Whenever I organize my e-mails for an occasional column on reader
feedback, I am amazed at the deluge on any subject involving customer service.
Here's how your comments on shopping have stacked up in the past few
months.
(snip)
� Who's minding the store? Another big irritant to shoppers is
problems in store operations that seem to crop up over and over and never get
fixed.
Falling clearly into that category are the discrepancies shoppers
find in unit pricing at supermarkets, when two brands of the same product
display unit prices in different measures, such as price per ounce vs. price
per pound. It makes it hard to figure out what product offers the best
deal.
"I can't believe that after all the years of unit pricing, store
chains have not implemented uniform standards," wrote an annoyed
shopper.
"I cannot believe this is not intentional," wrote another.
Shoppers have an eagle eye for inconsistency, especially when it
comes to price. But what really struck me in so many comments was the degree
to which readers refused to give stores the benefit of the doubt. They are
bitter and assume they're being "taken."
Any story on unit pricing is also going to invite the
inevitable flood of tirades about how stupid our measuring system is compared
with the simplicity of metric measurements. A reader from London explained
that unit pricing problems are nonexistent in Britain. "Everything here is
metric, so it's way easier to compare value. Time for a change?"
