Why do manufactures do this?

Widget manufacturers get a huge bulk discount when they buy the batteries from the battery manufacturer, so the cost of the batteries is a negligible part of the cost of the overall widget. But when you go to the store to buy an individual battery in all its shrink wrapped and packaged glory, you have to pay full price.

P.S. Please excuse any typos. It’s a Friday night and I’m on my second Guinness right now and I’m feeling rather woozy :-p

You could see it as a positive thing – devices can be made so cheap, they cost less than batteries. Would you prefer if they sell you the same item at a much higher price?

If you’re talking AA, AAA, C, or D, batteries, buy them from the dollar store, they work and last just as long as the ones at Walmart.

What ticks me off is buying a printer and having to buy ink cartridges which cost more than the printer.

@jaytkay has the right perspective on this. My first hard drive when I bought my first computer in the late 80s was a 40 MB ‘monster’. People asked me, “What are you going to do with all that space?” The thing cost nearly $2000. Nowadays I can get (in fact I just did get) a great new laptop with a huge screen, 8 GB of RAM and a 700 GB hard drive… for about what my hard drive cost a little over 20 years ago. And the new machine is much more reliable, and I bought it with dollars that have cheapened (inflated) over the past 20 years. (That’s another part of the story that you’re omitting, by the way.)

The fact is that electronics, including the means of producing them and many of the components that go into them (which amounts to the same thing in most cases) are getting cheaper and cheaper to produce. Sadly, energy sources (including batteries) don’t follow the same price curve.

@HungryGuy is also correct in what he says. The other fact about the bulk discount that the manufacturer gets is he’s just buying ‘job lot’ batteries from a no-name manufacturer. The batteries sold at retail by Duracell™ and other ‘brand name’ manufacturers, have a lot more overheads associated with their marketing (and the packaging itself) that account for their higher cost.

@jaytkay @WasCy But, it creates a situation of more waste, more garbage in the world, because everything seems to be so disposable. I figure they are naking a fortune on something? Not sure what because I am too tried right now to think it through. Tons of money on the batteries? Or, the devices? Not sure. Everyone is buying everyyhing in bulk. The electronics maker buys the batteries in bulk, but so does Radio Shack.

@AmWiser Yeah, in Marketing classes it is taught as the Gilette model sell the razor for a dollar or even give it away, and then sell overpriced razor blades to that person for the rest of their lives.

Toners cost me double than the rice of a new printer. Howzat for stupidity? You don’t want to keep throwing out new/old printers every few months (I print a lot).

Inkjet printers are nearly the same way. I can buy a new inkjet printer for the price of a full set of cartridges.

It’s in the widget manufacturer’s interest to have you buy a new widget. They are not interested in selling you more batteries, especially if it means not buying another widget.

But, it creates a situation of more waste, more garbage in the world, because everything seems to be so disposable. What is with going Green and having everything eco friendly? What is better having a lot of eco friendly widgets littering up the landfill even though they are still useful and working or having less because they make more sense to keep running than to simply replace?

It’s in the widget manufacturer’s interest to have you buy a new widget. They are not interested in selling you more batteries, especially if it means not buying another widget. Creating more trash out of widgets that should have not ended up in the trash to begin with. If you are going to make a disposable widget why not make one that you can’t replace the battery and when the battery goes so does the widget?

Does it matter if they make one where you can, or cannot, replace the battery if it ends up in the landfill either way? Remember, they’re not in business to care about landfills, they are in business to sell widgets.

If there are two widgets available, all things being equal except in one, you cannot replace the battery, and in the other you can, I bet 9 out of 10 people will buy the one where you can replace the battery. “When it wears out,” they think, “I can just replace the battery!” – so that widget goes to the checkout cashier while the non-replaceable one languishes on the shelf. Remember, it doesn’t matter IF you actually WILL replace the battery, it’s that thinking you can replace it combines with the feeling of wanting to be less wasteful, and that equals a purchase.

Why re-design a perfectly serviceable widget to make the battery seem not-replaceable? Then you’re just paying widget engineers to redesign a widget to make it less salable, and paying them to do so, raising the price of the widget to cover the engineers’ salaries and making it look even less appealing on the shelf.