Are adverts saying SALE. Then not displaying prices, sharp practice?

[blampied]

I'm Interested in a small generator.
This very page has an advert for Generators with SALE in big red letters.
But then refuses to display prices, contact us for prices!
To me that is Very annoying, sharp practice!

 

[Whitelighter]

Maybe the prices are so good they don't want the competition to see them.
Maybe they don't want you to be able to use there offer to get the price down with your preferred supplier.

Is it such a hardship to call them and ask for a price?

 

[BruceK]

It's a sales hook. And yes it is annoying when hunting down prices. I usually move on before I have to put up and hear the pitch.

 

[Momac]

This very page has an advert for Generators with SALE in big red letters

The advert possibly only appears to you because you have been searching on the interweb for generators.

 

[blampied]

Maybe the prices are so good they don't want the competition to see them.
Maybe they don't want you to be able to use there offer to get the price down with your preferred supplier.

Is it such a hardship to call them and ask for a price?

The contact them for price then turns out to be an online form, name address, email address, boat, boat location, etc etc etc

How can anything be offered as SALE when there is no record of what the price was they were selling at before the so called SALE and what price it is now?

 

[MapisM]

Maybe the prices are so good they don't want the competition to see them.
Maybe they don't want you to be able to use there offer to get the price down with your preferred supplier.

I don't buy any of these excuses.
They do that just because they hope to get in touch with the punter, knowing that it's more likely to sell something once a direct contact is established.
It's that simple.

 

[Anders_P42]

I do the same with certain products on my website, otherwise competition can always display a cheaper price despite not always offering the same level of after care / support. On a big ticket item like generator, worth spending a few minutes calling them, they could be very knowledgeable and not just box shifters.

 

[prv]

Is it such a hardship to call them and ask for a price?

Yep, because they're probably closed when I read the advert at 10pm, or 1am, or any such time that I might be browsing the Internet because it's 2016 now and we're not tied to doing business in office hours any more.

Anyway, I have no intention of wasting my time phoning one company whose prices, just by the law of averages, are unlikely to be the cheapest, when I can see their competitors' in seconds via a Google search.

I also don't want to volunteer to receive a sales pitch, which is the transparently obvious reason they do this. That or because the price is "whatever our slick salesman thinks he can screw out of you after sounding out how knowledgeable and price-conscious you seem".

I'm sympathetic to small businesses whose product is different every time (installing kitchens, say, or custom metal fabrication) - it's difficult for them to publish their prices although not impossible. But for a company that sells off-the-shelf items to end-users, deliberately hiding their prices is a silly and self-defeating practice that's only going to become even less effective as the days of reading a print ad and phoning up for details recede further into history.

Pete

 

[prv]

I do the same with certain products on my website, otherwise competition can always display a cheaper price despite not always offering the same level of after care / support.

Then I'm afraid I won't be buying from you.

For some things I am prepared to pay a bit more for service as you describe. But I need to know how much more in order to decide whether it's worth it.

I'll compare No-Name Box-Shifter's price of £x against Reliable Dealer's £x+y, deciding whether I'm willing to pay £y for their help and support. But I won't be comparing against Secret Squirrel's price of £??who-knows-give-us-a-ring?? because I don't even know what it is without waiting till tomorrow when I can loiter in an echoey stairwell at work, talking to someone I don't really want to talk to in order to discover that his price is £x+y+z anyway. So Secret Squirrel never even knows that I was in the market.

Pete

 

[Lon nan Gruagach]

How many shops have "SALE" signs in the window without displaying prices alongside? Is that sharp practice? No, you go inside and look around (visit the web site and product pages). There you can see the price, unless its Jewsons who will rue the day I next converse with them.

 

[fergie_mac66]

On display in UK has to have a sign somewhere that says for how long and how much it was before it was put on sale. Proly doesn't apply to the net tho

 

[blampied]

Ok so it's as I thought, a sale con trick.

I'm never going to fill in an on line form giving them my contact details and e-mail.

I'd rather go without a generator

 

[Poignard]

It could be that the seller is too lazy to keep his pricing up-to-date.

Years ago there was a chandlery in Emsworth Yacht Harbour, where I used to lay up my boat, that didn't have price labels on most of the stock. If you wanted to know the price of something you had to ask at the counter, which often involved awaiting the pleasure of the rather pompous woman in charge. One day I complained about this and she told me she was too busy to go round labelling everything. After that I made sure that she would never again be busy on my account.