Word: cheaping
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...system—travelers can hop on and off trains whenever and wherever they desire at very little expense! When I arrived in Paris, I came equipped with a Eurail flexi pass, allowing me to travel on four days within two months anywhere in France and Spain. A cheap and flexible option, or so I thought...
Train travel in Europe is actually a paradox: It’s only cheap if you book way in advance, and only flexible if you don’t mind paying extra for the privilege and don’t have a set itinerary. High-speed lines seem like a logical choice if you want to travel a sizeable distance, since local lines will take all day. However, because these trains are apparently very popular, rail pass holders must pay an additional fee to reserve a seat (anywhere from 3 to 45 Euros and up). Most trains require a reservation...
...what's wrong with cheap, in a nutshell? Well, in a nutshell, it comes back to bite us in the ass. It's short-term gratification and long-term pain. Now, I'm a rabid bargain hunter. Ask my kids. When I come back from the store and I have four boxes of cereal, they know that cereal is on sale. I'm what behavioral psychologists call "deal prone." And yet I noticed this wasn't really saving me any money - in fact, it was costing me money. I went and looked at the data and found that since...
...they set those reference prices very high to make you think that you're getting a good deal. In fact, often a department store will put one mattress on so-called "sale" and raise the prices of the other mattresses so it makes it seem that that mattress is cheap. The only mattress they really expect to sell is that mattress on sale...
...argue in your book that the so-called "age of cheap" is unsustainable. Right. It's a short-term fix. I talk about Ikea being the least sustainable company on the planet. That's a quote, I didn't say that. But the reason is that they rely on consumers to carry huge costs for the company. (Read "Wal-Mart vs. Target: No Contest in the Recession...