The price you pay
January 1, 2018
It has been quite the snowy winter here in NYC (clarification: Bostonians, this is NOT a complaint, xox). One particular storm, however, definitely stands out. It was hyped so much that it even ended up closing down the city transportation systems, causing an overall panic amongst many city-dwellers. The afternoon of the storm, on my way home to my cozy, warm(ish) apartment, I, like most others, decided to pick up the necessities to keep myself satiated over the next couple of days incase leaving became impossible (or more likely, undesirable). Due to the blizzard conditions I was hesitant to stray from my known path home (on which there are no grocery stores), so I stopped at my local corner bodega-type establishment to grab a dozen eggs. In a typical grocery store exchange, I hand the cashier my goods, she says that will be $8, I pay, and leave. Except, there was something atypical about this circumstance. These eggs were not golden, organic, or even cage-free. Yet, in my eagerness to get home to my patiently waiting couch and Netflix account (and stay there for as long as possible), the absurdity of the situation was completely lost on me. It wasn’t until later that evening when I was cooking with said eggs that it hit me. These cost me $8?! At this point, I consider myself relatively numb to the absurdly high prices at New York City grocery stores; I am prepared to walk into a market and shell out $20 or more for just four or five items. But $8 for a regular old dozen egg crate? Something seems off here. Upon further investigation I discovered that my local go-to supermarket, Fairway, located just two avenues and four blocks away from the market in dispute, prices a carton of eggs at around $3.29. If you want to get fancy, for about $1.50 more, you can go organic. Gristedes and D’Agostino, both located within a couple of blocks, are markets that typically charge a little more, so maybe up to $5 or $6 for a dozen eggs. But $8?! Staring out of my apartment window into the snowy scene, I couldn’t help but wonder…how does any market get away with charging such a price? Then thinking back to the exact circumstance of the purchase, I realized what was (possibly) going on. What I found was that similar to Uber’s controversial surge pricing technique—in which a company forces a consumer to overpay because of a high demand and lack of other options—the market was able to take advantage of my need to buy the eggs and get home before the snow started accumulating, so they were able to charge whatever they wanted. Clearly, in this case, I did have other options (the extensive selection of other local grocers listed above)—but none as appealing as buying a carton of eggs, exactly where I was, as opposed to walking 5-10 minutes in a blizzard to save a couple of bucks. In a subsequent visit to the same market a couple of weeks later, on your average 10 degree NYC winter evening, I found the same carton of eggs being peddled for $3.99, further proving my surge-pricing theory. The lesson here? Vendors can and will charge whatever they so please for items at any particular time. Next time there is a predicted blizzard on the way, stock up before it starts…or you will pay the price.
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