Valid comparisons in selling and buying- Comparing Apples with Apples or Apples with Oranges ?

The idiom, comparing apples and oranges, refers to the apparent differences between items which are popularly thought to be incomparable, such as apples and oranges.

The phrase may also be used to indicate that a false analogy has been made between two items, such as where an apple is faulted for not being a good orange !

Salespeople often use such comparisons to justify a marginal higher price differential on the lines of

“The extra cost is as little as a daily newspaper”

“The cost of a sandwich” etc

Of course care should be taken what you compare with what and how it is compared

For example, it is all too easy to be seduced by cheap printers for your pc with lots of extra but you should not purchase a machine without first considering the cost of the ink cartridges



Toby Walne's  Article in Mail on Sunday

The newspapers often have a story of comparisons usually how the consumer is hard done by

The Mail-on-Sunday this Sunday  posed the question

Which is cheaper – the most exclusive champagne in the world... or ordinary printer ink?

Well you can guess just how this story was going to pan out .

 Whilst drinking printer ink is not advisable nor refilling your printer cartridges with malt whisky, perfume or champagne is not recommended, it was quite a quite a graphic way to show how pricey printer ink cartridges are.

Apparently if you filled a Krug Clos de Mesnil bottle with printer ink it would cost a staggering   £1,725 !

This article pointed out how long suffering parents whose school children’s homework projects seems to use up cartridges as a phenomenal rate. 

The article also went on to describe how cartridge replacement warnings  come on well before the ink has actually run out.  Also some of those automatic self cleaning regimes according to experts are unnecessary. The article finished with the arguments of refilling the cartridges as being more economical.

Price per millilitre

1926 Macallan single malt whisky                               £48.90

Canon CL541 Colour Ink Cartridge                            £2.30

Hewlett-Packard 300 Tri-colour cartridge             £2.30

Brother  LC-123 Colour ink cartridge                        £1.60

Chanel No 5 perfume                                                     £1.20

Krug Clos du mesnil 2000 Champagne                     £0.90

Moet and  Chandon Imperial Champagne                    £0.05

Of course some  just don’t want accept the analogy of apples and oranges in any case

A fun quote to finish with:

 Chuck Klosterman, "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto"

“Why do you keep saying that " he asked in response "Apples and oranges aren't that different really. I mean they're both fruit. Their weight is extremely similar. They both contain acidic elements. They're both roughly spherical. They serve the same social purpose. With the possible exception of a tangerine I can't think of anything more similar to an orange than an apple. If I was having lunch with a man who was eating an apple and-while I was looking away-he replaced that apple with an orange I doubt I'd even notice. So how is this a metaphor for difference I could understand if you said 'That's like comparing apples and uranium ' or 'That's like comparing apples with baby wolverines ' or 'That's like comparing apples with the early work of Raymond Carver ' or 'That's like comparing apples with hermaphroditic ground sloths.' Those would all be valid examples of profound disparity.”

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