Mas o Menos

Today I had a conversation with a friend of mine who this morning purchased a Dell laptop computer on pre-Black Friday special for under $400 at Wal-Mart. Her sister who rides a broom loaded up on her when this purchase came up in conversation later in the morning. Mean sister said all sorts of crazy-assed foolishness. This included the comment that my friend got was she paid for suggesting that since she did not pay much she did not get much.

I thought about this beyond just the bitch cattiness. It is illogical irrationality to make the blanket statement about things that are being sold less expensively even on special at Wally World somehow automatically are of inherently inferior quality. This is often true in the world, especially at Wally World, but not all the time for all items, especially when one takes into account specials which can feature quality items at less-than-typical price points as a means of garnering traffic into a particular store or chain. Retailers can afford to do this because they already dictate to the suppliers what Wal-Mart's costs will be. Also, Wal-Mart purchases in such huge quantities that they can still make a large profit on a small mark-up as a result of selling at scale.

It is also true that just because one is paying more for something that one is automatically getting more value for their buck simply by virtue of their paying more for the good or service. Experientially, anecdotally, and intuitively we know this to be as inaccurate an assessment as the opposite assertion. Something can be priced well-beyond its inherent value due to its value being unwittingly overestimated as a result of misjudging the marketplace or simply the seller intentionally overpricing said good or service in a disingenuous attempt to extract more  than he or she knows it is worth.

In summary, we all ought to recognize that while some patterns usually hold true and are useful to recognize such as "you get what you pay for" that it is not always an accurate saying.