It’s not uncommon to see 75% off or 80% off of a jewelry item in department stores, or certain jewelry stores- Is this really a good deal? Many of the times we see people pay far too much for a piece, it was because a dishonest store told them it was extremely marked down. Let Silver City jewelers explain why this happens and why those huge percent off “deals” are actually just a dishonest sales technique!
When a jewelry manufacturer sells pieces to a store, they sell it for a certain cost and usually suggest a retail price, starting at 2 times that value. For instance, a manufacturer may sell a gold wedding band to a store for $50.00, the store pays the manufacturer that $50.00 and then tries to sell the wedding band to their customers for $100.00. That is the normal behavior of retail stores. However, in order to entice customers into thinking they are getting a much better deal, there is a shady practice of putting a much larger price on the pieces sticker and then saying that its been discounted by a huge percent. The store can take the wedding band that they paid $50.00 for, put a price tag on it of 300$, and then say they are selling it for 66% off, at $100.00. When that happens and the customer buys it for $100.00 because they think they got a special deal, they really paid the full retail price. Worse then that, what happens more often is that a company will take a $50.00 ring, put a price sticker on it of $600.00 and then say they are selling it for 66% off, at $200.00. A customer who buys that ring thinks they saved 66% when they really paid much more then they should have.
As you can see, its easy for companies to put an extremely unfair sticker price on a piece just so they can say they are selling it at a huge discount. Don’t fall for it! Companies all over the world are trying to trick customers into thinking they are getting a much better deal then they really are by putting big %off signs on their jewelry while selling the pieces for as much or more then honest stores.
Of course for someone who isn’t a trained jeweler, it can be very difficult to understand what a retail price on a piece should be. Our advice is to look at the bottomline of the actual price they are charging for the piece, and ignore any discounts or % off signs. On top of that, we advise typically avoiding shopping at stores who advertise huge % off discounts because they likely have huge unfair prices on all of their pieces and the ones without discounts may still be priced at 5 to 10 times higher then what an honest store would charge.
We hope you enjoyed this informative article! If you liked it let us know, and keep an eye out for more like this in the future.
