Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

Once i had a very amusing discusson with a store that sold laptops.

I wanted to purchase a laptop at the advertised price. The sales person told me i was in luck, because all their laptops came preinstalled with Microsoft Office for a little extra money. I told him politely i did not want to buy Microsoft Office, even for such little extra money. I just wanted the laptop.

Semi-flabbergasted he told me this was not possible, because all the laptops had Office pre-installed. I told him i did not care and wanted to buy the laptop for the adverstised price.

After 15 minutes of discussion, some manager came frustrated what the problem was. I pointed to the price tag and told him i wanted to buy the laptop for that price exactly and if that was possible. It was, but it would require uninstalling Office, which took them another 15 minutes.

So i waited for another 15 minutes so they could remove Office. Back at home i powered on the laptop, popped in a usb disk and removed every partition that its harddisk ever had and started a nice fresh install without any bloatware.

The irony is even though Dollar Tree prices are honest because they all are the same $1.25 (excluding the new “More Choices” $3-5 items) they’re still ripping you off. I always shop on a per-unit basis e.g. dollars per pound or cents per ounce, since that’s how I actually eat food. I need a certain amount of calories and a certain quantity of food to survive, and the less I pay per unit, the lower overall cost. On a per-unit basis, DT is almost always the most expensive store around, because quantities are so small!

There are of course exceptions; I can recall not long ago for example buying a pound of Himalayan sea salt for a dollar. That was a solid deal, and I haven’t seen it since.

But generally speaking, if you want to save money, don’t go to Dollar Tree.

Unless you are buying cards. Maybe candy, too? I’d be curious about that.

That's actually fascinating, because they surely weren't tracking the actual Office license keys, and getting their money back. The manager literally uninstalled Office just to spite you. That's super funny! Especially since it made zero difference to you in the end.

Was this in the US? I never purchased computers from people in a storefront.

That's not really a rip off, it caters to people who can't afford to buy in larger quantities.

This is possible in the US but I'm sure in many other countries too where electronics and computer stores exist, not even counting the wide swath of Apple stores around the world.

There are some things at dollar tree that are a good deal and some that aren't.

I think part of the appeal when everything was a dollar was so that people would know exactly how much it would be when they went to check out. Then they could manage a little bit of money with precision.

> I always shop on a per-unit basis e.g. dollars per pound or cents per ounce, since that’s how I actually eat food.

For staples that's definitely sensible but surely there are also times where you need one-off items where any extra amount would just be waste?

That makes it sound even more like a rip off tbh.

SO what do you buy for food and where do you buy it?

With your focus on calories per dollar, do you also get supplements? Which ones and where?

Why are you so focused on this?

I give it an even split between spite and genuinely not understanding how software licensing is tracked/preinstalled trials work, thinking "if they don't buy the office addon I need to make sure they don't receive one with the office addon" as they would have to do with most other products.

You may be shocked to hear that there are no seas in the Himalayas.

That sounds like it's basically the grocery equivalent of the boot theory of poverty. Poor people have to pay more in the long run because they can't afford to buy in bulk.

Yes because when I need a small bag of snacks to put in my backpack before a flight, my first stop is to Costco and buy everything I need in bulk.

I worked at Geek Squad almost 20 years ago and here’s how it went.

We would preinstall office on say 80% of the door buster laptops for something like $29. Most people used office so they’d pay it. Occasionally some people didn’t want it so they’d buy a bare laptop.

If all the bare laptops had been sold, we’d remove office from one of the preinstalled laptops. Then we’d take the box and send it back to the inventory guys to process and get credit back from the vendor. As part of that process we were supposed to verify to Microsoft that the product wasn’t installed on any machines.

So they weren’t tracking keys, but the manager wasn’t doing it to spite the OP, he was just doing what the vendor asked for.

I did many of these preinstalls 20 years ago. When you get credit back from Microsoft they ask you to make sure the key isn’t installed anywhere. They don’t track it, but it is a retirement from the vendor not a misunderstanding on the part of the manager.

Oh thanks, that's really interesting. It makes more sense if there's a physical box involved -- I don't remember ever getting physical boxes for preinstalled software, but it makes sense that way.

Well ackshually, Himalayan salt does come from a sea (although this sea has disappeared a long long time ago) so it's not _technically_ wrong

Dollar Tree regular items aren’t all $1.25 anymore. Maybe half of what I’ve purchased there recently (mostly craft/gift wrap/party supplies) have changed to $1.50 or $1.75. If you grab multiple of the same item each one can ring up a different price.

No. Western Europe.

I do. Up until 2005ish, Office install CDs and the code would be in the box with the PC. You needed them if you wanted to install optional features (or reinstall). Stores rarely did the full install.

This is exactly right and the reason that Costco shoppers are un-intuitively among the richest groups in the country (average $125,000 household income).

It’s slightly different for groceries. I am not poor but I also don’t want to buy perishables in bulk. I can choose to buy one week’s worth of lettuce to be eaten in a week, but by the seventh day the lettuce has visibly degraded. I want fresher produce, so I am willing to buy smaller amounts every two days.

I was really waiting for this to be a Windows bloatware where Linux laptops are cheaper since there's no unnecessary Microsoft license at all. So you are principled in not wanting to use Office, but unprincipled enough to go ahead and use Windows?? That's a bold position on HN. Linux or death!!!!

This will be the year of Linux on the desktop!

but you re-installed Windows which is the definition of bloatware and malware.

Is there any reason to assume they are “so focused” on it? Keeping an eye on unit or per-weight prices is somewhat conventional and pretty easy—at least I think most major grocery chains around here include that info right on the sticker.

They do this same type of thing at car dealerships everywhere. Some pre-installed dealer add-on they just tack onto the total. Annoying.

Costco is great for wealthy families, less so for less wealthy. People living in small apartments have no place to put 36 rolls of paper towels and 12 jars of pasta sauce.

Having a large home is a prerequisite for shopping at Costco.

In addition to the other comment about perishables, storage space is another meaningful limiting factor that can vary with income level. Both the raw volume of available storage and the quality of the storage on things like temperature control, energy usage, accessibility, etc

Would you quote the same hourly rate to someone who wanted one hour of time versus a six month contract?

When they say "groceries" they're not just referring to fresh produce but also to things like cereal, dried goods, canned goods, or other foods you might find at a dollar store. Though some of these stores like Dollar General do also stock fresh foods like eggs, meat, dairy, and produce.

Even after 2005 they still had physical boxes, just not with CDs.

You did not understand the comment. The person is talking about units per dollar, not necessarily calories per dollar, or anything about health. If I can buy one sponge for $1.25 and three sponges for $3, for example, I prefer three. This has nothing to do with how many calories are in a sponge.

My brother in law needed that laptop for his studies back then. Since he does not annoy me with countless IT related requests like some other family members tend to do and he did not have much money, i did some research for him. School supplied all the necessary licenses for free and i installed an extremely optimised Windows.

His studies required it.

At least where I'm at they're legally required to include that info and they appear to comply maliciously whenever possible. Sometimes it's slightly wrong. Often the unit of weight changes between items of the same sort. It's absurd.

TBF between SteamOS and ChromeOS I'd say that already happened some time ago.

Not usually but yes at times DT makes sense.

And yes there are times when some cannot always afford bigger quantities. But we’re not talking about 50 pound bags at Costco here; The price per pound for a ten pound bag of something at Walmart vs a six ouncer at DT is substantial.

We used to buy raspberries, blackberries, blueberries etc at Dollar Stores. They wouldn't last a week in the fridge which is why they were at the Dollar Store, but we were eating them same-day or next day so spoilage wasn't a concern. Really helped the berry budget with toddlers.

We live in an apartment but use Costco to stock our freezer with meat and seafood. We also use it for gas, cat litter, eggs, and cheese (lasts a long time). Basically for perishables that only need to be stored so long.

I've been using Gemini or Chat GPT in store to quickly calculate the cost-per when two like items use different measures ex. ounces vs. lbs.

Which is great, but you receive a fraction of the benefit wealthy households do.