This probably shouldn't bother me as much as it does. I order a lot of things off Ye Olde Internet and I'm constantly amazed or puzzled or just somehow reactive to the fact that companies presume that few people know how to comparison shop or do math or even how to use their calculator apps.
Let us say you want to lay in a supply of Skippy Natural Super Chunk Peanut Butter Spread in 40 oz. jars. Here are your best options on Amazon as I write this. These numbers may change slightly by the time you read this. Two of these ship free if you have Amazon Prime and the other three ship free regardless…
- One jar is $28.00 so you'd be paying about 70 cents an ounce.
- A package of two jars is $24.25. That's right: As I write this, buying two jars on Amazon costs less than buying one jar. So rounding up a half a penny, you'd be paying around $12.13 per jar and about 30 cents an ounce.
- A package of three jars is $36.35, which translates to $12.12 a jar. The Amazon listing says that's 91 cents an ounce but by my math, it's pretty much the same as the two-jar option.
- A package of four jars is $59.00 which is, of course, $14.75 per jar. The four-jar package costs more than two two-jar packages. Amazon says this works out to $1.48 per ounce but I think it's more like 37 cents per ounce.
- Lastly, they offer a five-jar package for $53.58, meaning five jars costs less than four jars. This works out to $10.72 per jar and while Amazon says this option will run you $1.34 per ounce, I think it's about 28 cents an ounce.
Now, I recognize that Amazon orders are fulfilled by different suppliers and that the company that set the price for the four-jar package is not the same company that set the price for the five-jar package but you'd think Amazon would get these guys lined-up a little better. If you're in a hurry and you order the four-jar pack and later realize you could have gotten more for less, you're not going to feel swindled by those outside suppliers. You're going to think Amazon took advantage of you.
And of course, there's no excuse for the price-per-ounce being so far wrong. (By the way: If you're puzzled by the references to "2.5 pound," these are 40 ounce jars and 40 ounces is 2.5 pounds.)
So which one are you going to buy? Answer: None of the above. You're going to go over to the Target site where you'll discover that they sell the same 40 ounce Skippy Natural Super Chunk Peanut Butter Spread for $7.39 a jar, which is 18-and-a-half cents per ounce. Postage is free if your total order is over $35.00 so you can order five jars or you can order a lesser number plus some other items from Target.
But you're probably not going to order from them, either. Unless you have some moral problem with buying from Walmart, you're going to go over to their website and discover that they sell the 40 ounce Skippy Natural Super Chunk Peanut Butter Spread for $5.58 a jar. Again, you have to get your order over $35.00 to get free shipping but how hard is that? The price per ounce for the peanut butter works out to 14 cents…and that's the lowest price I could find for what is, as you might have guessed by now, my favorite peanut butter.
My thanks to pals Bruce Reznick, Phil Geiger and Tom Galloway who helped fact-check my math. I just find it amazing that if you don't pay attention, you can wind up paying twenty-eight bucks for something you can purchase elsewhere for $5.58.