Witnessed Shrinkflation Up Close Today

[Badger]

Yeah, Home Depot style tomatoes are expensive. $4.50 for one plant, IIRC, in a medium pot, and no 4 packs available at all. That was last year, I gave up on HD, and so have not even checked this year, lol. Lucky for me, there is a gardening retailer near me that has tomato plants for $1.50 each, for the very small thin plastic pots. And they are pretty hardy.

I gave up on Home Depot a few years ago when they started that. It seems like Lowe's and Ace and even Walmart are in step with them on the price of vegetable sets. No way am I going to pay $5 for one tomato plant.. If they would have 4 or 6 packs for $1.98 i would buy them otherwise I will buy seeds.. This year my wife thought it would be a fun experiment to plant a thin slice of tomato in the ground to see what would happen. We wound up with a couple of dozen tomato plants.

Cheers!

 

[JoeWras]

Thanks for the replies about plants. It confirms I'm not nuts. It is definitely a form of shrinkflation, even though the product is larger... there are just a lot fewer of them per unit price.

 

[JoeWras]

The missing cookie thing is real! Remove a cookie and just reduce the weight printed on the wrapper.

I saw it with my own eyes today. This is devious! Grandma is a bad girl here!

 

[djsander]

I had mentioned earlier how Smiths had raised the price of their subs to 7.49 and shortened the bread. So I guess they weren’t selling so they dropped the price to 5.99 and put it back in the longer bread. However, they then sliced it lengthwise in half so they effectively cut the sandwich in half and it is now a narrow sandwich. It is obviously smaller, but the person that doesn’t look closely or hadn’t bought them before won’t know. Pretty sneaky.

 

[CaptTom]

I just thought of another example of shrinkflation, although it's not new: Linens.

I can't use a set of bed sheets any more. If I get the right size fitted sheet, the top sheet barely covers it. No room to tuck it in. You need the top sheet one size bigger. Same with blankets and bedspreads.

Towels are ridiculously small, too. If you want a hand towel, you have to buy a bath towel. If you want a bath towel, better get a beach towel. Those tiny things they sell as kitchen towels are useless.

Then there's pasta. I've always made everything with 16oz packages. Those have been disappearing lately. Who the heck has a recipe which calls for 12 ounces

It's not even about the money. Charge whatever you have to, but at least give me a size I can use!

 

[Surewhitey]

Prices going up faster than they can print new signs...

 

[Koolau]

Ha, I bought two Cottonelle Ultra Gentlecare Toilet Paper with Gentle Cleaningripples, 24 Family Mega Rolls back in January 2020 before the pandemic hit, and I still have half left.

And I bought another 12 megarolls of Cottonelle during the TP shortage in 2020 that I haven't opened. So, it will be some time before I need to buy TP again.

I need to have you talk with my DW. Well, maybe not.

 

[jim584672]

First time making spaghetti in awhile. I make the spaghetti sauce an added ingredients in a crockpot. Upon adding everything in the crockpot day, the amount sure seems less. Scratching my head now if I forget to add something.

Or perhaps, shrinkflation. Wonder the the sauce jar got smaller.

Ragu sauce went from 26 oz. to 24 oz.

 

[aja8888]

Prices going up faster than they can print new signs...

That photo sure is telling.