Bundle price = more than buying them seperate

[Ginger Tea]

Went to a famouse retail park PC shop (that moved in with it's white goods sibling a few years ago, although our one was next door so they just took out the wall) to pick up a new i7 pc that was listed as web only on their site, but they had stock when I went in on Sunday to look at HDTV's to use as a monitor instead of the default 23" they had on sale (a dozzen 23" full HD 3 by the same manufacture).

I could have orded the PC online but I was going purely to see just how big 32" and beyond TV's are as just reading it's 46" meant nothing I needed to see how big it was, had a nice browse and by the time I buy one prices will have changed as would stock, but I saw two for £400 and £450 the first being the stores own brand the other a reduced to clear Samsung.

New pc has VGA as well as HDMI so I can still use this 1280*1024 for a few more months till I have stuff sorted here to set up space for such a beast (although it was dwarfed by those in the 60" line behind it).
So I didn't need to buy the bundled pack 23" monitor or be drastic and buy the telly early and have to set it up on the floor.
The website's price differed from the store but only for the bundle, on the web it's probably saving only a few quid, but I tried to work out the difference in my head (bad idea my earliest memories of maths at school involved the teacher giving us all calculators) trying to deduct the PC from the bundle broke my brain so I just added £120 to the price, it came to less than 900, the price of the bundle (nothing else listed as a hidden extra) in store over 900, I think it was £100 more than the two products sold seperatly.

I was buying the PC either way, but I asked the sales lady to double check my maths as I could not see a 23" that brand monitor for sale anywhere near £220 the number my phone told me it was (or there abouts), she knew it was the £120 monitor in the bundle and added that to the pc's price then looked at the set's price and confirmed I wasn't oozing brain out of my ears with my derp maths.

I've seen a few supermarket "offers" that arn't that special, but I don't recall seeing any that cost more (least not in person, seen some on fail blog), worst I've seen is product 50p each buy two for £1 or any "it's just the price doubled there is no savings".

I didn't kick up a fuss, as I had no intention of buying a monitor anyways. I said it was a bit cheeky as it's a derp math tax, but I'm not sure how legal it is to charge someone more to buy two products together than seperatly, especially when they are kinda meant to go together in this case a PC and monitor (which has a shite wireless keyboard, so I think I'll use this one when I come to setting it up in the morning).

[Ladeeda]

I've seen bulk items priced that way. Generally the draw of the GIHUGIC MONSTER BAG of M&Ms is that they are cheaper per oz. But lately I've seen plenty of times where the per-unit cost goes up with the contents.

[Greenday]

I see a lot of these "deals" where the deal is more expensive. It's usually at chain bar/restaurants. The worst was Hooters. You could buy a 10oz beer for $1 OR you could buy a 23oz beer "on special" for $3.50...My friend was a waitress there so I pointed it out to her and she told me that they all knew but couldn't talk about it. Great way to sucker people in. She just told me that if I plan on drinking a fair amount, to order two 10oz's so the waitresses don't have to constantly run back and forth.

Buffalo Wild Wings always does the exact same thing. Kills me.

[HYHYBT]

Seems like that would be a special best offered after the customer has already had a few beers.

[jackfaire]

Things are bundled in most cases specifically for this reason. You can get away with charging more for a bundle because individual value is no longer in the equation.

Do the math if you were paying for only the TV channels you actually use instead of blocks of channels you would save hundreds of dollars.

Other services do this as a way to make discontinuing services more complicated. Your phone and internet are bundled well what if you stop using a land line?

My mom was bundling her Satellite, Internet and Phone which made it a 2 week long series of multiple phone calls to cancel her land line because she is only using a Cell phone now while trying to keep her satellite and internet.

[HYHYBT]

If you could unbundle all your TV channels, two things would happen: the per-channel rate would go up considerably, because the only way they can provide content at what they get for an individual one is to get it even from people who don't watch, and a lot of channels would vanish entirely.

[jackfaire]

If you could unbundle all your TV channels, two things would happen: the per-channel rate would go up considerably, because the only way they can provide content at what they get for an individual one is to get it even from people who don't watch, and a lot of channels would vanish entirely.

Some companies are attempting to change the way it works by offering bundles of the channels you want instead of "well you want 2 channels from this one 3 from over here so that's three chunks of channels you need that will be 300 please thank you'

These days it's getting cheaper just to buy the shows you want to watch as they are released digitally which is going to further drive up the prices unless they start giving us real choice.

[insertNameHere]

The bundle is a different SKU so it easy to get away with, as you pay for the convenience of having it prepacked. I once bought a laptop and a WII because it was a $900 Laptop, that if i bought with a WII, would cost me $800. I looked at the clerk and went "So you mean to tell me if i buy that laptop, I can have you scan a wii, and it $100 cheaper than the laptop alone?" So i managed a $600 laptop because i was getting a Wii for the Ex anyways.