Did your pet peeve come to mind when you read the question? Do you know what your greatest pet peeve is? Here’s mine.

I purchased a box of clementines the other day for what appeared to be a good price. When I got it home I noticed the box, which I thought was the same size as the box I’d bought a couple of weeks before, looked smaller. I found the box of the previous purchase and compared the two. The new one was smaller to the tune of at least six clementines.

That’s when I realized I’d been duped by a marketing ploy that constitutes my greatest pet peeve. The packaging was similar to the last version but it was reduced in size. They’d reduced it in size but not in price. Again.

Do they think we won’t notice? Eventually you notice that the cheese “block” you used to buy has so gradually reduced in thickness that now more of a thick cheese slice than a block. The pie looks the same but it’s now in a shallower dish so there is less of it and yet the box is just as large. Don’t even get me started on the box of chocolates which used to have many chocolates pressed together in those tiny papers but now have plastic trays with eleven chocolates spread out on each tray.

I know the weight or volume is shown on the packaging but how often do you look at the weight of something you buy regularly? I tend to trust that since the box looks the same nothing has changed. Don’t these companies know that when a customer realizes they’d been fooled by marketing tactics like this they will be less than impressed?

My question to the marketing geniuses who believe it’s wise to trick the customer: what are you thinking? Here some thoughts to ponder: create a smaller package with a lower price then raise the price on the original package. What happened to the golden rule: treat people the way you’d like to be treated?

I like to keep the conversation positive around here but some things in life just bother us. Let’s get them out and on the table then we can go along our merry way. What’s your greatest pet peeve?

photo credit: Sarah J