Hardly anyone pays attention anymore. Especially when it comes to the paper towel racket we are fully aware of. Select-a-Size paper towels are not worth it at all!
See below to find out the two main reasons why they are a waste of your money.
How deceptive are Select-a-Size Paper Towels?
Before we get started – we continue to feel the whole “12=18,” “6=9” and other marketing nonsense is insulting to consumers. Purposely done (and done in collusion) to just overwhelm ordinary customers. But that is a story for another day. We miss the good old days when standard units of measure were used. Such as price per square foot (as it’s done in other industries like flooring, etc.) It allowed customers to truly make informed and competent comparisons.
Just because they both say 12=15 does NOT mean they’re identical products.
Easy math to find best paper towel values
You will need some math comprehension to follow along here. There are two reasons precisely why “select-a-size” paper towels are NEVER worth considering.
- You get significantly LESS product for the same money. Look at the two packages on sale at ShopRite last month. $12.99 per pack. Both were that stupid “12=15” version – and to the ignorant customer – both the full-size sheets and select-a-size packages said “12=15.” Most people would think they were the SAME – but just different styles. WRONG.
- The full-size sheet version contained 420 square feet of paper. Cost per square foot: 3.1 cents.
- The “select-a-size” version contained 372 square feet of paper. Cost per square foot: 3.5 cents.
- To get the same amount of paper, the select-a-size would have cost $14.70. 13% MORE!
- Another way to look at it: you get only 88.5% of the paper in the select-a-size mode.
- The next interesting item of deception is the actual size of the “select-a-size” sheets. You’d think they were just half the size of a regular full-size sheet, right? NOPE. Full-size sheets are 11 x 10.2 inches. Select-a-size sheets are 11 x 5.9 inches. WHY does that matter? Because much of the time people cannot “get away” with just using the smaller sheet. So they’ll take TWO sheets quite often (and in their head thinking it’s just a full-size sheet at that point.) NO! It’s now an enlarged 11 x 11.8 inch sheet! Two select-a-size sheets are 16% larger than one full-size sheet. More waste!
You’re better off buying the full-size sheets always. More for your money. If you need less paper – either rip them – or if you’re anal, take a roll once a week and just manually cut them with scissors and stack them in your kitchen if you cannot tolerate jagged edges.
And don’t forget – we may be splitting hairs here with this premium Bounty brand – but the principles are sound. We don’t like getting scammed. Even if it’s just nickels here and there. It adds up.
In the end – we prefer paying a lot less for Paper Towels from either Wegmans, ALDI, or even Walmart if pressed. They all have premium paper towels at under 2 cents per square foot anyway.
Not to mention Bounty products aren’t what they used to be, either.
Are we the only one that care enough to critically-think these days? We hope not. And we do our best to manually inform people each time we go shopping. It feels good sharing knowledge about the scams that get people from all walks of life.
Have a nice day!
