Sigh... Labor Day sales gone wrong...

File this under annoying...

I was planning on buying some suspension parts for my S197.  Priced out different options a couple of days ago on Steeda and Strano and TireRack.  Thought about which option I wanted to go with and decided to order today.  Steeda says they are having a Labor Day sale.  Great. Added the same parts from Tuesday to my cart and... it's more expensive than before the sale...

Seems like they jacked up the prices at the same time as announcing the sale.

Guess I'll wait or order from elsewhere.

Um, that's how most "sales" go.  They raise the prices just before the "sale" and then drop the price with the discount to where it was before or slightly higher.  This is nothing new in the retail world, the difference is that its actually easier to track prices now so you'd think more retailers would smarten up a bit.

In reply to Stefan (Forum Supporter) :

Nah, most retailers just set the price artificially high in the first place so they can discount down to the normal price.

As a retailer, I hate sales. All they do is devalue your product and piss off anyone who bought the product within the past x months. And we get more complaints about not putting product x on sales. But they work.

I am pushing for no Black Friday sale at FM this year, but I will not be successful.

What makes really me chafe is a rebate offer that get you one of those prepaid gift cards that can't be used at a gas pump or applied to a purchase that exceeds that cards balance.

They're actually a pain in the ass to redeem. No surprise. I'm pretty sure they rarely end up rebating the advertised value.

JCPennys tried the "fair and square" (I think thats what the called it) approach and instead of having crazy "sales" all the time. They lowered their prices across to board and got rid of coupons/sales. It was very short lived, they response was terrible. Even though things were cheaper, people wouldnt buy without a "discount."

Its hard to blame the retailers, people are dumb.

Opti said:

...people are dumb.

Truer words...

Instead of checking for sales, I would use Honey or some other price tracking app. Without sounding like a shill I like Honey's coupon aggregation and I recently found out about their price tracker. I use it for Amazon purchases all the time. 

I've gotten a lot of car mods for cheap by carefully tracking prices. Unless it's a maintenance item, I can wait for the right price. 

If you think I sound too much like a shill you can make an excel spreadsheet and track prices yourself, lol. Just trying to say using a price tracker will be much better than waiting for a sale as the lowest price point could be during a Tuesday afternoon in the middle of Summer.

In reply to hunter47 :

There are alot of plug ins that Amazon sellers use for research that will show you a bunch of the backend data. It works great as a price tracker, or actually letting you find the original manufacturer finding the least expensive seller.

Thanks for the tip on Honey

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I appreciate the sales that offer something like free shipping or a free t-shirt over a discount (though discounts are fine on clearance or discontinued items).

We offer free shipping all the time anyway :) We are talking about shirts as a possibility. It's extra hard this year as our inventory is ravaged. I think we've come up with a good solution that works. 

Our income is funny, it falls off when Shopping Season kicks in. I guess nobody buys car parts for presents and the race season is over. Nothing like commodity retail where the six weeks before Christmas are the bulk of the annual sales volume.