Aw, and I love World Market..

They probably have other sections in the store with clearance items. They can technically get away with it cause the clearance is across the store in different sections.

There is a storewide clearance sale

each section has its own discount

this section happens to have a 50% discount, and the discount in this section is part of the 'storewide clearance event'

all areas of the store are at clearance, but not necessarily 50% off

@m_m: I concur

@m_m:

Yeah that seems about right after looking at the sign. It's the event they're having with discounts everywhere but just 50 percent off on that section. Makes sense.

@m_m: Agreed.

@m_m:
I could see how it might be misread as 50% off the whole store, but if you read it in the context of the whole sign it indeed seems understandable: "storewide clearance sale, items in this particular section are half off "

@crazyasianman: Yup, that's how I read it as well. It's a storewide discount for 50% in that section only. Though I can see how people who don't read it in that context can be confused.

@m_m:
Bury into the woops pile!

Poorly worded.

There should be a bold "this section" prior to the 50%.

It would be really misleading if there was only one sign that said "storewide clearance" and had 50% off but there weren't any signs elsewhere that specified how much other areas were at a discount.

@m_m: Indeed. This really ain't that hard to figure out...

Ok.... what's with all the recent advertising mistakes like this.... Are people just getting... dumber? Or perhaps now that I'm older I'm noticing companies doing this now....

Liquidators are well-known for pulling this trick. For instance, a sign will say something like "EVERYTHING 20-40% OFF" but will say in small print "with limited exceptions" or something of the like. Downright misleading especially when you are talking about Circuit City or CompUSA only selling computers/TVs for 5% off when they have the big "EVERYTHING 20-40% OFF" sign in front...those aren't "limited exceptions." Maybe Cost Plus is being taken over by a liquidator and we don't even know it? ;-)

@m_m: Yup. Could see how it could be confusing, but thats how I took it, too.

Hooray for intentionally confusing signage!

What the big print giveth, the small print taketh away. I was in a "holiday" store at the mall the other day, set up just for Xmas, and they had "75% storewide" out front, but apparently in the small print it said "Xmas decor only" so the Xmas candy (which is perishable anyway) was only 50% off. Uh huh.

At least I wasn't buying candy. Got some good gifts and decor items at 75% off, pretty sweet deal.

@m_m: The explanation is like a twisted fact sounds so illogical to be heard like it is logical.

I personally believe it was purposefully misleading with the "Storewide Clearance" so it attracts foot traffics into the store.

@Anthony Chow: Just because it's a "storewide clearance" doesn't mean the discounts have to be the same store wide.

Just like those coupons that say you can SAVE 25% except for this, and this and this and that and this department this brand.

They mislead you to get you in the store. You hunt for the bagains, but guess what? Nothing you want qualifies. Imagine that. Then you ask the store manager to find something that qualifies for the 25% off. He says, they're all sold out of overything. Wow!

That sign is exactly the same thing: misleading.

The proper sign would say "Limited Clearance event" Some items maybe up to 50% off.

@Jayrom Acorda: Both, probably -- also, companies deciding that they don't need editors anymore, or, in places they never had editors in the first place, deciding nobody needs to look at something after it's written to see if it actually makes any sense...

Same thing at Old Navy. The signs intimate that everything in the store is at least 30% off or something, but it's not. The lady in front of me at check-out was surprised to find out that none of the kids' things she wanted were on sale, so she just walked out. I thought the t-shirts and other crap would also be 30% off, but no. I bought em anyway because they were still only $7.50/ea, but this is still pretty misleading.

I keep hearing about all these fantastic deals everywhere, but I'm not really seeing them.

I actually shopped at a World Market yesterday and really, it wasn't confusing.

In each section of the store - for example let's say dishes - there is a clearance area which is 50% off. The dishes that were on clearance were clearly marked with the above sign.

I think "Storewide Clearance Event" to be very accurate because every department in the store had a clearance section, that is, it was store wide and not limited to a specific area like furniture, or holiday merchandise.

I work at one of these. Every department of the store has merchandise that is discounted at %50 off. It is a store-wide sale in the respect that it is not restricted to specific departments. We move all the discounted stuff into easy-to-locate areas and (at least in my store) none of our customers seem confused about what's on sale.

Even though I have not seen this sign at my store, I do get a ton of people asking me if we're going out of business when they check out.

@m_m: Don't you see? Those items from that section are fifty percent off no matter what part of the store you take them to. They'll ring up at fifty percent off even if you take them out of that section!

@geeniusatwrok: The sign at Old Navy reads 60% off storewide which means that 60% off deals can be found all around the store, not that the entire store is 60% off. We try our best to sign the items that are 60% off, but the company decided that instead of making individual signs stating the item and the original price, they would instead make an generic 60% off sign and told us to throw that up where the product is located. Not the ideal situation for employees since customers come up and don't understand that it's select items only (even though the signs clearly state that) so we were making a lot of price adjustments and piling up clothes that people didn't want to pay full price for.

Agreed, this is a non-issue. I hope Consumers Union helps weed out the panicked old lady, chicken little articles like this.

I've seen this at one of the Circuit City liquidation stores where signs proclaiming that "NOTHING HELD BACK!" are in the windows but once inside, signs saying "Do Not Sell" are taped to items all over the place.

It sucks they are going out of business. The store close to me is already gone. I was always able to buy hard to find items there. bummer!

@m_m: I was on my way to write this, but now I don't need to.

The same thing is going on at JCPenny. My wife and I went to get my watch resized, which she bought me for Christmas, and there were huge yellow signs hanging everywhere saying "STOREWIDE CLEARANCE! 60% OFF!" with NO exception small print on them, but when we asked about it at the watch counter (thinking maybe we could get some money back since she bought my watch at a 25% off sale), the lady explained that it was only a clearance in the areas those signs were hanging. I asked how that was "storewide". She didn't have an answer.

I actually just saw this at the Sioux Falls world market on Saturday. I got a good chuckle out of it when i read it as well. The only place you see it is one shelf so it was pretty hard not to read the sign since you did not see them all over the store.

@ajmccoll: Wow, that's a really misleading sign.

@scootinger:
CPWM already liquidated the stores in Detroit in May of last year. They used their own ugly liquidation signage. This is just CPWM's own cruddy way of having their clearance event. I worked at a Detroit store for 5 years until it closed. These events were always poorly executed and a disaster.

@Corporate-Shill: Agreed. Terms should be clear and prominent, not hidden.

I dealt with the same issue at an Old Navy in Rehobeth Beach, DE this weekend. I got to checkout and half of my items rang up at full price. I asked about the "storewide sale" sign outside and was told the same thing. I just didn't buy those items. Seems a little scheisty to me

@ajmccoll: See, the sign I saw on the day after Christmas said "60% off storewide" with no fine print or other text to clarify that. If it was only part of the store, there needed to be fine print or say "up to 60% off storewide." No such qualifiers were present so the only way to interpret it was that the entire store was 60% off, which was not the case.

@faintandfuzzies: World Market is going out of business? I didn't get that from the article...

I'm not convinced that the store isn't trying to confabulate customers, but instead of a big bold "50% OFF" and a tiny "in this section only" disclaimer, they should have started off with "This section:" and THEN a huge "50% OFF". Peppering the store with those kinds of signs would be a lot less confusing.

It's not like this is rocket science, so why do they keep getting the basics wrong?

This article reminds me of the time I found a printable 40% off coupon for World Market. It didn't say in the small print that it didn't apply to furniture...so, I got me some bargains! It's worth pointing out that the next time they had those coupons...the small print had been revised to exclude furniture... ;-)

Maybe the "50%" part only applied to that section. maybe it was different in different sections?

Isn't a store supposed to be in clearance all the time. You want to get rid of old product to bring in the new.

In marketing-speak "Storewide" clearance just means that every department in the store has clearance items, not "everything is on sale". It's effectively a meaningless catch-phrase like "new and improved" that fools shoppers in each succeeding generation until they catch on.

"Storewide clearance" for "only items in this section" isn't an oxymoron (nor false advertising) if all departments of the store are represented in the clearance section.

But when you get confused and want to apply leverage on the company, post it to your favorite consumer advocacy website and try to stir up trouble.

Um, everyone, this is actually a pretty direct and simple sign. For example:

If there was a nationwide drought, would EVERY body of water in the US be dangerously low? No.

If there are industry-wide shortfalls, is every business (bank) going bankrupt? No.

Similarly, if there is a store-wide sale, not every single item is going to be on sale. I blame poor English/vocab skills for this one. That, and lazy consumers.