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21.0 PET PEEVE, NO PRICES POSTED AT STORES! - CONSUMER CULTURE ARTICLES, FROM SAVVY-DISCOUNTS.com

There is simply no excuse for not posting the price of a product on the shelf. At one chain department store, in a quick survey, I found about 10% of the products did not have prices.

Some stores now have self-service scanners. This is better than nothing. Still many companies just don't seem to notice or care that the prices are missing.

Years ago, when retailers removed prices from individual products and went to bar coding, a deal was struck with the consumer. The stores agreed to post prices on the shelf but not mark a price on each item. The cost savings would be passed along to the consumer. There were protests at the time because many said that prices would not be clear or accurate.

Now, some 25 years later stores are often not doing what they promised. Trying to find the price may take ten minutes. This happened to me recently.

It is next to impossible to shop if you cannot find the price for something. When I mentioned this to some store clerks, they shrugged it off. "Just bring the item up to the check out-lane and don't buy it if you don't like the price," I was told. "But what if I want to buy several if the price is right? What if there are a number of products and I want to comparison shop? Should I bring five boxes of three kinds of tissue paper to the check out counter and leave the ones I don't like?"

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I suggest that you complain to the management, when the store does not post prices. This is not simply an inconvenience, it is a breach of trust.

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