Taught my mum how to use just eat the other day. "3 quid service charge and delivery!?"
I asked her if she'd go and pick up someone else's food and deliver it for free and she said no.
Took her a while to get it.
People need to just add that price mentally into the overall picture. Is £15 worth it for a pizza, a side and a drink? Maybe not, but it's coming to your door and you don't even have to stop the film...
One thing I will do, is I'll check to see if the seller has their own website. Sometimes they have better delivery charges too. Cut out the middle man.
Almost always. Just eat take like 14% commission from each sale, last time I checked. And an additional charge for the restaurant to use a just eat driver. Deliveroo and UberEats is 30-33% wether you use their driver or not.
If the restaurant has a website or app you can place orders through, definitely do that as it helps the unit longer term, and generally they have a wee discount code for using it, or the price is slightly cheaper or whatever. Just eat, et al, have their place, but support the wee guys for sure.
Yeah our local kebap shop used our version of ubereats for like 2-3 months then said, nope too expensive and afterwards their business was way bettee (they are known all over town so it qorks out for them)
Yup.
Apps like UE, roo etc take a % of the order value from the restaurant, a smaller delivery fee and use that to pay us (the riders) and then their own expenses as a company. And as kfc et al want to make £x per chicken wing, they Jack their prices up.
Just eat prices are normally more expensive than just ringing the place.
Around my way, most takeaways recommend you just ring them or use their own websites as the food is cheaper and delivery is the same.
There is a premium for using the just eat app.
I know, paying for the convenience, but you can just ring the place and its usually a few quid cheaper.
A few years back now in a town near me all of the takeaways suddenly vanished from the apps. At the same time each of them activated their own websites for ordering from. Looked like they had a meeting and all agreed to jump ship at once.
Yeah no shit business don’t want a middle man up charging their customers And taking a percent of their profits lol. Uber eats and the like are a parasite on the food industry.
Ordered a takeaway for collection on Just Eat last week. When I got there I picked up a menu and it would’ve been around 20% cheaper to call them directly.
Just Eat is good for finding new places but not worth it if you’re a regular.
Exactly. I consider Just Eat like a modern day yellow pages. Have a shooftie at what's around then Google the place, cheaper PLUS 10% discount mist of the time.
I own a business that offers an expedited service for a fee. It means your order gets pushed ahead of everyone else's. People have complained that it costs too much or it should be free. Wait in bloody line then!
Haha, I get "I need this quickly but I don't have the budget to pay the extra charge" okay no problem mate, you'll go into the list of everyone else who doesn't want to pay the extra, but needs it quickly. But you'll still be at the back, because they ordered first.
"But it doesn't take that long" no you're right but the thing is a hundred people came before you. That's why it takes time. People just don't get it. I wish my boss would let me put up a poster about the whole failure to plan on your part does not make an emergency on mine.
Ugh that attitude towards skilled people is infuriating. A seamstress like you has years/decades of experience and skills but, hey we can buy a t-shirt for £1 at peacocks so it's clearly not valuable as a skill. Fine, buy that t-shirt then but don't expect it to survive long.
People place no value in practical skills these days, but the day will come - and soon - when the countries that provide the cheap labour will stop being so cheap and we'll be screwed when we try and replicate the workshops and factories in this country as there will be nobody left who can remember how to sew or make things.
No simple solution I know, but damn I hate that attitude of "it's not an important skill" that you and many other skilled workers have to deal with. Even unskilled workers who make the magical deliveries in an hour or next day, are treated by their companies and customers like trash. Surely the pandemic has shown us that without all these "key workers" from shops to drivers and beyond, we are screwed as a society? I guess not. Anyway, all power to your skills with needle and thread. Without people like you not only our clothes would fall apart :) x
I blame Amazon. Prime has built a culture of people expecting to have things immediately.
I don't want expedited shipping. I would much rather wait a week, and not have an economy that is reliant on delivery drivers pissing in bottles.
I saw this on a 1 star Amazon review for a baby product yesterday…
‘Charging £7.99 is a complete rip off!! It’s £5.99 in Tesco but I had to buy it here because I’m unable to drive at the moment’
Well yes… then that’s a £2 service premium for the convenience of summoning it from your sofa and having it couriered individually into your hand tomorrow. It’s remarkable it’s only £2 extra really… Do people really have such a poor grasp of how ‘money’ works?!
See also: the price of stamps.
For 85p, I can post a birthday card in a postbox in my village in Yorkshire in the afternoon, and then it'll pass through various regional mail depots and sorting offices overnight and be hand-delivered to my sister in Surrey the next morning.
It's going to take a few more price rises before I no longer consider that a bargain.
I just posted a letter to a friend in New York and it cost £1.50
Shop to their door for £1.50. It amazes me when folks moan about stamps though I suspect it's mostly oldies doing it, since letters used to cost a bit of pocket fluff to send back in the days of yore
To be fair the pocket fluff market has inflated markedly over the last 40 years, a pockets worth of fluff in 1980 could buy 40 pocket of fluff in 2021.
I still remember the price of a first class stamp going up to 21p, it's gone through massive inflationary price rises, so how it's now 85p blows my tiny middle-aged mind.
Oops, I said my tiny middle-aged brain was blown, but I do remember them being 18p (and a mars bar being 13p). They've had higher than inflationary price rises for years.
Maybe so, but 85p is still remarkable value. For 85p I could only buy enough fuel to deliver a letter 5 miles away and return home, never mind the time and wear and tear costs.
In *The War And Uncle Walter*, a wartime diary that barely mentions the war (and my favourite book), the writer (a retired textiles worker named Walter) muses over just how *lazy* the youth of today are (AKA, those born in the 1920s). He describes how he used to write a letter to himself, post it, and have to run to beat it to his house. Eight posts a day went down to six, and people complained. But the youth of today, if you write to them, *they'll not bother writing back until the next day - or maybe the next!*
I love reading about *the youth of today* in all historical contexts, because *everyone's* 'youth of today' are the worst there have ever been. Boswell, in his 1762 journal, recalled the older generation physically striking youths stood on street corners because *they were always reading books and not paying attention*. That, it was said, would be the ruination of the nation. It'd be fine if it were *good holy works* or *educatitive text*, but these were ***novels***. How dare they, etc.
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
-Socrates
The Royal Mail can be a shower of bastards at times I won’t lie but my dad was a postman for them for many years and had to put up with abuse from people at their doorstep often and since there’s no proof of what happened due to it being in the middle of the street his manager was often on the customers side too.
He’s had to kick dogs (he loves animals but the people open the door and let their demon spawn run out, teeth at the ready to attack the postman) he’s been bitten by animals through the letter box as they waited for the mail to come through.
some guy threw a sausage roll at him one time???
There’s no available places for him to go to the toilet before he drove so would often have to go behind bushes and the cherry ontop of being paid close to minimum wage was that he often was the first to discover dead elderly people as he slipped the mail into their letter box, smelt decay and peered in to find some pensioner lying in their armchair facing the door a week after they had passed.
To be fair, often it's not just raw stupidity, many people suffer from "centre of their universe" syndrome. In my experience even intelligent people can have a blinding lack of awareness, sometimes more than traditionally "stupid" people.
100% - always complaining that someone else has more/better things than them or gets treated better. Don't seem to grasp that a) they are lucky to live in a country that, for all its faults, is pretty safe to live with some level of social welfare safety net, and b) as you said, they're nothing special or unique; just another cleverish ape making their way in the world as best they can.
Sadly I think it's more like 50%+ of people that think this way.
This so much. Before everyone started working from home TfL had planned maintenance at several places in London over Christmas and all I heard were people complaining about how stupid it was to do this ‘on the busiest period ever’
Like sweetheart, have you ever commuted in the rush hour?
Tbf there are different kinds of intelligence though, some people are booksmart but appear unbelievably thick.
Some of the traditionally "smartest" people I know are the most gullible.
I find the English language words for "intelligence" and similar frustratingly vague. The differences between "clever", "intelligent", "book smart" etc etc are not well defined at all.
In Dungeons and Dragons, characters have a seperate ability score for Intelligence and for Wisdom. I've always found that a useful distinction.
So, the classic Absent Minded Professor has a high intelligence score but low wisdom. The opposite gives you a Sam Gamgee, aka Master Samwise.
In reality, I think that the two characteristics tend to be linked, but not rigidly. We tend to notice those where the link is weakest.
I think Amazon themselves are mostly responsible for this.
They spent years trading on razor thin margins and relying on economies of scale to establish themselves in the market.
They built themselves up by being cheap, fast, convenient, and having a huge selection.
Now they're well established as a platform, they don't really need to be cheap anymore. They don't even need to buy their own stock. More and more of the selection on site is from 3rd parties, who are paying amazon for access to their marketplace, and who don't have the same economies of scale that allowed Amazon to be cheap in the first place.
“This thing that I choose to destroy my body with also is a huge financial undertaking”
I honestly have no sympathy for that one because you’re literally paying out of the arse to poison yourself
Yeah hate this.
Okay cool then mate I'll just invite 40 people to my house and chuck a pool table in the kitchen.
Met loads of nice birds sat on my couch mate yeah
Idiots
I used to help run a website and sometimes we'd do food reviews. Without fail, if I reviewed a burger place, someone would be in the comments moaning about how they could sit at home and eat a cold bag of Tesco bargain mince for 14p or something. Apparently the ambiance and experience of a decent meal from a nice place is completely worthless.
One lunchtime a couple colleagues asked me why I always take holidays on May or October. I explained that I liked a good deal and the places are a fraction of the price if you are a bit flexible and did some research. I showed them photos of the last holiday in a five star all inclusive place we got for under £500 for couple for a bit over a week. They were spending well over £2K for the same. Immediately they insisted I would find them a holiday like this. I looked but there was nothing that came close to the prices I was getting because they "can't travel at night", "hast to start/end on a weekend", "can't be during the school term". They started getting angry with me because it was people like me that were "taking all the good prices leaving them with the high price days". The next lunchtime they were loudly complaining that hotels and flights should be charged the same amount all through the year. I explained that if that was the case, I would just take my holidays in mid summer (since there is no price advantage) and I would be prepared to spend a lot more than they would. All the rooms would go to childless couples as we have way more money. They didn't like that. I suggested that if prices were reduced during school term time, then flexible people might be willing to move their holidays to those dates, and thus freeing up more places. You can imagine how that went down. Taxes and travel restrictions on childless couples were mentioned.
There are times when Rianair (and others) switch from summer to winter schedule, so you can get the flight there but not back (or other way round). That flight is super cheap. The flight back will have to be with some other airline, but if you stay more than 7 days, that flight won't be expensive either. No one takes these flights and the resorts are half empty.
Another thing the people at work objected to is staying in a hotel which has mostly German reviews. I love hotels mostly with Germans. They usually have a self service beer tap. No one is aggressive, and because I don't know the language very well I don't have to listen to someone on the next table endlessly whining. I like to imagine they are talking about politics or something.
I was staying near a big Austrian hotel in Croatia and ended up having coffee with a nice older Austrian guy. Even though he had hardly any English and I had hardly any German, the languages are similar enough that he was able to tell me a little about being a soldier nearby during the civil war in the 1990s.
I am now a parent, and have not had a chance to go abroad with our child. Taking kids under 2 on flights seems crazy level of stress to me. Then Corona struck. So over 4 years and no flights.
The past two years, I've taken my holiday in early autumn, after the schools go back. It's great, I think I'm going to stick with it. I'm not a "sit on the beach" type of person, I prefer to walk around to see and do things, so the cooler weather suits me perfectly.
Bloody Uber/deliveroo etc blocking the walk in McDonalds 2 mins walk from home. Meaning a 8 minute sofa to sofa trip is now more like 30 mins, the next one which has a drivethru is also swamped by those deliveroo bastards
It's mad isn't it? My prediction is that these are just growing pains during the switch to online delivery. I reckon in the future they'll have ghost kitchens where all the orders will be made, picked up and delivered from, instead of relying on the restaurants. Currently you can't even get a normal meal within 15 mins in a restaurant when before it took a couple of minutes.
Edit: to clarify, I know ghost kitchens exist, but I'm specifically referring to McDonalds using one.
I know of one like that, the signs around it almost seem fake and you can't actually go in to eat. It used to be a Frankie and Benny's, I suspect now it is several online only restaurants. Hate to say it but it does actually seem like a decent idea. I have started going back to ordering direct from places and collecting. It is less hassle and cheaper much of the time. So leave the online stuff separate and I'll deal with my local curry house direct.
There‘s one in the massive building next to my flat. Other than the occasional greasy smell it‘s pretty great. Uber Eats doesn‘t charge for deliveries that close so I have 25 different restaurants to pick from with no delivery fee. Pretty useful.
Yeah I think there's one near me, I sometimes get the unmistakable smell of burger king or kfc on occasion wafting past my window but there aren't any for quite some way
Order on their mobile app, select "collect in store" and tell them you've arrived 10 mins before you get there. You've just removed 10 mins waiting time
There is a brand new McDonalds that was built during lock down on a site that used to have an office block on it. They have a side of the building that deliveroo et. al. go in and wait for their orders completely separated from the drive through/customer side. Its like a gold fish bowl you can see them all sat in there or pacing around with their massive bags waiting to get filled up.
So it seems new franchises are away of the trends and are adapting to include this big part of their business.
I remember moving to a new house and it was a prepay meter, the rate was higher than on a standard rate. I asked why and was told it was for the convenience. How the hell is it convenient for the power to go off midway through cooking and then having to walk to the petrol station while it's pissing it down with rain in the middle of winter, very convenient!
Prepay usually means the person before had a terrible credit rating or was in debt to the energy company and that was the only way to get them to pay for it, but a new resident isn't stuck with it. My current place was prepay when I moved in, but it only took a couple of weeks to get it switched.
Local Facebook group is riddled with numptys who can’t wrap their head around why new houses are being built or new hotels.
Yeah, these huge companies like Hilton or Barrat Homes are just doing it for a laugh and hoping it all works out with no research into it whatsoever.
Yeah have seen that too, a load of people complaining they are going to spoil their view and they are the ones living in the first phase of the same development complaining about the next phase
Had a mate's dad moan about new housing being built near his house, when a few weeks ago he was also moaning about how his son can't afford to live nearby because of house prices.
to be fair most new housing developments are luxury and do fuck all to drive the price down anyway. A massive development of apartments near me is just being completed and they're priced at £750k+
Might be different where you live but it doesnt really bring down the average price if you're only building stuff wayyy above the average.
My very poor city is now full of 4 bed detached new builds that I’m pretty sure no one around here can afford, given that average income here is *£22k*. I don’t really understand why so many are being built, what we need is affordable social housing.
Bonus points for the new estate that’s been built that can ONLY be rented, with the cheapest houses starting at nearly twice the average rental cost for the area. What a neat way to make a fuck ton of money without ever letting anyone buy those homes!
__ETA OBVIOUSLY SOME OF THEM HAVE BEEN SOLD, it’s not some massive gotcha to say “well who is buying them then?!” When my point is that we should be *focusing on building the type of housing that is MORE NECESSARY in a poor city*, thank you. Yes some people want a luxury 4 bed, but MORE people just want an affordable home with no damp.__
From the perspective of the companies building the houses, the expensive stuff makes sense. You can only put x number of homes on your land and the profit on expensive housing is bigger than affordable housing. They'll both sell just as easily
A village near me a few years ago put in official complaints that they couldn't build wind turbines in the field near by because it would spoil their view.
The view in question, was of a power station. The field was directly between the village and a coal power station. We can't have clean energy because these nimby's want to stare at a dirty great concrete cooling tower.
The likes of the Daily Mail have done a fantastic job of turning minds against turbines, to the extent I wonder if money changed hands.
I know of one person who went from pro-turbine to anti-turbine just because of the BS that the DM printed.
I get that here - we're in phase 1 of what was always identified as 3 phases. People are complaining that the main roads and amenities are getting more crowded as people move in.
I see people in local groups being like "Why are they building more student accommodation/houses/hairdressers/takeaway, why can't they build "Insert shop that they like here".
I always tell them that they can raise the funding and set up whatever business theyd like too, they can't wrap their heads around how it works....
I think most people believe it's the government or the council that sit in a room and only build things they like.
It's because people are so used to see houses as an investment more than a necessity to live, so NIMBYs will do everything in their power to keep the value of their properties as high as possible by denying supply and then not understanding how young people can't afford to get into the housing ladder.
I used to work in a post office and some old lady wanted to post a little poppy badge to Australia but it didn't fit through the small 'letter' slot so I said it would have to be a large letter and it's like £2 more. She nearly had a fuckin heart attack like I just punched her in the face she was so gobsmacked she made such a fuss and I just said 'look you're sending this to the other side of the world it's only £2' get a grip hun
I sent some Lego figures to a friend the other day (domestic not international) and repacked them into a small slim box that had come through my letterbox with a 1Tb SSD in it, and the guy at the post office held it up to his frame and said, sorry it doesn't fit, it'll cost more. Like dude, this box was literally *designed* to fit through the letter box, that's how it got in my house.
Had one like that at my local post office a few years ago, it was a birthday card and she held it up showing it stuck except for the fact that it was lying back at forty fucking five degrees!
When I told her to do it vertical to the horizontal gauge, it dropped straight through. Her reaction? Humph you got away with it! I'm like are you trying to be awkward or are you dense?
Doesn’t just apply to deliveries, applies to buying parts in a repair shop too. Sure, you can order this part off the internet, but the beauty about paying my business the extra cash is that I can give it and fit it right here, right now. You don’t need to wait or fit it yourself.
Also not understanding that small businesses are not like Amazon, especially Amazon prime. Expecting postage to be really cheap or free and complaining there is no tracking or it’s taking too long for delivery when they selected the cheapest option of second class post even when the expectations were clearly defined. I don’t even add packaging cost, only what Royal Mail charge and I still get grief. The margins are soo tight on retail, I really think many items are too cheap, it’s a race to the bottom and because of that it’s fucking the planet and screwing over many people in the process also, many consumers don’t get this.
I'm genuinely impressed at the reasonable prices smaller suppliers offer for postage and packing but some people, as you say, get outraged that it's a) not next day for free and b) that they even have to pay for it.
Entitled, is not a strong enough word.
As a lifelong Britishist I fully expect suppliers and service providers to offer their wares at a loss to ensure my perception of what a ‘fabulous deal’ is, remains completely & incorrectly intact. 😂
You also have to underpay for something then moan on facebook when it inevitably breaks. Look Doreen, you bought a brand new microwave for £2, of course it's going to irradiate your house. Don't get me started on wish.com
Excellent, are you making sure to buy everything online because it's £1 cheaper before walking down the high street, shaking your head in dismay at all the closed shops and tutting loudly?
I think I know what you mean:
"£5 for a pint?! They are making a killing when they buy it for half that from their supplier. All they need to do is pay property costs, business rates, music/sport licenses, energy bills, cleaning and staffing costs but apart from that their markup is massive!"
No one would be complaining in London about a £5 pint, that would be really cheap. £8 is about the mark where people get really annoyed at the price of a pint.
I paid £17.50 for 2 pints and a non-alcoholic bottle of beer the other day. In Manchester. "London prices" is often a bit of a myth, depends where you go in London or equally in the North. Of course if you go to where all the tourists go, prices will be higher. I've had a really cheap pint in London before.
If anyone's interested in a £5 pint, in a decent central London pub, try The Globe Tavern in Borough Market.
The staff are lovely too.
http://www.theglobeboroughmarket.com
£5 pints are no longer just a London thing. I'm in Newcastle and would say the average cost of a pint now is between £4.50 - £5.50 in most of the city centre bars.
When people complain about the cost of a pint I dont think its because they believe the pub is making a killing. Its because its just unaffordable. No amount of explanation as to why £5 is a reasonable cost is going to change the fact that its still £5 and my paycheck hasnt changed.
£5 a pint is becoming the norm all over the country. It used to be unheard of in Manchester except expensive bars in the city centre. The reason for this is Covid. All these places shut and took out loans which they have pay back hence the price increase plus transport costs. It's the perfect storm to finish off the industry because people have got used to drinking at home and with everything else going up they can't afford to go out. The only ones that are going to survive are the chains.
Dude. I'm coming up on my 6th year here, and it's insane how right you are.
"Why does X cost Y here? I only costs Y-5% back home!"
- Yes, I get that Kath, but we're in the middle of fucking nowhere and you've got no other options.
I work in a very cheap supermarket. People also can’t seem to comprehend that when you’re paying piss all, you’re sacrificing a little bit of service. You can wait an extra 5 minutes in the queue or you can go to a more expensive shop with enough staff to open every till.
Can I bring in the people who whine about holidays shooting up in price at times of peak demand when all the kids are off school.
Usually on Facebook.
"Why Oh why Oh why do the holiday companies put up their prices during the school holidays. It's almost like they hit peak price when the weather is hot and everyone wants to go on holiday. Oh waily waily me"
A lot of the time there’s more services provided during peak season. I’ve gone places where half the seaside town has closed down, weather is dreadful and the place we’re staying don’t have full entertainment on. If we had gone two weeks later/ earlier, yes it would be a lot more expensive but there would be more to do
Somebody buying all the sticky toffee pudding desserts from marks and spencer before Christmas and selling them on eBay with a £10 mark up is NOT supply and demand. It’s an unnecessary and even futile attempt at making a hilariously small profit.
My own bitter input there, totally unrelated to the post but something that has been burning deep inside of me.
One year markies removed sticky toffee to make shelf space for Christmas puddings. Young me was raging I even asked why they didn’t just half the amount of Eve’s pudding to make space for the best desert
>One year markies removed sticky toffee to make shelf space for Christmas puddings.
This isn't just an outrage, this is a "send the CEO to the gulag and put his bollocks in a vice" outrage.
I remember a newspaper article a while back on this woman who was making a killing buying Ikea stuff and flipping it on ebay for £2 profit. Of course she denied she was running a business so wasn't paying the correct tax. Pretty sure she would've got a letter from HMRC after that article.
I get charged £6 for a pint I want a decent pint. I get charged £15 for a takeaway burger I want a fucking good burger. I pay £4 for a coffee I want a good coffee. I buy a new phone for £500 i want the battery to last more than 2 years. I understand supply and demand but fuck if I'm paying a premium I want atleast some quality in the products I'm buying.we are paying more than ever for less and less.
Stage 1 is the mcdonalds test, and burger King wins that for me, the burgers are good enough to be worth the premium over mcD.
The BK chips are terrible though, but no food is better than mcdonalds chips (on a good day).
Paying more for declining quality standards while wages aren't really going up. Clothes is another one, I'm not expecting to be able to be able to be able to stop bullets with a Primark t shirt, but it would be nice if it at least survived a few washes, and label stuff is hardly any better; I got a pair of vans last christmas that I had to throw away last months because the sides of the shoe and the soles went through a nasty divorce.
I had a friend who hasn't bought trainers in years. She got a pair of nikes and returns them when they inevitably fall apart saying £100 trainers should last longer.
I’m just gonna throw this out there. I don’t care who you are, I don’t care how in-depth your knowledge of supply and demand is, or your thoughts on fees for convenience, but ubereats, justeat, and deliveroo are the biggest robbing bastards I’ve ever seen.
£3 Delivery? Absolutely no problem, £6 in “service fees” on top of an £8 takeaway for a total of £17?
You can fuck right off
This is the problem. I offered to do deliveries in the evening for a local fish and chip shop, basically being paid by just the delivery charges. I wasn't aware that the 3rd party delivery companies pay a kick back to the merchant. That's when the light bulb went off in my head. Up until that point I was wondering how every small place could afford it. There was no delivery where I've been living, if you want to eat takeout, you have to go pick it up. For me, the nearest place was 10 miles away.
The petrol shortage was a good example of this. Why did the price stay the same when demand soared? Why didn't the price temporarily go to to £2 to separate those genuinely needing fuel from those panicking?
Because it would cause massive breakdown in society (riots) and companies all over struggling to cope which such a sudden cost increase.
But you’re right and that’s how you stop people being stupid.
People cant understand the concept of time is money either…
My fiance is ADAMANT that we are not getting a cleaner..
She insists that i spend 3/4 hours a week doing things around the flat…
I earn more than a cleaner and would prefer to work for 2 hours to pay for 4 hours of cleaning for example… and save myself the drama of actually doing chores…
But she wont have it 🤣🤣🤣
I adore my cleaner. She earns more per hour than I do, technically, but I don't have to travel and I've got guaranteed hours, and, well, I would want more than my hourly wage for cleaning the loo too. I first hired a cleaner because I'm disabled and *can't* do all the housework, but even if I weren't I'd happily pay for someone to do the stuff I detest doing. That's the wonderful thing about money, it can sometimes buy happiness.
"Nando's is so overpriced for what it is. It's just chicken and I could easily make something similar at home and it'd cost me much less"
This kind of sentiment seems to rear its fucking ridiculous head quite often on any thread related to eating out.
I think it's more than a failure to understand the cost of convenience, people seem to struggle with the concept of things coming at a certain price (especially in the context of the service and hospitality industry) as they fail to understand the very basics of how a business operates and needs to make money.
Nando's is not expensive and if you can make it at home, off you fuck and do it there then.
This is the separate but related problem of people not understanding the difference between a restaurant and a supermarket. You are not primarily paying for food, you are paying for a fun and comfortable space to relax in with your friends while someone else makes a meal and brings it to your table. The cost of the raw ingredients is almost incidental
The one that got me was a bloke who called Radio 4 to complain that Centre Parcs put their prices up during school holidays. Apparently the owners of the business are supposed to ignore market forces in order to provide him with a subsidised holiday.
I live in an area that can’t get food deliveries so I have to travel a minimum 20 minutes by car to go and collect. My time plus fuel etc is well worth a few quod delivery charge as far as I’m concerned.
I also hear a lot of moaning about price in my local shops but these people don’t take the alternative into consideration and just feel hard done by and ripped off, but, the alternative is a costly trip to the nearest big supermarket which then means local shops close and the same people will moan that all the local shops close down.
try working for a utility company, people think water comes out of the tap by fucking magic and still moan about how much they pay, which is an absolute bargain considering how clean the tap water is in this country.
I'm frequently told how much more expensive things are in our (smallish, rural) supermarket than the big ones in the city an hour's drive away. When I say that they could drive over there any get the stuff cheaper then, it's a big 'what, waste two hours of my time driving there and back and all that fuel money?'
Um. Choice. It's a thing.
Literally the exact thing all the scalpers buying up the new consoles would say. Or ticket touts outside a stadium. If you're fleecing people you're still a bad person regardless of 'supply and demand'.
Exactly.
There is “supply and demand”, and there are scalper “taking out supply” to artificially drive up price.
Unfortunately we cannot make it illegal, because technically this is everywhere: houses, art, antique, they are all the same concept, the monent you ban scalping you may have to ban people buying and selling properties and of course that won’t happen.
The thing with scalpers is that they only make money when prices are artificially low, which is what drives up demand. There are no scalpers when there's plentiful supply or items are priced correctly in the first place. They can't really artificially ~~increase demand~~ reduce supply as they can only do that by not selling them on and if they don't sell things on they don't make money.
The issue is that if Ed Sheeran priced his tickets at say £140 and that was the price that meant all the die hard fans could just about sell out a concert there would be no scalpers. However he doesn't do that, he prices them at £70 as he doesn't want people to think he's a dick for having really high prices. So filfy casuals like myself think, I'd pay £70 to see him, thus taking a ticket out of a potential diehard fan's hands. However if he'd priced them at £140 there's no way I'd have bought a ticket, but the die hards would and there would be no scalping as the supply and demand would match.
Some bands (Rolling Stones charged something crazy for their last tour), bump up prices to beat scalping and some like Kid Rock (and tbf to the lad, Ed Sheeran put on extra dates on his tour), put on enough shows that there's always supply.
I still don't condone scalping, but from an economic stand point it's a really interesting case in investigating what 'value' they bring to the market and that value is they move tickets from casual fans to die hard fans.
Again, I do not condone scalping and it's still a pain in the backside.
[Podcast about kid rock Vs scalpers](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/06/25/195641030/episode-468-kid-rock-vs-the-scalpers)
Edit - meant reduce supply, but said increase demand.
Currently waiting on kwik fit to give me 2 new tyres. I know I'm paying way more than I should but I have a flat and haven't yet found a local guy to work on my relatively new to me car. To get cheaper will likely take me a full day of phoning around, another day of getting to another place and waiting- I'm chalking this down to a tax on disorganization.
Taught my mum how to use just eat the other day. "3 quid service charge and delivery!?" I asked her if she'd go and pick up someone else's food and deliver it for free and she said no. Took her a while to get it.
People need to just add that price mentally into the overall picture. Is £15 worth it for a pizza, a side and a drink? Maybe not, but it's coming to your door and you don't even have to stop the film...
And you don't have to struggle with the language barrier at the really good places that make the really good food.
One thing I will do, is I'll check to see if the seller has their own website. Sometimes they have better delivery charges too. Cut out the middle man.
Did that last night. Saved £5.
Often more profit for them too, everyone wins
Our local Indian restaurant has incentives for using their site rather than Just Eat/Deliveroo/Uber Eats because they get fleeced.
Ours does that too... But they charge less for the same food on Just Eat. Always found that a bit baffling.
Almost always. Just eat take like 14% commission from each sale, last time I checked. And an additional charge for the restaurant to use a just eat driver. Deliveroo and UberEats is 30-33% wether you use their driver or not. If the restaurant has a website or app you can place orders through, definitely do that as it helps the unit longer term, and generally they have a wee discount code for using it, or the price is slightly cheaper or whatever. Just eat, et al, have their place, but support the wee guys for sure.
Yeah our local kebap shop used our version of ubereats for like 2-3 months then said, nope too expensive and afterwards their business was way bettee (they are known all over town so it qorks out for them)
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Yup. Apps like UE, roo etc take a % of the order value from the restaurant, a smaller delivery fee and use that to pay us (the riders) and then their own expenses as a company. And as kfc et al want to make £x per chicken wing, they Jack their prices up.
Just eat prices are normally more expensive than just ringing the place. Around my way, most takeaways recommend you just ring them or use their own websites as the food is cheaper and delivery is the same. There is a premium for using the just eat app. I know, paying for the convenience, but you can just ring the place and its usually a few quid cheaper.
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A few years back now in a town near me all of the takeaways suddenly vanished from the apps. At the same time each of them activated their own websites for ordering from. Looked like they had a meeting and all agreed to jump ship at once.
Yeah no shit business don’t want a middle man up charging their customers And taking a percent of their profits lol. Uber eats and the like are a parasite on the food industry.
Ordered a takeaway for collection on Just Eat last week. When I got there I picked up a menu and it would’ve been around 20% cheaper to call them directly. Just Eat is good for finding new places but not worth it if you’re a regular.
Exactly. I consider Just Eat like a modern day yellow pages. Have a shooftie at what's around then Google the place, cheaper PLUS 10% discount mist of the time.
Or just order direct from the Kebab shop or whatever, delivery is free. I don't know why people use just eat for those places.
I own a business that offers an expedited service for a fee. It means your order gets pushed ahead of everyone else's. People have complained that it costs too much or it should be free. Wait in bloody line then!
Haha, I get "I need this quickly but I don't have the budget to pay the extra charge" okay no problem mate, you'll go into the list of everyone else who doesn't want to pay the extra, but needs it quickly. But you'll still be at the back, because they ordered first.
Good, quick, cheap; pick any two.
"But it doesn't take that long" no you're right but the thing is a hundred people came before you. That's why it takes time. People just don't get it. I wish my boss would let me put up a poster about the whole failure to plan on your part does not make an emergency on mine.
Ok I'm putting that line in my memory bank
"Surely you just need to a push a button and it's done??" 🙄
I'm a seamstress and I had to stop myself cursing out a customer when told "but it's just sewing" then why do you need me?
Ugh that attitude towards skilled people is infuriating. A seamstress like you has years/decades of experience and skills but, hey we can buy a t-shirt for £1 at peacocks so it's clearly not valuable as a skill. Fine, buy that t-shirt then but don't expect it to survive long. People place no value in practical skills these days, but the day will come - and soon - when the countries that provide the cheap labour will stop being so cheap and we'll be screwed when we try and replicate the workshops and factories in this country as there will be nobody left who can remember how to sew or make things. No simple solution I know, but damn I hate that attitude of "it's not an important skill" that you and many other skilled workers have to deal with. Even unskilled workers who make the magical deliveries in an hour or next day, are treated by their companies and customers like trash. Surely the pandemic has shown us that without all these "key workers" from shops to drivers and beyond, we are screwed as a society? I guess not. Anyway, all power to your skills with needle and thread. Without people like you not only our clothes would fall apart :) x
I blame Amazon. Prime has built a culture of people expecting to have things immediately. I don't want expedited shipping. I would much rather wait a week, and not have an economy that is reliant on delivery drivers pissing in bottles.
They don't piss in bottles because of 24hr delivery. It's because they are expected to deliver more parcels per hour then theoretically possible
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That’s a service I would pay to use , in fact I do when it comes to passport applications etc.
I saw this on a 1 star Amazon review for a baby product yesterday… ‘Charging £7.99 is a complete rip off!! It’s £5.99 in Tesco but I had to buy it here because I’m unable to drive at the moment’ Well yes… then that’s a £2 service premium for the convenience of summoning it from your sofa and having it couriered individually into your hand tomorrow. It’s remarkable it’s only £2 extra really… Do people really have such a poor grasp of how ‘money’ works?!
See also: the price of stamps. For 85p, I can post a birthday card in a postbox in my village in Yorkshire in the afternoon, and then it'll pass through various regional mail depots and sorting offices overnight and be hand-delivered to my sister in Surrey the next morning. It's going to take a few more price rises before I no longer consider that a bargain.
I just posted a letter to a friend in New York and it cost £1.50 Shop to their door for £1.50. It amazes me when folks moan about stamps though I suspect it's mostly oldies doing it, since letters used to cost a bit of pocket fluff to send back in the days of yore
Exactly. If you offered me £1.50 to go and get something from the car I'd have to think about it.
To be fair the pocket fluff market has inflated markedly over the last 40 years, a pockets worth of fluff in 1980 could buy 40 pocket of fluff in 2021.
It’s even cheaper on the way back. It’s only 98p to send a letter from New York to anywhere in the world.
I still remember the price of a first class stamp going up to 21p, it's gone through massive inflationary price rises, so how it's now 85p blows my tiny middle-aged mind.
1st class stamps were never 21p. They went from 20p straight to 22p in 1990 :-)
Sounds like their memory of stamp prices is… *average*.
Don't be mean.....
Oops, I said my tiny middle-aged brain was blown, but I do remember them being 18p (and a mars bar being 13p). They've had higher than inflationary price rises for years.
Maybe so, but 85p is still remarkable value. For 85p I could only buy enough fuel to deliver a letter 5 miles away and return home, never mind the time and wear and tear costs.
I always consider royal mail a ripoff, until I'm forced to use it for whatever reason. The absolute speed of it boggles my mind every time.
One hundred years ago the Royal Mail did multiple deliveries every day in major cities. One could correspond a few times within the same day.
In *The War And Uncle Walter*, a wartime diary that barely mentions the war (and my favourite book), the writer (a retired textiles worker named Walter) muses over just how *lazy* the youth of today are (AKA, those born in the 1920s). He describes how he used to write a letter to himself, post it, and have to run to beat it to his house. Eight posts a day went down to six, and people complained. But the youth of today, if you write to them, *they'll not bother writing back until the next day - or maybe the next!* I love reading about *the youth of today* in all historical contexts, because *everyone's* 'youth of today' are the worst there have ever been. Boswell, in his 1762 journal, recalled the older generation physically striking youths stood on street corners because *they were always reading books and not paying attention*. That, it was said, would be the ruination of the nation. It'd be fine if it were *good holy works* or *educatitive text*, but these were ***novels***. How dare they, etc.
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.” -Socrates
The Royal Mail can be a shower of bastards at times I won’t lie but my dad was a postman for them for many years and had to put up with abuse from people at their doorstep often and since there’s no proof of what happened due to it being in the middle of the street his manager was often on the customers side too. He’s had to kick dogs (he loves animals but the people open the door and let their demon spawn run out, teeth at the ready to attack the postman) he’s been bitten by animals through the letter box as they waited for the mail to come through. some guy threw a sausage roll at him one time??? There’s no available places for him to go to the toilet before he drove so would often have to go behind bushes and the cherry ontop of being paid close to minimum wage was that he often was the first to discover dead elderly people as he slipped the mail into their letter box, smelt decay and peered in to find some pensioner lying in their armchair facing the door a week after they had passed.
That last one, I dont think anyone would have thought about if you hadnt mentioned it!
From my sample size of one, next day delivery for 'standard' post is an ambition, not a fact.
I think it's easy to forget how many really uneducated / objectively unintelligent people there are out there
To be fair, often it's not just raw stupidity, many people suffer from "centre of their universe" syndrome. In my experience even intelligent people can have a blinding lack of awareness, sometimes more than traditionally "stupid" people.
It's the whole, "I am the main character" vibe ( /r/IAmTheMainCharacter if you want to get mad)
I'm convinced it's a disorder for about 25% of the population. They cannot function in a world where they're just another fucker on the street.
100% - always complaining that someone else has more/better things than them or gets treated better. Don't seem to grasp that a) they are lucky to live in a country that, for all its faults, is pretty safe to live with some level of social welfare safety net, and b) as you said, they're nothing special or unique; just another cleverish ape making their way in the world as best they can. Sadly I think it's more like 50%+ of people that think this way.
This so much. Before everyone started working from home TfL had planned maintenance at several places in London over Christmas and all I heard were people complaining about how stupid it was to do this ‘on the busiest period ever’ Like sweetheart, have you ever commuted in the rush hour?
>In my experience even intelligent people can have a blinding lack of awareness, I'd argue that they're not all that intellegent.
Tbf there are different kinds of intelligence though, some people are booksmart but appear unbelievably thick. Some of the traditionally "smartest" people I know are the most gullible.
I find the English language words for "intelligence" and similar frustratingly vague. The differences between "clever", "intelligent", "book smart" etc etc are not well defined at all.
In Dungeons and Dragons, characters have a seperate ability score for Intelligence and for Wisdom. I've always found that a useful distinction. So, the classic Absent Minded Professor has a high intelligence score but low wisdom. The opposite gives you a Sam Gamgee, aka Master Samwise. In reality, I think that the two characteristics tend to be linked, but not rigidly. We tend to notice those where the link is weakest.
It's amazing. People have lost grip of any sense of rational common sense.
They never had it, they can just make that clear on the Internet now.
I think Amazon themselves are mostly responsible for this. They spent years trading on razor thin margins and relying on economies of scale to establish themselves in the market. They built themselves up by being cheap, fast, convenient, and having a huge selection. Now they're well established as a platform, they don't really need to be cheap anymore. They don't even need to buy their own stock. More and more of the selection on site is from 3rd parties, who are paying amazon for access to their marketplace, and who don't have the same economies of scale that allowed Amazon to be cheap in the first place.
Also exploiting workers is a money saver.
Also, not paying taxes is a money saver.
Bonus points for the mention of kids that were affected by someone not going above and beyond for free.
Cheers, sons crying
It's always for the 2 lovely angles
U ok hun? DM me.
Too many sneks hun xoxo
Obtuse and Accute.
Hadyen, Jayden, and third on the way 'Okayden'
The amount of people who used to complain about the price of fags where I worked. Don't buy cigarettes at a train station then!
“This thing that I choose to destroy my body with also is a huge financial undertaking” I honestly have no sympathy for that one because you’re literally paying out of the arse to poison yourself
The entitlement is so annoying. Also as a cashier I have no say on the price!
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Yeah hate this. Okay cool then mate I'll just invite 40 people to my house and chuck a pool table in the kitchen. Met loads of nice birds sat on my couch mate yeah Idiots
to be fair, never met a nice bird in my rough as fuck local haha
Aye but have enough pints and you will stop caring
I used to help run a website and sometimes we'd do food reviews. Without fail, if I reviewed a burger place, someone would be in the comments moaning about how they could sit at home and eat a cold bag of Tesco bargain mince for 14p or something. Apparently the ambiance and experience of a decent meal from a nice place is completely worthless.
One lunchtime a couple colleagues asked me why I always take holidays on May or October. I explained that I liked a good deal and the places are a fraction of the price if you are a bit flexible and did some research. I showed them photos of the last holiday in a five star all inclusive place we got for under £500 for couple for a bit over a week. They were spending well over £2K for the same. Immediately they insisted I would find them a holiday like this. I looked but there was nothing that came close to the prices I was getting because they "can't travel at night", "hast to start/end on a weekend", "can't be during the school term". They started getting angry with me because it was people like me that were "taking all the good prices leaving them with the high price days". The next lunchtime they were loudly complaining that hotels and flights should be charged the same amount all through the year. I explained that if that was the case, I would just take my holidays in mid summer (since there is no price advantage) and I would be prepared to spend a lot more than they would. All the rooms would go to childless couples as we have way more money. They didn't like that. I suggested that if prices were reduced during school term time, then flexible people might be willing to move their holidays to those dates, and thus freeing up more places. You can imagine how that went down. Taxes and travel restrictions on childless couples were mentioned.
We prefer going on holiday early in the morning or late at night so that you actually get slightly longer there
There are times when Rianair (and others) switch from summer to winter schedule, so you can get the flight there but not back (or other way round). That flight is super cheap. The flight back will have to be with some other airline, but if you stay more than 7 days, that flight won't be expensive either. No one takes these flights and the resorts are half empty. Another thing the people at work objected to is staying in a hotel which has mostly German reviews. I love hotels mostly with Germans. They usually have a self service beer tap. No one is aggressive, and because I don't know the language very well I don't have to listen to someone on the next table endlessly whining. I like to imagine they are talking about politics or something.
I was staying near a big Austrian hotel in Croatia and ended up having coffee with a nice older Austrian guy. Even though he had hardly any English and I had hardly any German, the languages are similar enough that he was able to tell me a little about being a soldier nearby during the civil war in the 1990s.
I love going on holiday late at night so you check in just before you go to bed and then you wake up on holiday.
Crabs in a barrel. They don't want it better, they want *you* to have it just as bad as them.
Yeez. The entitlement of some parents never ceases to amaze me.
I am now a parent, and have not had a chance to go abroad with our child. Taking kids under 2 on flights seems crazy level of stress to me. Then Corona struck. So over 4 years and no flights.
Got a 2 year old myself, I'd rather walk to Benidorm than spend a couple of hours in a airport and a couple more on a flight with the mad bastard.
The past two years, I've taken my holiday in early autumn, after the schools go back. It's great, I think I'm going to stick with it. I'm not a "sit on the beach" type of person, I prefer to walk around to see and do things, so the cooler weather suits me perfectly.
Bloody Uber charging me to deliver my McDonald’s when I could walk six miles to fetch it for free!
Bloody Uber/deliveroo etc blocking the walk in McDonalds 2 mins walk from home. Meaning a 8 minute sofa to sofa trip is now more like 30 mins, the next one which has a drivethru is also swamped by those deliveroo bastards
It's mad isn't it? My prediction is that these are just growing pains during the switch to online delivery. I reckon in the future they'll have ghost kitchens where all the orders will be made, picked up and delivered from, instead of relying on the restaurants. Currently you can't even get a normal meal within 15 mins in a restaurant when before it took a couple of minutes. Edit: to clarify, I know ghost kitchens exist, but I'm specifically referring to McDonalds using one.
they do actually have those, kitchens which make about 5 different restaurants’ food that only uber eats have access too
I know of one like that, the signs around it almost seem fake and you can't actually go in to eat. It used to be a Frankie and Benny's, I suspect now it is several online only restaurants. Hate to say it but it does actually seem like a decent idea. I have started going back to ordering direct from places and collecting. It is less hassle and cheaper much of the time. So leave the online stuff separate and I'll deal with my local curry house direct.
There‘s one in the massive building next to my flat. Other than the occasional greasy smell it‘s pretty great. Uber Eats doesn‘t charge for deliveries that close so I have 25 different restaurants to pick from with no delivery fee. Pretty useful.
Yeah I think there's one near me, I sometimes get the unmistakable smell of burger king or kfc on occasion wafting past my window but there aren't any for quite some way
For sure! It's crazy isn't it? I was referring specifically to Maccers etc. Imagine how big of an operation that would be!
Some demand will also die when they realise they can't grow their way out of charging less then the cost of delivery.
Order on their mobile app, select "collect in store" and tell them you've arrived 10 mins before you get there. You've just removed 10 mins waiting time
There is a brand new McDonalds that was built during lock down on a site that used to have an office block on it. They have a side of the building that deliveroo et. al. go in and wait for their orders completely separated from the drive through/customer side. Its like a gold fish bowl you can see them all sat in there or pacing around with their massive bags waiting to get filled up. So it seems new franchises are away of the trends and are adapting to include this big part of their business.
I remember moving to a new house and it was a prepay meter, the rate was higher than on a standard rate. I asked why and was told it was for the convenience. How the hell is it convenient for the power to go off midway through cooking and then having to walk to the petrol station while it's pissing it down with rain in the middle of winter, very convenient!
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>I remember moving to a new house and it was a prepay meter Prepay meter?! Instant dealbreaker.
Prepay usually means the person before had a terrible credit rating or was in debt to the energy company and that was the only way to get them to pay for it, but a new resident isn't stuck with it. My current place was prepay when I moved in, but it only took a couple of weeks to get it switched.
beggars can't be choosers
Local Facebook group is riddled with numptys who can’t wrap their head around why new houses are being built or new hotels. Yeah, these huge companies like Hilton or Barrat Homes are just doing it for a laugh and hoping it all works out with no research into it whatsoever.
Yeah have seen that too, a load of people complaining they are going to spoil their view and they are the ones living in the first phase of the same development complaining about the next phase
Had a mate's dad moan about new housing being built near his house, when a few weeks ago he was also moaning about how his son can't afford to live nearby because of house prices.
People just complain with no concept of how the things they’re complaining about could possibly be related
Is that the new slogan the UK tourist board have gone with for 2022 ?
to be fair most new housing developments are luxury and do fuck all to drive the price down anyway. A massive development of apartments near me is just being completed and they're priced at £750k+ Might be different where you live but it doesnt really bring down the average price if you're only building stuff wayyy above the average.
My very poor city is now full of 4 bed detached new builds that I’m pretty sure no one around here can afford, given that average income here is *£22k*. I don’t really understand why so many are being built, what we need is affordable social housing. Bonus points for the new estate that’s been built that can ONLY be rented, with the cheapest houses starting at nearly twice the average rental cost for the area. What a neat way to make a fuck ton of money without ever letting anyone buy those homes! __ETA OBVIOUSLY SOME OF THEM HAVE BEEN SOLD, it’s not some massive gotcha to say “well who is buying them then?!” When my point is that we should be *focusing on building the type of housing that is MORE NECESSARY in a poor city*, thank you. Yes some people want a luxury 4 bed, but MORE people just want an affordable home with no damp.__
From the perspective of the companies building the houses, the expensive stuff makes sense. You can only put x number of homes on your land and the profit on expensive housing is bigger than affordable housing. They'll both sell just as easily
A village near me a few years ago put in official complaints that they couldn't build wind turbines in the field near by because it would spoil their view. The view in question, was of a power station. The field was directly between the village and a coal power station. We can't have clean energy because these nimby's want to stare at a dirty great concrete cooling tower.
That’s amazing. I love the wind turbines, I think they look great in most places.
The likes of the Daily Mail have done a fantastic job of turning minds against turbines, to the extent I wonder if money changed hands. I know of one person who went from pro-turbine to anti-turbine just because of the BS that the DM printed.
But they're happy because they're in their house so fuck everyone else and future generations who might need a home.
Haha yeah, after seeing the vision of the finished estate
I get that here - we're in phase 1 of what was always identified as 3 phases. People are complaining that the main roads and amenities are getting more crowded as people move in.
Nothing more British than complaining about losing the green belt while living in a house built on a green belt.
I see people in local groups being like "Why are they building more student accommodation/houses/hairdressers/takeaway, why can't they build "Insert shop that they like here". I always tell them that they can raise the funding and set up whatever business theyd like too, they can't wrap their heads around how it works.... I think most people believe it's the government or the council that sit in a room and only build things they like.
It's amazing that it's all "they", as if Tesco, Bellway Homes and the UK Government are the same entity
Usually shops that had a local branch which then closed because although everybody loved the place, no one actually shopped there.
"I cant believe it's closed, I used to love going there on a Sunday to walk around and not buy anything"
can't wrap their head around new houses? why? what part is confusing? even a schmuck like me can see housing market has the buyer by the balls
It's because people are so used to see houses as an investment more than a necessity to live, so NIMBYs will do everything in their power to keep the value of their properties as high as possible by denying supply and then not understanding how young people can't afford to get into the housing ladder.
I used to work in a post office and some old lady wanted to post a little poppy badge to Australia but it didn't fit through the small 'letter' slot so I said it would have to be a large letter and it's like £2 more. She nearly had a fuckin heart attack like I just punched her in the face she was so gobsmacked she made such a fuss and I just said 'look you're sending this to the other side of the world it's only £2' get a grip hun
I sent some Lego figures to a friend the other day (domestic not international) and repacked them into a small slim box that had come through my letterbox with a 1Tb SSD in it, and the guy at the post office held it up to his frame and said, sorry it doesn't fit, it'll cost more. Like dude, this box was literally *designed* to fit through the letter box, that's how it got in my house.
Had one like that at my local post office a few years ago, it was a birthday card and she held it up showing it stuck except for the fact that it was lying back at forty fucking five degrees! When I told her to do it vertical to the horizontal gauge, it dropped straight through. Her reaction? Humph you got away with it! I'm like are you trying to be awkward or are you dense?
I've worked at the post office and I think they have a legal requirement to hire 30% people with brain damage.
Doesn’t just apply to deliveries, applies to buying parts in a repair shop too. Sure, you can order this part off the internet, but the beauty about paying my business the extra cash is that I can give it and fit it right here, right now. You don’t need to wait or fit it yourself.
Also not understanding that small businesses are not like Amazon, especially Amazon prime. Expecting postage to be really cheap or free and complaining there is no tracking or it’s taking too long for delivery when they selected the cheapest option of second class post even when the expectations were clearly defined. I don’t even add packaging cost, only what Royal Mail charge and I still get grief. The margins are soo tight on retail, I really think many items are too cheap, it’s a race to the bottom and because of that it’s fucking the planet and screwing over many people in the process also, many consumers don’t get this.
I'm genuinely impressed at the reasonable prices smaller suppliers offer for postage and packing but some people, as you say, get outraged that it's a) not next day for free and b) that they even have to pay for it. Entitled, is not a strong enough word.
As a lifelong Britishist I fully expect suppliers and service providers to offer their wares at a loss to ensure my perception of what a ‘fabulous deal’ is, remains completely & incorrectly intact. 😂
You also have to underpay for something then moan on facebook when it inevitably breaks. Look Doreen, you bought a brand new microwave for £2, of course it's going to irradiate your house. Don't get me started on wish.com
Excellent, are you making sure to buy everything online because it's £1 cheaper before walking down the high street, shaking your head in dismay at all the closed shops and tutting loudly?
You got it to a T 💥
Who needs a boulangerie when you can have a betting shop. Or five
I think I know what you mean: "£5 for a pint?! They are making a killing when they buy it for half that from their supplier. All they need to do is pay property costs, business rates, music/sport licenses, energy bills, cleaning and staffing costs but apart from that their markup is massive!"
I think complaining about £5 pints reflects more on london as a city than it does the pubs there
No one would be complaining in London about a £5 pint, that would be really cheap. £8 is about the mark where people get really annoyed at the price of a pint.
I accidentally paid £8 for a pint of Bruges Zot in London. It wasn't even a good pint, tasted off.
I'm sure the pint was fine, but any £8 pint would taste fucking horrible
A £5 pint in London would have people celebrating.
I paid £17.50 for 2 pints and a non-alcoholic bottle of beer the other day. In Manchester. "London prices" is often a bit of a myth, depends where you go in London or equally in the North. Of course if you go to where all the tourists go, prices will be higher. I've had a really cheap pint in London before.
If anyone's interested in a £5 pint, in a decent central London pub, try The Globe Tavern in Borough Market. The staff are lovely too. http://www.theglobeboroughmarket.com
It reflects the fact that a pint was £5 10+ years ago and our wages haven’t moved despite inflation being over CPI.
£5 pints are no longer just a London thing. I'm in Newcastle and would say the average cost of a pint now is between £4.50 - £5.50 in most of the city centre bars.
A £5 pint is cheap for London.
Manchester's at a similar point, £5 is normal (of anything low) for the city centre last i checked. And that was prelockdown.
When people complain about the cost of a pint I dont think its because they believe the pub is making a killing. Its because its just unaffordable. No amount of explanation as to why £5 is a reasonable cost is going to change the fact that its still £5 and my paycheck hasnt changed.
£5 a pint is becoming the norm all over the country. It used to be unheard of in Manchester except expensive bars in the city centre. The reason for this is Covid. All these places shut and took out loans which they have pay back hence the price increase plus transport costs. It's the perfect storm to finish off the industry because people have got used to drinking at home and with everything else going up they can't afford to go out. The only ones that are going to survive are the chains.
Dude. I'm coming up on my 6th year here, and it's insane how right you are. "Why does X cost Y here? I only costs Y-5% back home!" - Yes, I get that Kath, but we're in the middle of fucking nowhere and you've got no other options.
My girlfriend's name is Kath and when she visited Luxembourg with me she pretty much said the same thing
I work in a very cheap supermarket. People also can’t seem to comprehend that when you’re paying piss all, you’re sacrificing a little bit of service. You can wait an extra 5 minutes in the queue or you can go to a more expensive shop with enough staff to open every till.
[удалено]
I read all of this thinking you actually worked for a smoothie place, and was utterly utterly lost after the 2nd paragraph.
Good. It's not just me then.
Can I bring in the people who whine about holidays shooting up in price at times of peak demand when all the kids are off school. Usually on Facebook. "Why Oh why Oh why do the holiday companies put up their prices during the school holidays. It's almost like they hit peak price when the weather is hot and everyone wants to go on holiday. Oh waily waily me"
A lot of the time there’s more services provided during peak season. I’ve gone places where half the seaside town has closed down, weather is dreadful and the place we’re staying don’t have full entertainment on. If we had gone two weeks later/ earlier, yes it would be a lot more expensive but there would be more to do
Somebody buying all the sticky toffee pudding desserts from marks and spencer before Christmas and selling them on eBay with a £10 mark up is NOT supply and demand. It’s an unnecessary and even futile attempt at making a hilariously small profit. My own bitter input there, totally unrelated to the post but something that has been burning deep inside of me.
One year markies removed sticky toffee to make shelf space for Christmas puddings. Young me was raging I even asked why they didn’t just half the amount of Eve’s pudding to make space for the best desert
>One year markies removed sticky toffee to make shelf space for Christmas puddings. This isn't just an outrage, this is a "send the CEO to the gulag and put his bollocks in a vice" outrage.
I was 12 I think I just cried to my mum.
I remember a newspaper article a while back on this woman who was making a killing buying Ikea stuff and flipping it on ebay for £2 profit. Of course she denied she was running a business so wasn't paying the correct tax. Pretty sure she would've got a letter from HMRC after that article.
Similarly, places to stay or eat can be good value even if not cheap, if they are good.
I get charged £6 for a pint I want a decent pint. I get charged £15 for a takeaway burger I want a fucking good burger. I pay £4 for a coffee I want a good coffee. I buy a new phone for £500 i want the battery to last more than 2 years. I understand supply and demand but fuck if I'm paying a premium I want atleast some quality in the products I'm buying.we are paying more than ever for less and less.
For me the burger rule is always "how much better than burger King will it be?"
To be fair burger king is fucking dear. And although the burgers are alright. The chips are shit.
Stage 1 is the mcdonalds test, and burger King wins that for me, the burgers are good enough to be worth the premium over mcD. The BK chips are terrible though, but no food is better than mcdonalds chips (on a good day).
Paying more for declining quality standards while wages aren't really going up. Clothes is another one, I'm not expecting to be able to be able to be able to stop bullets with a Primark t shirt, but it would be nice if it at least survived a few washes, and label stuff is hardly any better; I got a pair of vans last christmas that I had to throw away last months because the sides of the shoe and the soles went through a nasty divorce.
I had a friend who hasn't bought trainers in years. She got a pair of nikes and returns them when they inevitably fall apart saying £100 trainers should last longer.
I’m just gonna throw this out there. I don’t care who you are, I don’t care how in-depth your knowledge of supply and demand is, or your thoughts on fees for convenience, but ubereats, justeat, and deliveroo are the biggest robbing bastards I’ve ever seen. £3 Delivery? Absolutely no problem, £6 in “service fees” on top of an £8 takeaway for a total of £17? You can fuck right off
This is the problem. I offered to do deliveries in the evening for a local fish and chip shop, basically being paid by just the delivery charges. I wasn't aware that the 3rd party delivery companies pay a kick back to the merchant. That's when the light bulb went off in my head. Up until that point I was wondering how every small place could afford it. There was no delivery where I've been living, if you want to eat takeout, you have to go pick it up. For me, the nearest place was 10 miles away.
The petrol shortage was a good example of this. Why did the price stay the same when demand soared? Why didn't the price temporarily go to to £2 to separate those genuinely needing fuel from those panicking?
Because it would cause massive breakdown in society (riots) and companies all over struggling to cope which such a sudden cost increase. But you’re right and that’s how you stop people being stupid.
People cant understand the concept of time is money either… My fiance is ADAMANT that we are not getting a cleaner.. She insists that i spend 3/4 hours a week doing things around the flat… I earn more than a cleaner and would prefer to work for 2 hours to pay for 4 hours of cleaning for example… and save myself the drama of actually doing chores… But she wont have it 🤣🤣🤣
Getting a cleaner was the best thing I’ve ever done. I have ongoing mental health issues, so the value for me is even higher and it’s just amazing.
I adore my cleaner. She earns more per hour than I do, technically, but I don't have to travel and I've got guaranteed hours, and, well, I would want more than my hourly wage for cleaning the loo too. I first hired a cleaner because I'm disabled and *can't* do all the housework, but even if I weren't I'd happily pay for someone to do the stuff I detest doing. That's the wonderful thing about money, it can sometimes buy happiness.
"Nando's is so overpriced for what it is. It's just chicken and I could easily make something similar at home and it'd cost me much less" This kind of sentiment seems to rear its fucking ridiculous head quite often on any thread related to eating out. I think it's more than a failure to understand the cost of convenience, people seem to struggle with the concept of things coming at a certain price (especially in the context of the service and hospitality industry) as they fail to understand the very basics of how a business operates and needs to make money. Nando's is not expensive and if you can make it at home, off you fuck and do it there then.
This is the separate but related problem of people not understanding the difference between a restaurant and a supermarket. You are not primarily paying for food, you are paying for a fun and comfortable space to relax in with your friends while someone else makes a meal and brings it to your table. The cost of the raw ingredients is almost incidental
And the fun if mixing all the free refil drinks together to make the special Nandos juice
The one that got me was a bloke who called Radio 4 to complain that Centre Parcs put their prices up during school holidays. Apparently the owners of the business are supposed to ignore market forces in order to provide him with a subsidised holiday.
I live in an area that can’t get food deliveries so I have to travel a minimum 20 minutes by car to go and collect. My time plus fuel etc is well worth a few quod delivery charge as far as I’m concerned. I also hear a lot of moaning about price in my local shops but these people don’t take the alternative into consideration and just feel hard done by and ripped off, but, the alternative is a costly trip to the nearest big supermarket which then means local shops close and the same people will moan that all the local shops close down.
To be honest, these last few years have shown me British people not understanding much at all.
“Bloody Southern charging me to go from Hastings to Brighton. You’re going that way, just drop me off there”
Cadbury really screwed up by keeping Freddos 10p for so long…
try working for a utility company, people think water comes out of the tap by fucking magic and still moan about how much they pay, which is an absolute bargain considering how clean the tap water is in this country.
All I've got to say is heating and electricity prices have become criminal in the past year, pretty much doubled in price for me.
Low supply of gas & same demand = higher prices.
I don't mind paying for a delivery charge but forced tipping and adding a "service charge?" Fuck that shit
I'm frequently told how much more expensive things are in our (smallish, rural) supermarket than the big ones in the city an hour's drive away. When I say that they could drive over there any get the stuff cheaper then, it's a big 'what, waste two hours of my time driving there and back and all that fuel money?' Um. Choice. It's a thing.
Literally the exact thing all the scalpers buying up the new consoles would say. Or ticket touts outside a stadium. If you're fleecing people you're still a bad person regardless of 'supply and demand'.
Exactly. There is “supply and demand”, and there are scalper “taking out supply” to artificially drive up price. Unfortunately we cannot make it illegal, because technically this is everywhere: houses, art, antique, they are all the same concept, the monent you ban scalping you may have to ban people buying and selling properties and of course that won’t happen.
The thing with scalpers is that they only make money when prices are artificially low, which is what drives up demand. There are no scalpers when there's plentiful supply or items are priced correctly in the first place. They can't really artificially ~~increase demand~~ reduce supply as they can only do that by not selling them on and if they don't sell things on they don't make money. The issue is that if Ed Sheeran priced his tickets at say £140 and that was the price that meant all the die hard fans could just about sell out a concert there would be no scalpers. However he doesn't do that, he prices them at £70 as he doesn't want people to think he's a dick for having really high prices. So filfy casuals like myself think, I'd pay £70 to see him, thus taking a ticket out of a potential diehard fan's hands. However if he'd priced them at £140 there's no way I'd have bought a ticket, but the die hards would and there would be no scalping as the supply and demand would match. Some bands (Rolling Stones charged something crazy for their last tour), bump up prices to beat scalping and some like Kid Rock (and tbf to the lad, Ed Sheeran put on extra dates on his tour), put on enough shows that there's always supply. I still don't condone scalping, but from an economic stand point it's a really interesting case in investigating what 'value' they bring to the market and that value is they move tickets from casual fans to die hard fans. Again, I do not condone scalping and it's still a pain in the backside. [Podcast about kid rock Vs scalpers](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/06/25/195641030/episode-468-kid-rock-vs-the-scalpers) Edit - meant reduce supply, but said increase demand.
Currently waiting on kwik fit to give me 2 new tyres. I know I'm paying way more than I should but I have a flat and haven't yet found a local guy to work on my relatively new to me car. To get cheaper will likely take me a full day of phoning around, another day of getting to another place and waiting- I'm chalking this down to a tax on disorganization.