in 12 oz. cups?

It's been slowly shrinking for years! With no savings passed on to you!)

So the smaller contents sort of explains the fewer cups, although you

could say that their math is a little goofy. If you pull out your calculator,

the older bigger bag supposedly gave you 7.1428571 cups per ounce.

(50 cups divided by 7 ounces) The newer smaller bag, with 40 cups

divided by 6 ounces, gives you an ominous sounding 6.6666666 cups

per ounce. Are they trying to be more honest about how many cups

you can get per ounce to atone for the shrinking size of the overall product?

Doesn't really matter anyway, since that "up to" so many cups is sort of a

'legal disclaimer' way to lie in the first place.

I hope I don't sound like too much of a 'nut' here.

I've just been around long enough that to me this is obvious 'in your face' poop. ( :

[ann]

Candy bars have been doing this fir years. OK, the Heath Bars of my youth were never huge, but . . . then they started making them in 2 pieces, for "convenience." And so on.

Just venting.

[kbobam]

Ha! I wasn't thinking about candy bars, but they're a particularly good example of this sort of thing.

And the "convenience" concept is a great point.

It's particularly irritating when the manufacturers pretty much tell us we're being 'blanked' for our own good! ( :

[Steph]

I like the whole "advertise flaws as features" thing.

Whatever is annoying about a product, hang a lantern on it and advertise it as a good thing.

[kbobam]

I'm hoping that by 'like' you mean that you've been aware of this

blank too, and are gratified that we're all saying so!

Another less irritating but oh so weird thing they do goes along the

lines of "Colorful new box! Same great taste!" I mean, what the blank?

Sorry I've been saying 'blank' so much, but with so much blanking blank

going on, I just don't know how else to describe it. Hopefully this board

has the 'anti-blank' feature turned on, and is child-proofing my vulgarities! ( :

[lstmmrbls]

Now I have to ask, is it really greed or are the sellers not just trying to cover the increased cost in product supply(coffee has gone up tremendously at the source for example) and other costs (Labor transportation insurance etc etc) while passing on a similar product that will not loose them sales which may even drive the costs up more????? Seems like a very intelligent sales method to me. Raise costs or shrink size? And there is only one way to do it in a dollar store is there not??? Too bad they have to do both sometimes.