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Dear Diary, I think we may have discussed a few of the reasons that it’s okay to pay full price for something in the past, but I’m almost positive that we haven’t addressed the possibly ‘quirkiest’ reason that I have: spite. Yes, spite. You see, when others make mistakes that make themselves look stupid, it makes me embarrassed for them. When they do something to intentionally hurt others, I get mad. Today is a great day. It marks the start in a time-saving way of my rural life. Today is the day that our Dollar General opens. We are approximately 8 miles from the nearest town. This town boasts 3 gas stations, a grocery store, a nurse practitioner, a bank, an insurance agency, and two restaurants. From the driveway to Dollar General, it is 15 miles in either direction to another town that boasts a Price Cutter and a Wal-Mart (45 miles to the nearest Kroger affiliate). I’ve spoken publicly before about the bait and switch issues at our grocery store, along with additional pricing issues- pricing issues that led to corrections on 80% of our receipts in 2010. In the past 2 weeks, I’ve stopped in to pick a handful of staples a few times, and both times I paid with cash, I’ve been shortchanged. This is a chain store, and to be fair, I will tell you that the problems are chain-wide, not just locally. Two weeks ago, said grocery store got this brilliant idea to actually compete with the Dollar General- before they opened! What did they do? They took some extremely cheesy yellow hand-written signs (cheez-whiz yellow, in fact) and undercut the Dollar General prices by 1¢. Well, they really didn’t undercut it, and they were matching generic for generic. I’ll tell you straight up, I’ll pay a penny more for Dollar General’s level A generic over Always Save products (ranked right up there with Taco-Bell meat). This has me a trite miffed. More than a trite. I’m t-totally ticked. To publicly call out an establishment that can only HELP your business makes you look like a jerk. We spend very little money there because of their shady practices, but an ethical stab is too much. I KNOW their toilet paper is cheaper- half the price even, but I don’t care. I packed the kids up, drove right by the lower priced store, pulled up at my shiny, yellow clad slice of heaven and dropped eight bucks on a package of Charmin. Yes, I know, if I were a *real* Extreme Couponer, I’d have added on a room for toilet paper. However, in case you haven’t heard, Extreme Couponers are going to ruin couponing for everyone. There may be NO great coupons in seven years (because if everyone’s getting a free life supply, the manufacturers will stop issuing coupons due to a low profit margin)- the amount of time it will take the existing toilet paper shrine to turn to dust. Then we’re all going to spend the rest of our lives paying full price to flush our paycheck down the tubes. You might have heard that I dabble in grocery marketing. I know, it’s just a tad- not like I’m a C-List celebrity that has appeared with famous people such as: (ah- this isn’t for bragging) or anything. For some reason, stores pay the big bucks for advice like mine, so I’m going to offer a tip to our local store (you know who you are): STOP FIGHTING THEM! Dollar General is only going to better your business. Dollar General will carry a very small percentage of duplicate products- as do the gas stations in town. What you can do is capitalize on their newfound success by sharing customers. There are very few reasons to even leave the town now. If you would understand that this will keep a much larger portion of the town’s shoppers actually in town (instead of driving 30 miles round trip to the newest supercenter), you could work this to your advantage. Three other cars left Dollar General when we did. Guess where they went? That’s right! The grocery store! Yes, I paid double for my toilet paper and drove directly past a much cheaper place. Do I feel badly? Nope! Would I do it again? Yup! I don’t feel it’s okay to support any store, business, restaurant, etc., that treats you as if you owe them something for simply being open. Whatever happened to good old customer service? This was a bit more cynical than most of the Diary of a Discount Shopper posts. If you’re looking for some quick and absolutely hilarious reads, check out the rest of the posts in our Diary of a Discount Shopper Series
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I feel exactly the same about our local chain store. I have driven to Lebanon to get what I need to keep from going in there. I don’t shop their unless I absolutely have too and now that the DG is in town I don’t have to go there ever again.