War
The Age
Saturday February 2, 2008
The battle lines are drawn, warns Janice Breen Burns.
I can't remember anybody declaring war but - sure as frocks - we're in one. A gloves-off, Them-versus-Us brawl to the death and last grimy dollar. Summer's sale season was a memorably bloody campaign. Frock shops: five. Suckers (aka consumers): two (pending dispute). Settle back; I want to regale you with a couple of my war stories. Comfy? Righto:I stumbled into my first battle - a shelf of folded denims discounted from $230 to $170 - at a frock and jean shop in Chapel Street, South Yarra. FYI, there is a brand of skinny-leg jean with low-tide hip band and white stitching that is listed "compulsory" on the self-defining fashion inventory of certain females aged 14.9 to 15.7 years and living in the middle-Melbourne geodemographic belt between the CBD and outer East Malvern. I happened to have such a female with me. She flit immediately to the "Sale" shelf. Moth to flame. Bee to honeypot. "I need new jeans. Nee-eeeeed them."Ah yes. Need. That acid-on-silk word upon which modern humanity sits, and swivels. "Well, I need a new Vuitton," I said. "And Edmiston shoes. And liposuction. And a wind-in-my-hair vintage soft top with mag wheels and cream leather upholstery would be nice, but there is the little matter of reality to consider, young missy."And so I waited, patient, while she tried on her new jeans. At least they were on sale. Fifty smackers off. Not bad. I win. Frock shop: one. Wily consumer: two. Smugness, thy name is Moi.Halfway down Chapel, however, in a dreamy fug of schemes about how to spend this unexpected $50 windfall, with aforesaid female dawdling happily beside me in her own dreamy fug of schemes to winkle a new top out of me to go with her jeans, I checked my receipt and the credit slip I had signed, in my usual fashion, without looking at it. "1 pr jeans, total $230."Surely. Not. Where was my $50 discount? A mistake? Yes! Back at the frock shop, the counter jock-ette assured me; it was indeed a mistake. Mine. "You see," she ponced showily along the "sale" shelf of neatly folded denim stacks (was that a triumphant glint in her evil little eye?): "This pile, and this pile, and all these piles up to here; they're all on sale." The subtlety of the trick took my breath away. "But this one, and this one, aren't." And, she patted two piles at the end of the line of discounted jeans. "They're full price."Knickers.My next war story swivels on the kind of cotton underwear I regularly buy in bulk; the knicker equivalent of AA batteries, tennis balls for dog walks, white T-shirts, and cleanskin wines.The cheaper they are, the more you buy, the more you save, the smugger you feel. Score! And so it was; the most alluring cotton knickers I have ever encountered in my life, were racked - also amid the red-Texta hype, the fluttering forest of "Prices Slashed!" banners and the "Not only this! But that! And this too!!" cacophony of the summer sale season - at $9.50, marked down to a deliciously ridiculous $3.50. Not only that, a price-check of one pair at one of those zap machines dotted around this self-serve discount department store, blipped a genuinely stupid $1.32.Knickers for $1.32 a pair! Good grief."Smug" didn't cover it. I scraped 20 pairs in assorted colours off their little hangars and lugged them to the counter. There was a queue. I hate queues. But I queued in a kind of bliss, nonetheless: a $160-odd saving-stroke-windfall! I smiled my most saintly Nicole-Kidman-esque-I'm-better-and-cleverer-than-all-of-you smile. My fellow shoppers smiled. The checkout chick smiled. She zapped my knickers: $3.50, $3.50, $9.50, $9.50, $3.50, $9.50 . . . What? Duped again? With a wink, she stuffed the last pair, a wildly unattractive fleshy-peach colour that the store obviously couldn't get rid of quick enough, into the bag. "Wow! $1.32. What a great buy!"Yes, I thought so.The flat plastic head of my new high-tech mop ($35, slashed to $17.50), snapped in a pool of my tears at home that night. The lush waves of my $100 hairdo ("Not a mere senior stylist for you, my dear, but the salon owner himself!"), dropped like Phyllis Diller's tits into a cut of which only a first-year apprentice on crack could be justly proud. A $400 pair of sneakers, barely worn, purchased less than a year ago (commissioned by a global brand from a famous Japanese designer) also chose that week to curl up its toes. And a $34.95 blouse bought (half price! sale ends soon!) for the aforesaid teen female to wear with her outrageously expensive jeans ("I don't care if they're cheap compared to the $400 ones!"), split like a stab wound across its entire empire bodice.So, I know what you're thinking. But, if every tricky or disappointing retail transaction were tackled down a proper channel, we would all live, love, have babies and die in a "customer relations" queue. And though, yes, this is indeed a self-serve buyer-beware world and I am an idiot, in my defence, I was hardwired as a consumer in a petite bourgeoisie culture of trust, fairness and good quality for a good price.But enough. Not any more.On with the war.
© 2008 The Age