I recently (20 December) bought a few bits from an online retailer as they had a discount of 7% and they seem to have the best prices for what I wanted. Before the discount my basket was about £86 and a few pence, and following the discount it came down to just over £80. Bargain I thought.

The exact same items are now less then £80 with no discount.

I’m not going to bother complaining for the sake of a few quid but I think its wrong that parts that are not part of any Christmas sale are suddenly reduced the day after a discount offer ends, it’s as if the prices were inflated to offset the discount applied.

Am I being silly being bothered about this, or would this annoy other people too?

If you were happy paying just over eighty pounds, then why are you now checking their prices and getting upset by the fact they’re now cheaper?

They can change their prices how and when they like*. Seems they’ve lowered prices once it’s too late to deliver for Xmas.

*Except for marking things as discounted which were never offered for a higher amount, etc.

Start a petition demanding that any online supplier must place a bold graphic flash across every item that is possibly to be included in a future sale, notifying any potential purchasers of said item that it is to be possibly included in that future sale, so would be available at a discounted price in the future sale, as opposed to now, where it would cost a few quid more. Possibly.

I’ll sign it

I wasn’t checking prices as such, I was checking the status of my order as the items haven’t ben dispatched yet and I wanted to check something with a part I bought. When I realised it was cheaper it prompted me to look at the other bits.

Thanks Binners, good advice.

I’ll go ahead and do that.

Glad to be of assistance 😀

I start my new job in January working for the EU commission. I’ll get it sorted!

Good lad 🙄

Halfords have been selling bikes this way for years.

If your order hasn’t been dispatched why not just cancel it and re-order at the new lower price?

some retailers actually tell you on the pricing label what the previous high prices were over a given time to show the “saving” you will get.

My order has been dispatched otherwise I would’ve considered this as I could’ve waited till after Christmas for the parts, but thanks anyway.

No major biggie, just a slight annoyance.

It’s often worth writing a reasonable-if-whiny email. Especially if it’s a shop that does free returns or if the price of return is less tha the saving.

I’ve done the whiney email, free returns thing before. Probably helped when they realised they weren’t too keen to have to pay the postage on a hefty tow-bar bike carrier again though

Had a discount not been applied to my original order I would’ve emailed them and returned them, but as it goes its a only a few quid difference, but its more a principal thing.

It just comes across to me that prices ‘seem’ to have been inflated to drive Christmas sales then a discount thrown at them to promote and push these sales.

It’s just odd that when the discount ended the prices went down.

This is of course just my opinion and I have no hard facts based my theory.

But, on the flip side of the coin I recently purchased a pair of Sombrio Shazam riding shoes from another retailer for £24.99 which was an absolute bargain (down from £79.99), then just over a week later I noticed they had gone back up to £54.99, crazy! And ironically they were listed in the ‘extra discount’ section of the website 🙄

I once found a tenner just lying there on the pavement. Wish it’d been a twenty, but hey.

wordnumb, I feel your pain, but I hope you handed that to the police 😉

I once found a tenner just lying there on the pavement

Eh! think that was mine, did it have a picture of the queen on it?

A certain bike company did something similar last Christmas (don’t they all?) – £50 voucher with any purchase of a groupset from 1st Jan. Funnily enough, come 1st of Jan the groupset costs went up remarkably by £50…