The Occasions When You Should Say No, But Don't

I honestly did not know flea tablets were now so expensive.

I find it quite funny that every now and then you put yourself in a position where you cannot say no. This has happened to me on many occasions in the past and yesterday I found myself having to pay far more than I had first expected to pay.

Yesterday afternoon I popped into our local vets to purchase flea tablets for our dogs. The weather with the hot days and afternoon rain showers or highveld storms is perfect weather for fleas to breed in the grass and then hop onto your dogs. I have not seen any as yet, but they will be around as I have seen this happen each year around this time.

Last year I must have paid around R600 for the tablets and was expecting to pay a similar amount this year. My one dog is roughly 75-80 kilograms so he does need multiple tablets as the largest/strongest tablet caters for a 50kg dog so he requires two tablets.

The vet never has the usual brand I purchase of the right sized tablets and had to look at Bravecto instead which the lady mentioned was slightly more. The slightly more is what caught me as I said that was not a problem even when I did not thoroughly understand what the price was. In my head I was thinking slightly more is maybe 5% more and they have stock so this is fine.

When she told me the price it was 3 x the price I paid last year and having already rung up the sale and was just waiting to tap the card I found myself just paying. None of the items on the shelf had prices so I was purely guessing as to what the tablets would cost. R1800 for 3 flea tablets which is roughly $110 in my mind is rather excessive and on reflection should have said no thanks and looked elsewhere for an alternative.

I can recall a similar incident maybe 20 years ago when I was purchasing a lingerie set for my wife as a valentines gift. This was a spur of the moment type gift purchase as I normally do not buy gifts for valentines anyway.

The bouti1ue lingerie shop did not look exclusive except the shop again had no prices and I was literally shopping in the dark. The lady serving me and guess must have been the shop owner was very helpful and after what was a good hour of help started wrapping up the selected items which even included rose petals inside the box.

You just know at this point you are committed and there is no way you can reject the sale because of the price. This is not something I would normally buy and have no clue what the price would even be or even to be able to guess a price. When guys tend to shop you would expect to see pricing somewhere to at least give you a guide or gauge whether this is a good or bad idea.

The price back then was around 150 GBP and this was 20 years ago so would hate to know what that would be in todays money, but it was way over my budget. There is no way you can say no once the kind lady had packaged the item with rose petals and wrapped the item in special valentines paper.

The weird part is I am not frugile with my money, but I am also not stupid either and I do tend to get caught in these situations from time to time. I admit I should have enquired about pricing on both occasions before moving further with the sale before getting past the point of no return.

I mentioned this to a friend of mine and he has had similar instances in the past and recalled a story of a very attractive Israeli women selling sea salt where he could not say no. His wife who was with him at the time this happened said what are you doing and called him a soft cock for not be able to say no. I think we are just caught off guard and our ego saying something is too expensive gets in the way.

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