It’s hard to resist a sale. See something that’s at a big discount, and you immediately want to grab it before it goes back to normal price.
But is that “sale” price really a special, reduced price?
Not so fast! Many times, it’s just a marketing tactic to make you buy useless stuff, and at it’s worst, it can be downright illegally deceptive. So what gives?
1) Stores often raise the prices artificially, and then decrease it back with a fake discount.
2) If a store has sales very frequently, and on every possible holiday and event, it may be trying to hide fat profit margins under the guise of a discount.
3) Large, deep discounts may be a sign that the store’s trying to clear inventory. If the store discloses this or the reason for the sale (like MerryDerma does, when it runs a flash sale), that’s fine. But if the store hides this information, you may end up with faulty, expired, damaged or otherwise problematic goods.
4) Less ethical stores often run bait and switch campaigns. Show good products at great discounts, and when the capture the order, pretend the product is out of stock or something. Then, they try to cross-sell you something you didn’t originally want.
These are just some of the ways that less ethical stores try and rip you off. It’s a way to attack the human psyche, but they win and you lose.
At MerryDerma, we try and avoid sales altogether. We don’t build big profit margins into our prices, and we don’t have room to discount them significantly. We’re built on a foundation of professionalism and integrity, and we don’t follow practices that may hurt our customers.
But when we do run a sale or promotion, it’s typically for a few products, and generally, for a very good reason (such as clearing stock). And the best part? We try our level best to communicate the exact reason to you before we ship you your order.
We do all this so our customers can have confidence that they’re shopping at a safe place. And if we ever make a mistake (we’re humans, after all), don’t hesitate to reach out to us!