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Upselling to the downtrodden
Why...
Buy a Coke at the cinema that is so big an Olympic diver could use it for high board practice… and you will need a pee half way through the movie if you drink it all? Sucker! You were upsold something useless… and probably with a box of popcorn deep enough to hide Jimmy Hoffa. As I trundle about my everyday life it's becoming nearly impossible not to have some snake oil salesmen try and upsell me on everything I buy. Let’s start with useless upsell number 1- High Octane Performance fuel. The Octane is a flammable hydrocarbon added to petrol and is basically the optimum compression point in the piston cycle when the fuel explodes. If my car can do that with 95 Octane it is an utter waste of money to buy 98 Octane ‘High Performance’ fuel. It will do nothing, zip, nada, blobski-bloojah, f*ck all in terms of performance and just cost me a few more cents per litre. Now that I have been conned out of a few bucks filling up, it’s time for a trip to my supermarket where I am inundated with upsell offers…the result of this is the interior of the car is filled with enough loo paper and fish fingers to supply a battalion of men in Helmand Province. Unless I have amoebic dysentery and only eat fish morning noon and night for thirty years I ain’t ever using it all. Time to go home and watch something on TV? Most digital services make you stack package on top of package before you can get to pay per view movies or entire series box sets. Why? It is irrelevant now with on line services offering pay per view circumventing the need to even have packaged TV… and to add insult to injury the pay TV services then want to charge me more on pay per view than iTunes!!
...and another thing
Electronic superstores are unquestionably masters of the upsell. Like a lamb to the slaughter I saunter into one of these cathedrals to the God of Electricity to buy a simple Apple extension cord only to leave with two new TVs, a Sous Vide cooker, electric tooth pick and a Hammond organ.
As I stagger to the checkout, my credit card about to melt, I get sucker punched with the final upsell – extended warranty.
If you look at the financial reports of these mega chains you will see that selling extended warranties is what keeps the owners in jets and jacuzzis. They are eye wateringly profitable and utterly unnecessary.
I read recently the single most reliable purchase you ever make is a fridge. (Yup, I know what some of you are thinking. I am excluding any person to person ‘physical’ purchase whose result are100% reliable).
Yet despite the fridge being more dependable than a TV morning show presenter having had too much Botox, we buy these warranties by the bucket load. Even then the gremlins of built in obsolescence always ensure problems only start the day after these warranties expire.
...and another thing
I think I will introduce my own version called upyours. If you want me to buy another ton of carrots, I get to send my local Jehovah’s Witness to sell The Watchtower in your shop for a day. You want me to buy unlimited dollops of mash potato and gravy then I get to sing out loud in your restaurant. Give me free extra beer and I’ll sing in tune.
So next time you get offered two for one, offer ✌️for?
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One Comment
What a fertile mind. You’re able to verbalize exactly what I’m thinking, and make me laugh while doing it. Please don’t stop!