[blindcooks] Re: Kind of a Rant - Shopping
- From: "Jon Rawlings" <twosocks76@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <blindcooks@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 08:04:52 -0800
Robert:
Trust me, most of us deel with these same frustrations all the time. The
fact that you're in a rural area only complicates things for you. Were I in
your place, I'd probably do most of my food shopping on line and get my pantry
items and canned foods and things in bulk at places like Wal Mart or Sam's Club
as much as possible. It's a shame that Sam's Club is unwilling to help you
shop. You didn't mention any sighted friends that are able and willing to help
even occasionally, so I assume there are none right now.
When I was single, I
'm a little ashamed to admit I didn't worry very much about saving money on my
food bill. I lived on the same block as my grocery store, as well as a store
kind of similar to Sam's Club called Smart and Final. I generally just bought
what I wanted when I wanted it with little regard for cost. Then, along came
Emily, and all that changed. Not only does she go through the ads in the mail
with me, but our store also has a website where we can log in, enter the code
on the back of our store card, and load electronic coupons onto the card that
are applied automatically at checkout. Between all that and planning my menus
in advance and trying to stretch what we do buy, our grocery store spending is
really quite reasonable, especially given how well we eat. I made barbecue
chicken in the slow cooker last week that went on sandwich buns, then took the
leftovers and made awesome barbecue chicken pizzas for dinner yesterday. We
were given a free turkey about a week and a half ago which I roasted last week.
It has already made three meals for us, and there's enough left in the freezer
for five more. But, I digress....
In short, I'm afraid I don't have any suggestions or advice I can offer to
make things easier for you. I like Marilyn's suggestion to basically accept
your limitations with regard to your food bill and try to cut expenses
elsewhere that are easier to control and manage. Emily and I are trying to do
much the same thing as I also have my eye on buying a house as soon as
possible. Renting just sucks for so many reasons. Anyway, sorry I can't be of
more help.
Jon
----- Original Message -----
From: Rob Hudson
To: blindcooks@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2015 6:38 AM
Subject: [blindcooks] Kind of a Rant - Shopping
What follows is more of a rant than anything else. It has been a rather
frustrating little while, recently. Please bare with me.
I have been looking at a lot of different ways to save money on grocery bills
and over all budget cuts, due to the fact that I am thinking about trying to
buy a house, or a mobile home. The lattter doesn't really belong on this list,
so I'll stick to the former.
One of the ways you can save money is by shopping at different stores. Some
stores will have different sales on different items, on different days of the
week. The only problem is, those kinds of sales are announced in print
circulars that, last time I checked, did not scan very well on OCR programs. Or
they are stupid graphics in the middle of web pages that we can't OCR either.
Or there are big fliers tacked up in the store window that announce one
specific item is on sale that day, and because you're blind, you miss out on
the sale. How is that fair?
Another problem with the multiple store approach is transportation. Something
like a paratransit system requires that you schedule with them far in advance.
This is even more of a problem for me since I live way out of town. My nearest
big town is twenty-five miles away. So you miss out on the sales yet again.
Then, once you do get to the store, you have to rely on sighted assistance,
who have their own thing to do. So you end up feeling rushed, like you're
intruding into their busy schedule. This means that you can't really comparison
shop. For instance, maybe there is a block of cheese you want, but is it
cheaper in the deli section that day, or in the dairy section? Is that bag of
flour tortillas on your list cheaper in the dairy case or the ethnic aisle?
Things like that.
Or maybe the store with the best deals--such as that one store that requires
you to bag your own groceries and that you pay a deposit for the shopping
cart--doesn't even offer you sighted assistance. The low staff count means
lower food prices, but is thoroughly aggravating for the blind shopper. So you
once again miss out on some good food prices, and there goes your idea to
budget.
I ran into the latter problem at Sam's Club. The one I went to wouldn't offer
shopping assistance, so I had to turn around and walk out again. What the heck
did I pay the forty-five dollar fee for if you won't <insert unfamily friendly
word here> help me?
Then there's online grocery shopping. To be honest, this is the approach I
most often end up using. This is great, because on top of making a customer
service rep feel put-upon by taking time out of their busy, busy day to bother
helping the blind dude out, I'm also so hard of hearing that conversation is an
effort, especially in a loud, noisy store. Both the rep and I end up frustrated
with my inability to follow along and it leads to a very unsatisfactory
experience.
Enter the wonderful world of online shopping. It's great. I can comparison
shop to my heart's content, I don't have to get a headache trying to listen to
people, and the eleven dollar delivery fee is much cheaper than a twenty-five
mile taxi ride. Not that any cabs would come way out here, but that's beside
the point.
Except.
There's always an except, isn't there?
Except there is only one store in the area which does online shopping, and
they are pretty expensive to compensate for that. So you are basically
comparison shopping between something which is a little more or less expensive
than the other thing. So the budget isn't really saved much at all, especially
when you hear, for example, that the ground beef you bought online was two
dollars less at the store you couldn't get to.
And lastly, there's coupons. So far as I know, there is no way to use coupons
online, and the coupon printing sites are java-based and not terribly
accessible, so you can't really print them either. Or the coupons are just
graphics that you click on. Or they are in the newspaper, which might be too
big for your scanner. Or if you do manage to get it scanned,, as you are blind,
you can't really tell if you are cutting out the correct bit of newsprint which
contains the coupon. So there you go, missing out on even more deals.
All in all, I'd have to say that trying to save money on grocery shopping
hasn't really met with a great deal of success. If you guys have ideas to help
alleviate some of these problems, I'm all ears.
Thank you for listening to my little rant. I have seen lots of blogs about
budget savings and things like that, but not one of them takes these kinds of
things into consideration. Very frustrating, indeed.
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