TransWikia.com

What's it called when you're forced to purchase a whole item when you only need a part of it?

English Language & Usage Asked by fandor on June 10, 2021

Is there a word to describe the situation of being forced into paying for something sophisticated and often expensive when you only need a part of it? An example that comes to mind is that of one of the subscription-based online services that offer dozens of benefits but you only purchase it for one or two of them.

Edit: To give an example of how I want this word to be used in a sentence, suppose that a company sells two models of a widget – let’s call them A and B. A customer might need more features than what widget A has, but not nearly as many features as model B has. But because there are no models in between widgets A and B, the customer will be forced to purchase widget B and most of its features will go unused. Ideally, this situation could be described with the word I’m looking for in a sentence like

a customer {maybe word} a more expensive model because {maybe word}.

One of the words that was suggested is “upselling”, which is very close to what I’m looking for, but it implies that the seller intentionally withholds a cheaper, simpler item in order to make more profit. I’m looking for a word that doesn’t imply any intentions, only states the fact that the purchase was an overkill for the task in a situation where there were no other options.

2 Answers

We often have to buy more than we want due to bundling. There’s a lot of legal and economic literature about its effects, both pro- and anti-competitive. iTunes unbundled music albums, letting people buy just one song off an album. Streaming services have done the same for cable bundles. You might also try “tying” and “coupling”. A razor might be tied to its proprietary razor blades. Cell phone handsets and carriers have historically been fairly tightly coupled, due to different internal radios or whatever, but are increasingly sold “unlocked”.

Answered by Toph on June 10, 2021

My first two thoughts were:

  1. "bundling"-- as in, bundle packages. You only want to buy a subscription to a streaming service, but the only way you can purchase it is if you buy an entire bundle of streaming services with other services that you don't really want.

  2. "lowballing" or for a noun, "the lowballing technique"-- a sales strategy, it's all the hidden costs that are sprung on you at the end. Car salespeople are great at this. You're told the car will only cost a certain amount and it seems pretty cheap, but once you go to pay, you're suddenly told of all these extra warranty and insurance payments that you have to pay for in order to buy the car. Also can be the case for mattresses, TVs, any big purchase.

Answered by Saul on June 10, 2021

Add your own answers!

Ask a Question

Get help from others!

© 2024 TransWikia.com. All rights reserved. Sites we Love: PCI Database, UKBizDB, Menu Kuliner, Sharing RPP