Reader Nathan spotted these confusing sale signs at a Belk and can’t figure out how much off he’s supposed to get. Can you?
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Ticketed price (“price marked”) reflects 50% off original price, according to the framed sign.
Taking an extra 40% off the ticketed price results in 70% total savings, according to the sign topper.
Take a 99.99 item, deduct 50% and it is ticketed at 49.99. Deduct a further 40% from the new base value of 49.99 and you get 29.99, which is 70% off 99.99.
Then recall that no one need ever have paid 99.99 for the item in question for it to be advertised this way. In order to pass muster with state laws, items usually must be offered at their full price for a handful of days each month while it could have spent 90% of its time on the sales floor, and seen 100% of its sales, at a much lower price.
Lets see 70 percent off with an extra 40% of that and then the 50% off the original price – that like 160% off! They pay you to take the item? Sweet!
50% off original price, say $10.00, leaving $5.00.
40% off current price, leaving $3.00.
70% savings would be $3.00, which equals the $3.00 from the above.
Works for me.
A $100 item is marked $50. At register, they take off 40% (of the $50) for a final price of $30 or 70% off the original price. Nathan needs to learn his 5th/6th grade math.
I can’t believe anyone is confused by this. The sign is perfectly clear.
The marked price is 50% off the original price.
The discount price is 40% off the marked price.
This works out to 70% off the original price. The sign is clear and correct.
Why should this be hard? Think of it starting with a price of $100 if you’re still having trouble. 50% off makes a marked price of $50. 40% off of $50 leaves $30. That’s 70% off the original price of $100.
Take an extra 40% off the items already marked/priced with a 50% reduction. 70% sounds good to me.
Surely there must be more people dying to tell everyone how smart they are.
“Smart” and “not math illiterate” aren’t the same thing.
Looks more like a geography problem to me, as in guess which part of the country Nathan is from based on the primary locations of Belk stores. Or perhaps a construction problem, as in figure out which part of the sign was there first and which part was stacked on top of it to indicate further price reduction. Not that it matters. If you can’t figure out the sign, you’re probably not able to figure out the amount of the discount if you knew what the correct percentage is.
Clearly you add them all together and get 160% off. Duh.
The reason they do the sign this way has to do with them not wanting to actually re-ticket all the items. They put one sticker on an item that is 50% off the original price. This item has been “marked down” and the new permanent price of the item is the 50% off price on the ticket.
Then, they are running a temporary sale. This sale is 40% off. So, the 40% sale is on the new permanent price, which is 50% off of the original price. Thus, the TOTAL savings off the item is 70%.
Stores do it this way so that they avoid the labor of putting new price stickers on items, and then un-stickering them after a sale.
Of course, one thing to watch out for is the “original price”. When I worked at MayCo (back in 1990), they were under investigation for listing an original price that the item had never sold at. It was original price on the truck to the store, and was then marked down the moment it arrived in the building.
I’m sorry but this is as clear as the contents of Obamacare. For those who read bottom to top then the 70% makes sense (50% of original price + extra 40% equalling 70%). However, the vast majority have learned to read top to bottom and left to right. The top sign reads total savings of 70% and then upon reading further down (like most of us read) “with an additional 40% off the current ticketed price”. For those who read bottom to top, an original $200 item would cost $60 but to the vast unwashed masses who read top to bottom the price is $20.