The 99 Store Mail Ad

[Alpha8472]

I looked in my mail and found a two sided ad for The 99 Store. It advertised various items such as $7.99 to around $17.99. There were some small appliances. I have not been to the store in a while, but do they actually sell that much stuff in the higher price range?

[storewanderer]

I think 90% of their items are priced above 1.4999.

Not much of anything is .99999 anymore but there are a few items.

1.2999 is also a ship that is quickly sailing away to 1.4999.

I don't consider them to be competitive with Dollar Tree anymore.

But I have bought some of their $8 to $12 range softline/home items. I don't think it was the best deal I could have found but there were a variety of reasons I made the purchases including just not wanting to go hunt around elsewhere.

[HCal]

I think most of their items are in the higher price range now. Those items probably have better margins than the cheap stuff, so they can make more profit even with fewer items sold.

You can occasionally get good deals, particularly on food ($1 trays of strawberries and blueberries in the summer) but not as many as a few years ago. They also have some good prices on wine.

My location has a huge problem with items not having prices labeled, or scanning at the wrong price. Many times the scanned price is lower so I don't think it's malicious, it's just sloppy stocking and a legacy system from the era when shelf tags weren't necessary on most items. Another store in town doesn't have this problem, so it seems to be due to local management.

[storewanderer]

I've noticed this issue. One store has many items misplaced/mispriced. Overcharges and undercharges both. Their current operating policy is price as scanned so forget a price override. Initially the way the stores here were interpreting the pricing policy was any "UNPRICED" item was supposed to be 99 cents and they'd give it to you at 99 cents then go address the issue (put price stickers on the items).

But they also have been doing some zone pricing. I recall one day earlier this year or late last year where I bought the same bag of candy at two different locations. One location the candy aisle said 0.9999999 all candy and the other it said 1.2999999 all candy and it really did scan 99 at one and 1.29 at the other. It took a couple months but that other location eventually went to 1.29999.