Wow, look at this nice five-piece bedroom set. Only $599! Not bad, especially when the description says it’s normally $1800. Five different pieces—that would fill a bedroom with a lot of cheap class! Now let’s put the fine print filter on it:
Five-piece set includes headboard, footboard, wood rails/slats, dresser and mirror.
That’s right, the bed is actually three pieces. That nightstand and other dresser must have wandered onto the set accidentally.
Scott, who tipped us to this, writes, “So to Value City, a bed = 3 pieces? Sheesh! Why not consider each side rail a piece and call it a 6 piece set!?!” Great idea! We think we’ve discovered a whole new way to increase profits without raising prices: segmentation. Why, that dresser can be listed as a 7 piece storage system by itself, a pizza with twelve pepperoni slices on it is suddenly a 12-topping pizza, and KFC’s 2-piece chicken meal immediately doubles to a 4-piecer if you count the bones as individual units.
The important thing to remember is to use misleading photographs, though, or else your customers might not take the bait.
“Classic Cherry Queen 5-PC Bedroom Package” [Value City Furniture] (Thanks to Scott!)
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I started to call bs on this being standard practice, but several of you have noted that it has been in your experiences. However, there is at least one store that sells a bed (headboard, footboard, rails and slates) as one piece — Haverty’s lists everything that makes up a bed as one piece and it has one sku. I don’t know about the rest of you but if someone is selling me a bed that is exactly what I expect.
Regardless of wether or not you *can* break a bed down into 3 individual SKUs, and whether or not this ad breaks any laws, I’d boycott this company on principal alone.
We actually have several pieces of furniture from them – bedroom and living room. BUT their “compare at” signs are absolutely retarded. They are on everything and each time I was there I mocked them. I could put “compare at $10,000″ if I wanted, but that wouldn’t mean anything more than their signs do. Also, they are not the only ones who count pieces this way.
oh, all the furniture we bought was solid wood, tongue/groove joints, wood on wood drawers/slides, etc – very hard to find that kind of stuff today.
@Trust me, I’m a doctor: Not true, see my post below about the quality of what we got. We shopped at EVERY furniture store in Fredericksburg, VA and came back there several times simply b/c of the construction techniques. Not saying all of the furniture is made like the pieces we got, but what we bought is sturdy and long-lasting construction. not veneers, not cheap screws.