Now I've bought trail mix in a box with these outer dimensions before...I recognize it and know roughly what I'm getting, right? This allows me to judge whether or not the price is acceptable, before I buy. Well I was wrong about the Safeway brand. Their box has a modification;
That's right, a pyramid of plastic in the bottom that peptides into the container space and reduces it's effective volume by about a fifth. Now I speculate that someone at Safeway wanted to improve profit margins but already had the cheapest plastic container and the cheapest foreign ingredients, so they wanted to reduce the amount without dropping the price, and finagle the margin. And instead of being upfront and honest with customers they hid an airspace inside the packaging that took over an ounce of mix out. I further theorize that when the package was introduced the price did not adjust.
Finally, some people would suggest that the packaging is shaped thus for “strength”. Bollocks. These packages have been on the market with flat bottoms, and more contents, and apparent proven strength - for years. To me (note, me) this is plainly a straight-up customer swindle.
What would work? Smaller packaging, certainly. Less contents, absolutely. But without a corresponding drop in price those would have been obvious. So instead we're left with the feeling we got swindled and those of us who noticed will probably not be back, at least, for this product.
That's just fucking broken. The wrong incentive controlled the decision. The customer is (often) left unhappy. No repeat business (at least from me), and maybe a loss of further potential business (definitely from me in this case). I was so angry I've rather stopped buying much from Safeway at all. No, this didn't take a lot of thought, or occupy my mind, it just happened. And that's how customer reactions go.Do the right thing people; make better product, don't try to fuck the customer, and be proud of it.