Not exactly a hack: Control what Target.com charges you
When you move into a city, you expect that things cost more. That’s just the way it is. There’s limited space, which means that rent is more, and it’s logistically more difficult to get goods into stores. CVS, for instance, uses half semi trucks to drive around the Chicago Loop.
Expectations are set
So when I go into a store, even a big box one, located in the City of Chicago, I expect to be charged more than someone in Naperville, about 30 miles away from downtown Chicago. If you pay close attention while shopping at stores like Target, this is what happens for many items.
Amazon.com has been king at this for a while, showing even different users different prices on their website. Target seems to charge different prices on a store by store basis. For certain items, each location within the City of Chicago has slightly different prices compared to each other and to those outside the city.
Before the pandemic, I would go physically into Target and take care of getting what I needed, but I’ve been trying to practice good COVID habits by avoiding extra trips.
This extra online shopping at target.com showed me something that I hadn’t quite expected: Depending on your default store in your Target account, they will charge you a different price to ship an item to you via UPS or FedEx. (Note we are not talking about local delivery from their Shipt service.)
Prices not based on destination address
You could certainly argue that Target needs to charge more to ship to certain locations. That wouldn’t necessarily get an argument from me — because that idea would at least be grounded in actual cost to Target.
What appears to be happening is that target.com is charging you the price of the items at the store you have set as your default. The destination address does not matter.
To prove this, while signed into my target.com account, I chose two random household goods to order on target.com: a body wash and bathroom cleaner.
As seen in the table, if you set your default store to Niles, IL, you get a different price for your UPS or FedEx delivery than if you set your default store to the Chicago Elston Ave. store.
From the screenshots, you can see that the only difference in the order is the default store. The destination address is a Chicago zip code (starting with 606). With the default set as Niles, my subtotal was $10.58, and with the default set as Chicago Elston Ave., my subtotal was $11.28.
Checking other metro areas
With that in mind, I look at two other metro areas I’ve got more than a passing familiarity with: San Francisco and New York City. Based on whatever store location I set, I was able to get the subtotal of my order (being shipped to Chicago) to change. I’ve included the prices below in the table.
The cheapest location I found was North Bergen, NJ, although it was just by 10¢. Whatever you do, don’t set your location to Chicago’s Mayfair store, where the bodywash costs 40% more than it does in the highest cost location that I viewed, San Francisco.
It also appeared to allow me to set the default Target to a cheaper store and then pickup in a higher cost area. I chose Naperville, IL, a known low price location, and set the pickup location as Manhattan Hell’s Kitchen. Instead of the body wash costing me $8.69, by doing this, I could pick up the body wash at $6.99.
Avoiding personalized pricing
One thing I could not necessarily control here was whether I was getting personalized prices from target.com, based on past purchases. To try to avoid these, I created a Chrome Incognito browser window and tried again.
Target.com is sneaky and still detected my IP address was in Chicago (and maybe associated it with my profile anyway using the IP address). It charged me as if I was at the Chicago Elston Ave. store. Fortunately, it did not think I was in the Mayfair area, as that would have significantly increased the price of the body wash.
Interestingly enough, I also checked Walmart’s website, which I’m less familiar with. It charged me the same price, whether I was logged in or not, and whether I wanted local in store pickup or shipping.
How is the pricing supposed to act?
Pricing is difficult even under the best circumstances. Target likely made a lot of recent changes to its website and shipping policies due to the pandemic, and it might have triggered this unintended side effect.
Ideally for the consumer, the price to you depends on the cost that Target pays to get the products to you. If it actually costs Target more in UPS/FedEx charges to deliver to Chicago than Naperville, it’s OK to charge more, in theory. However, I’d note that very few internet sites charge different prices based on the destination address of a UPS/FedEx package.
The target.com website seems to just take your default profile location and charge you that price.
The lesson here is to watch your location. If you have your default store set to a high priced location, even if you don’t live in that high priced location, you might be getting charged too much.
At this time of great need, please consider giving to your local food bank. In the Chicago area, I recommend the Greater Chicago Food Depository.
