Random Thought Thread

David Nowlin said:
Very interesting!
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Don’t know if they’ve fixed it, but I also mentioned in a previous post that there’s a bug (feature?) in the Instacart program.

The offers are worded as $20 off your next 2 orders of $50 or more etc.

Whenever I make use of those offers, I always try to get the total as close to the minimum as possible (since the percentage off decreases, the more you exceed the minimum necessary).

One of those times, I had a $40 off orders of $80 or more, so I placed an order that came out to something like $82.xx, but I selected “No substitutions” for the items (otherwise, if something is unavailable, they might substitute it with whatever they think is close/similar).

It turned out they only had a limited number of one of the items (that I’d ordered a dozen of). Well, the way the offer worked on Instacart, was that they took $40 off that $82 offer (so the total came to $42), but when they determined that they didn’t have X number of the item, they issued a partial refund for the items that weren’t available (since I added “No substitutions”), but they didn’t cancel/revoke the $40 off, even though the total was now only $62, so I wound up paying $22 for a $62 order.

Wasn’t enough of an a-hole to deliberately make use of this programming bug. No idea if they’ve fixed it (this was probably ~ 2 years ago).
 
bluemax_1 said:
Don’t know if they’ve fixed it, but I also mentioned in a previous post that there’s a bug (feature?) in the Instacart program.

The offers are worded as $20 off your next 2 orders of $50 or more etc.

Whenever I make use of those offers, I always try to get the total as close to the minimum as possible (since the percentage off decreases, the more you exceed the minimum necessary).

One of those times, I had a $40 off orders of $80 or more, so I placed an order that came out to something like $82.xx, but I selected “No substitutions” for the items (otherwise, if something is unavailable, they might substitute it with whatever they think is close/similar).

It turned out they only had a limited number of one of the items (that I’d ordered a dozen of). Well, the way the offer worked on Instacart, was that they took $40 off that $82 offer (so the total came to $42), but when they determined that they didn’t have X number of the item, they issued a partial refund for the items that weren’t available (since I added “No substitutions”), but they didn’t cancel/revoke the $40 off, even though the total was now only $62, so I wound up paying $22 for a $62 order.

Wasn’t enough of an a-hole to deliberately make use of this programming bug. No idea if they’ve fixed it (this was probably ~ 2 years ago).
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What a wasted opportunity. 😪


😐
 
I ever mention before that I used to keep fireworks in my toolbox?

The whole point of them was whenever some one was in the bathroom too long I would throw a few in there to get them out and diffuse the smell

One day a body guy was in the bathroom and I happened to have a good one left(it was 4 times the size of o normal black cat)

Lit that thing and with special forces like precision managed to throw it over the bathroom stall wall..... and in between the guys legs that was going number 2 ......

It was hilarious, made a mess..... and sadly I'm no longer allowed to have fireworks at the shop 😞

I will not confirm or deny who threw said firework lol
 
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yoko said:
I ever mention before that I used to keep fireworks in my toolbox?

The whole point of them was whenever some one was in the bathroom too long I would throw a few in there to get them out and diffuse the smell

One day a body guy was in the bathroom and I happened to have a good one left(it was 4 times the size of o normal black cat)

Lit that thing and with special forces like precision managed to throw it over the bathroom stall wall..... and in between the guys legs that was going number 2 ......

It was hilarious, made a mess..... and sadly I'm no longer allowed to have fireworks at the shop 😞

I will not confirm or deny who threw said firework lol
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Yeah who needs balls?
 
bluemax_1 said:
A while back, I mentioned my experiences using Instacart, where I signed up for their free promo trial, used it, then canceled it just before the trial period ended (so I wouldn’t end up with the recurring subscription), and ever since then, Instacart regularly sends me offers for things like 20$ off each of the next 2 orders of $60 or more etc. that I can use without subscribing to Instacart.

I generally ignore them until I see something that’s more like 40%-50% off the order, which I wind up seeing about once every month or two lol.

Turns out, Instacart has been using AI to gauge individuals “price sensitivity”, and charging some customers more, when it determines they’re less price sensitive (i.e. when it gauges that a person orders stuff anyway, without price checking).

I always price check whatever items I’m thinking of purchasing, before using the Instacart offers, and have had deliveries to my door from Instacart from a store, that I also happened to go to in person the same day, and out of curiosity, confirmed that the total I paid to Instacart delivered to my door was ~40% less than the price in the store.

Apparently, their AI swings both ways and punishes frequent users, while rewarding people like me, too stingy to get their paid subscription and ignoring their offers until they drop costs drastically 😂

*** years ago, I’m positive Amazon was doing the same thing. Different people online would post seeing different prices for the same item on Amazon within minutes of each other, and if I went back to look at the item multiple times, the price would increase (because it showed interest in that item).

Haven’t seen that with Amazon in the past few years. Maybe they had complaints about it.
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First of all, eff that noise! :poop: :thumbsdown:

Second, Amazon still does it! I see it between my work computer and my phone all the time (different IPs). Amazon also encrypts this stuff into their links if you do searches from one computer/account and send it to someone else. To bypass this, I search for stuff while logged out of my account, and when I find what I'm looking for, I only copy the beginning of the link that leads to the particular product, without the massive tail that tells them who searched for the item, when, and how much it was. They hate this one trick! (lol)

i.e. amazon.com.../.../dp/B019RSVD3S/th=1 and that's where you cut it off. After the dp/B0xxxxxxxx. Amazon will usually tack on the th=1.

(The B0xxxxxxxx is known as the ASIN # on Amazon, uniquely identifies all their products.)

By doing this, they can't track where the link came from, or what pricing was shown.
 
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SpyderPhreak said:
First of all, eff that noise! :poop: :thumbsdown:

Second, Amazon still does it! I see it between my work computer and my phone all the time (different IPs). Amazon also encrypts this stuff into their links if you do searches from one computer/account and send it to someone else. To bypass this, I search for stuff while logged out of my account, and when I find what I'm looking for, I only copy the beginning of the link that leads to the particular product, without the massive tail that tells them who searched for the item, when, and how much it was. They hate this one trick! (lol)

i.e. amazon.com.../.../dp/B019RSVD3S/th=1 and that's where you cut it off. After the dp/B0xxxxxxxx. Amazon will usually tack on the th=1.

(The B0xxxxxxxx is known as the ASIN # on Amazon, uniquely identifies all their products.)

By doing this, they can't track where the link came from, or what pricing was shown.
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I do this on YouTube links also

https:// youtu. .be/-XPi2RKYPX0?

''si=ZZNWSJP8HfKGKHnM''

If the link above were whole you'd just delete everything in the second line in parenthesis. Basically everything after the question mark.
 
SpyderPhreak said:
First of all, eff that noise! :poop: :thumbsdown:

Second, Amazon still does it! I see it between my work computer and my phone all the time (different IPs). Amazon also encrypts this stuff into their links if you do searches from one computer/account and send it to someone else. To bypass this, I search for stuff while logged out of my account, and when I find what I'm looking for, I only copy the beginning of the link that leads to the particular product, without the massive tail that tells them who searched for the item, when, and how much it was. They hate this one trick! (lol)

i.e. amazon.com.../.../dp/B019RSVD3S/th=1 and that's where you cut it off. After the dp/B0xxxxxxxx. Amazon will usually tack on the th=1.

(The B0xxxxxxxx is known as the ASIN # on Amazon, uniquely identifies all their products.)

By doing this, they can't track where the link came from, or what pricing was shown.
Click to expand...
I learned something today.

Thanks y’all
 
SpyderPhreak said:
First of all, eff that noise! :poop: :thumbsdown:

Second, Amazon still does it! I see it between my work computer and my phone all the time (different IPs). Amazon also encrypts this stuff into their links if you do searches from one computer/account and send it to someone else. To bypass this, I search for stuff while logged out of my account, and when I find what I'm looking for, I only copy the beginning of the link that leads to the particular product, without the massive tail that tells them who searched for the item, when, and how much it was. They hate this one trick! (lol)

i.e. amazon.com.../.../dp/B019RSVD3S/th=1 and that's where you cut it off. After the dp/B0xxxxxxxx. Amazon will usually tack on the th=1.

(The B0xxxxxxxx is known as the ASIN # on Amazon, uniquely identifies all their products.)

By doing this, they can't track where the link came from, or what pricing was shown.
Click to expand...
I read a couple of days ago about how many brick and mortar shops post one price on the shelf or on the price tag of an item, but it rings up as more at the register. Dollar General and Family Dollar were habitual offenders. The department of weights and measures and whoever else regulates this stuff catches them constantly. But, the maximum fine is $5000 so it must be worth it to them. The stores try to explain it by saying they can update prices at the register quickly and easily but it requires an employee to go through the store manually changing prices on each item to update them, and the are often short staffed as a way to keep prices low.
 
Mendoman said:
I read a couple of days ago about how many brick and mortar shops post one price on the shelf or on the price tag of an item, but it rings up as more at the register. Dollar General and Family Dollar were habitual offenders. The department of weights and measures and whoever else regulates this stuff catches them constantly. But, the maximum fine is $5000 so it must be worth it to them. The stores try to explain it by saying they can update prices at the register quickly and easily but it requires an employee to go through the store manually changing prices on each item to update them, and the are often short staffed as a way to keep prices low.
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I catch this at stores ALL the time. I make them go check it, and usually they'll give me the as-posted, lower price. Grocery stores are getting pretty bad about it.

Walmarts in my area recently have moved to digital tags on the shelves that can be quickly updated with a scanner, so they can pull one over on the customers more easily.
 
SpyderPhreak said:
I catch this at stores ALL the time. I make them go check it, and usually they'll give me the as-posted, lower price. Grocery stores are getting pretty bad about it.

Walmarts in my area recently have moved to digital tags on the shelves that can be quickly updated with a scanner, so they can pull one over on the customers more easily.
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They can also be changed based on your Walmart app cookies
 
SpyderPhreak said:
First of all, eff that noise! :poop: :thumbsdown:

Second, Amazon still does it! I see it between my work computer and my phone all the time (different IPs). Amazon also encrypts this stuff into their links if you do searches from one computer/account and send it to someone else. To bypass this, I search for stuff while logged out of my account, and when I find what I'm looking for, I only copy the beginning of the link that leads to the particular product, without the massive tail that tells them who searched for the item, when, and how much it was. They hate this one trick! (lol)

i.e. amazon.com.../.../dp/B019RSVD3S/th=1 and that's where you cut it off. After the dp/B0xxxxxxxx. Amazon will usually tack on the th=1.

(The B0xxxxxxxx is known as the ASIN # on Amazon, uniquely identifies all their products.)

By doing this, they can't track where the link came from, or what pricing was shown.
Click to expand...
Brave browser allows you to do a copy a clean link that automatically strips out the tracking information. Saves a bunch of time.
 
Mendoman said:
I read a couple of days ago about how many brick and mortar shops post one price on the shelf or on the price tag of an item, but it rings up as more at the register. Dollar General and Family Dollar were habitual offenders. The department of weights and measures and whoever else regulates this stuff catches them constantly. But, the maximum fine is $5000 so it must be worth it to them. The stores try to explain it by saying they can update prices at the register quickly and easily but it requires an employee to go through the store manually changing prices on each item to update them, and the are often short staffed as a way to keep prices low.
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MI has a price tag law; if something rings up for more than the tag price (or the price on the shelves), you’re entitled to a refund of the overcharge plus 10x the overcharge (but it’s a minimum of $1, maximum of $5. So if the shelf tag says $9.72 and it rang up as $9.99, you’re entitled to a refund of the $0.27 + $2.70), and you have up to 30 days to catch it.

Supposed to ensure stores don’t try to pull a fast one, or so they’ll make corrections promptly, as they might end up cutting into their profit margin if a lot of people catch the error.
 
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