Paying extra for something to get great service in old-time Phoenix


In my lifetime, which is turning out to be lasting longer than I'd ever expected, I've known very few people who have wanted to pay more for something in order to get better service. In fact, most of the people I've ever known have been enthusiastic about getting a discount, and not saying that they paid more. Paying more for something seems a very strange, and almost insane thing to do. But people have done it, and some still do.

Speaking for myself, I distinctly remember doing it in my late twenties in Los Angeles, where I paid a LOT of money for some dress clothes at a Men's Shop. I walked in, was greeted, measured, and sold a bunch of stuff which all fit beautifully and looked great. After that, I just knew my size and bought the rest of my clothes at discount stores. I really didn't see any value in going back when I knew perfectly well how to do it myself. Of course if I'd become rich and famous and moved to Beverly Hills, I would have continued doing that, and on Rodeo Drive!

And that makes me wonder about old-time Phoenix, when doing this kind of thing was common. Of course there were discount stores, but even average people would go to a store, be greeted by someone, explain what they wanted, and someone would go get the stuff. If you bought shoes, someone would measure your foot, and then go somewhere and bring the correct size and style for you. You didn't have to walk along an aisle looking for the correct number for your size, which is what I've always done, except for back when I was a little kid.

My parents, who were born in the 1920s, saw this type of service, and both liked it and hated it. They liked the convenience and knowing that they were going to get a great product, picked out by someone with more expertise than them, but they knew that if they went to a discount store they could save a lot of money. And over the years the discount stores won out.


My best guess about why people would pay more for something to get great service in old-time Phoenix had to do with trust. Nowadays it's easy to trust a product. You can trust that the Nikes that you see at any store are all the same. And while it's far from perfect, the laws and regulations have made buying products, from gasoline to whiskey, pretty safe no matter who you buy it from. In old-time Phoenix I know that I would have paid a few cents extra for gasoline from a trusted source, and also I'd be sure to buy my whiskey from Melczers, even if they charged a bit more. I knew that they'd sell me the good stuff!

Nowadays the level of trust is so high that it makes it easy for people to be cheated. This fascination with buying something for less can make people blind to the source. People have learned to buy from strangers. Every once in a while I see a particular company say that they're family owned, and have been in Phoenix for many generations, and some people see a product that they can trust, and possibly pay more for, and some people just see it as just too expensive.
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