Black Friday & blowing out discounts in a bid to stay alive

Brutal truth from us at Tinker and Fix - we don’t ‘do’ discounts.  Well, we do, but it’s a postage discount that’s offered all year round (it’s a bit like a dog is for life, discount isn’t just for Bank Holiday or Black Friday).  

But ‘that’s not a discount’ we hear you say. We get that all the time from Amazon, Sports Direct, John Lewis and all the others. Yep. You’re absolutely right. But it’s well reported that Amazon don’t put money aside to pay their taxes in full, that Sports Direct aren’t as generous to their workers rights as they are to the discounted sales they run, that John Lewis is losing profits at a scary rate, and that other businesses are blowing out discounts in a bid to stay alive (which invariably means, unfortunately, they won’t).

But ‘we want the 20% off offer’ we hear you say - ‘we’ll wait until one of them come around and order then’. Sorry - you’ll be waiting a long time (and it definitely won’t be this Black Friday!) So we strongly suggest you try and source what you need elsewhere (absolutely no issue with us - we don’t want you to miss out!).

The thing with discounting is that customers become conditioned to want it cheaper the whole time. Which just isn’t feasible - if you want something that is good quality, is built to last, and is made in a way that’s sustainable (be it ethically, environmentally, or commercially). There is a cost of making things well - but the benefit is that you’ll have them for life. So when you’re looking for a discount code, think instead how much value you’ll get from the item - it’s lifetime value - and all of a sudden it becomes discounted without being devalued!

Still not convinced and still asking ‘discount?, what discount?’ We do offer postage free over £50 - which costs us from £3.50 to up to £10 depending on the size of what you order.  And for those items under £50 we charge a flat rate of £3.50 (or just 60p if it’s something small - on a single Fixit or greetings cards.).  So on many items this doesn’t even cover our postage cost - so you often are getting a bit of free postage (that’s the issue with us selling wonderfully bulky tools and equipment).  But hey - that’s fine - we sell things online, we suck up the cost of postage and all packing - as that’s the norm.  

And if all this fails, and you’ve managed to get to the end of this - hell, here’s a discount code - SuckOnThis - you’ll get a discount, of sorts, it’s not worth money, instead you’ll get a free lollypop. Enjoy! 

And yes, we have run this post before, but we are going to be like a consistently broken record on this topic, so expect to see it again when it’s the Boxing day and January sales, the next Bank Holiday, and likely next Black Friday too…!