A few days ago I stopped at the local drug store to buy some contact lens cleaner. (I buy the store brand, because it's cheaper and usually as effective as most of the "name" brands.) When I arrived at the shelf, I noticed that the box looked considerably larger than before, but the price hadn't changed.
For a moment, I found myself floating up above the Eye Care aisle in an out-of-body experience, such was the power of this rarest of all retail events -- an upgrade in contents with no price increase!
I weasled the box out of its spring-loaded row to scrutinize it. After generations of tricky retail, American consumers (the word reminds me of a bunch of hungry worms in a bucket, but it's the King's English, now) have rightfully grown as suspicious of vendors as a Russian peasant in an old movie, biting a kopek to see if it's real. I squinted at the tiny print on the box, muttering to myself at yet another retail time-theft.
(All told, I've spent whole years of my life peering and squinting at boxes, wrappers, and containers of all kinds, like a myopic mouse in a kids' book, trying to decipher ingredients and searching for the tiny, cryptic, faded or just plain omitted expiration dates on retail stuff. True, comedians have been lampooning the theme for years, but since it's getting worse, let's gong it again.)
I couldn't tell offhand if the ingredients in the repackaged liquid had changed. (Had that hydroxypropyl methylcellulose been in the same position on the list the last time, I wondered, or was it now lower, indicating a dilution? They tinker with the mix every few months, trying to squeeze another penny out of it -- out of me -- and usually making it less effective each time; another example of hidden inflation.) So finally I took the plunge and bought it.
Driving home, I mentally celebrated my victory over the eye-care pickpockets. Saline solution (aka salt water) may have doubled in price in the past two years (I hope it didn't used to be yellow, but with luck that's just our drinking water), but at least my vigilance had rewarded me here. I nodded triumphantly to myself as I walked in the house.
Just to be sure of my victory, I went in the bathroom and compared the ingredients on the old bottle to the ingredients on the new box. Yes! Identical in every way! I hadn't been snookered after all.
I opened the box and peered inside. Hmm. The bottle was dramatically smaller than the box, but you couldn't tell by shaking the box at the store. The bottle was wedged into that tricky scaffolding they like to install when the box is meant to disguise the flea-world dimensions of the contents.
Still, it didn't matter that the box dwarfed the bottle. The ploy was common enough. I reached in and pulled out the bottle.
It was then that my mental victory dance came to an end. Preoccupied with all the times I'd been had by the ingredients, I saw that I had just paid the same price for 2/3 of an ounce that I had paid for a full ounce two months before.
Bigger box, smaller bottle, "same price." Duped again!
