Well the first step is retailers and manufacturers needing to de-normalize this practice of playing continual games with pricing. These days if I see a "good sale" (aka non-sucker price) on something I'm in the market for, I will hit buy and then make the actual purchase decision over the next few weeks. Or if I'm unsure how many of something I will need, I will buy extra and then figure out how many I need later. Because I'm sure as shit not going to buy one or two for an honest price and then feel like a sucker later when I end up needing more but they've got me over the barrel. My main consideration is whether I've already got pending returns using the same method, or if I'm making a new task for myself.
It feels like this is part of a larger dynamic where companies are basically arbitraging consumers' feeling bad about waste and environmental destruction to increase their own bottom line. Like Target is abjectly terrible at packing items in boxes, such that things often get crushed in shipping. So then you're left with the dynamic of either complaining and accepting that return/resend creates a bunch more waste, or just shrugging off the damage they've caused (willfully, at this point). Now that I've seen the pattern, I just call that bluff too.
It feels like this is part of a larger dynamic where companies are basically arbitraging consumers' feeling bad about waste and environmental destruction to increase their own bottom line. Like Target is abjectly terrible at packing items in boxes, such that things often get crushed in shipping. So then you're left with the dynamic of either complaining and accepting that return/resend creates a bunch more waste, or just shrugging off the damage they've caused (willfully, at this point). Now that I've seen the pattern, I just call that bluff too.