Companies & Intentional Shadiness

I've had two experiences in the past two days that have really highlighted how common it is for companies to participate in extremely shady behaviors, and I just wanna talk about them.

#1: Hiding the price of food when ordering via a restaurant's app

A lot of apps & even some websites do this nowadays and I find it really deceptive, honestly. They only do that so you'll order more food without realizing how expensive your order is, because they hope that by the time you get to checking out, you either won't notice the price, or you'll be so set on getting that food that you won't even question it.

It's annoying but ultimately you can work around it by opening up order list, so, whatever.

What's WORSE is when they deliberately hide up-charges! We ordered pick-up from Wendy's the other night and when we were picking out our meal deals, basically all of us chose to get the "sauced" nuggets because they were listed as an equal substitution. There was no indication that they cost extra, and when my mom picked up the order, that's when they informed her that she would have to pay extra. Again, it's deceiving! They didn't even give us the chance to decide whether or not we willing to pay the up-charge.

It turned out fine because our current financial situation isn't in ruin over an extra $5, but for some people, $5 is the difference between eating and not eating, because they have to literally budget until their last cent. We've been in that position before, I've paid for food with loose change because we didn't have the money otherwise. So it's fucking frustrating to be lied to and then be up-charged on top of it.

#2: Disregarding the shipping option the customer chosen

I ordered some stuff from Walmart.com today, deliberately chose things that could be shipped to me, and then chose the shipping option for all 3, instead of "delivery" or "pickup".

And then 2 hours later I got a surprise text message that there was going to be a delivery driver on my doorstep in 4 minutes.

Because Walmart decided to override the decision I made and essentially doordashed one of the items to me from the nearby store.

I imagine if you lived further away, you'd have more warning, but I live 2 miles away from a Walmart and it's literally a 5 minute drive (I can't drive. It's an hour walk. That's one of the reasons I wanted things shipped to me.) so I got the message 5 minutes before they arrived. That's not enough warning!!!

They default to leaving the package on the doorstep— fucking imagine if I had an aggressive dog in my yard and I hadn't seen the message that the driver was coming? Or if I were out of town and simply didn't want my package abandoned on my doorstep when it was supposed to arrive in a few days?

It's just insane to me that it automatically decided that it didn't fucking care that I chose shipping, it was gonna deliver it via driver anyways. My other packages are being shipped normally, thank god.

There's no thrilling conclusion to this, I'm just frustrated that companies do whatever the hell they want!