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A project to make businesses more aware of their customer experience, and how to fix it. By Mark Hurst. |
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Previous: Parking sign instructions | Main | Next: Faux-Chinese tattoos
April 4, 2006 12:03 AM
Broken: Sushi promotion
50% off sushi every day? I'm not sure I want to eat there any day.
I fail to see how this is broken. Could someone please explain it to me?? This site seems to get further and further away from truly "broken" things, and seems to be getting more and more focused on anal-retentive people, or people just expressing opinions.
If they can afford to sell at "50% off" all the time, imagine what their profit margin would be if they ever sold at "full price"!
Better still, since they're never going to sell at "full price", they could pretend it's even higher and put up a sign saying "95% off". Bargain!
Broken? It's most likely illegal! One cannot claim that one is providing a 50% discount on the price when the goods or services in question are never sold at the claimed regular price. This is deemed to be misleading advertising in many jurisdictions which have consumer protection laws that specify how long something must be offered at a regular price before a price reduction can be considered a discount.
I think the comment about not eating sushi was in reference to old, discounted sushi. I know if I'm eating sushi, I want fresh. I wouldn't want the bargain-bin specials.
And yes, how can they claim it's 50% off if it always is? Do they mean it's 50% off what they think they should charge or maybe it's 50% less price than the sushi place down the street?
Jim King, I have to disagree with you, we DO need commentary and opinions, this what this site is all about...
I'm not sure how this is broken. As soon as I saw the sign I figured it means something like "we always have a 50% off special" or similar. It doesn't say ALL sushi is 50% off and I wouldn't expect that's what it means.
By the way, I agree that the daily broken items on this site are becoming less interesting.
No, Sam, this site is SUPPOSED to be about broken things, things that are undisputibly broken.
The sign is broken.
Saying "I'm not sure I want to eat there any day." has nothing to do with the sign at all.
I think what the original poster was trying to get at was that he wouldn't want to eat there "any day" because he wouldn't want to do business with a company that makes obviously false claims (like that their sushi is 50% off everyday -- a logical impossibility).
And that is what this site is about, according to the header. This business is driving away customers (at least one anyway) because of their broken advertising.
There used to be a pizza joint near my house that advertised "2-for-1" pizzas. The first time I went there, I discovered that their "2-for-1" price was over 20 bucks for medium pizzas. Looking closer at the menu, I saw that in fact, you could get a single medium pizza for about $15. So though there was a bit of a discount for buying two, it was certainly not "2-for-1". Needless to say, I didn't return, and I suspect few others did either, because they went out of business in short order.
Jim King
If we only had things that are "undisputibly broken" what would even be the point of being able to post comments?
All the comments would basically be "yep that's broken" and "that sure is broken" That'd be boring. Part of the fun, I think, is the debate over whether or not something is broken as well as the debate over how broken something really is. But maybe that's just me.
It's always interesting to see what sleeper items suddenly become the 20+ comment posts. I'm frequently wrong about which ones I think will or won't be.
"One cannot claim that one is providing a 50% discount on the price when the goods or services in question are never sold at the claimed regular price."
The sign says "everyday," not "always." It could be full-priced at dinner time, and half-priced at lunch time, every day.
Okay, Another Bob, that's a possibility, in which case the sign is merely misleading rather than blatantly false. Another possibility, of course, is that whoever put up the sign was just not clear on the concept of "50% off" (as I expect was the case with my "2-for-1" pizza guys).
So what the sign is telling us is that the management of this restaurant is either (1) incompetent, (2) manipulative, or (3) outright lying. In any case, I would think twice about eating there.
This reminds me of many jewelry stores -- Everything is always at least 50% off when you go to buy a diamond ring.
Anybody else notice that the bottom part of the sign that says "everyday" looks like it's covering up something? My guess is that the sign used to say "Sushi 50% off Mondays" or something like that. If that's true, and I walked by that sign every day, when I saw that it changed from "Mondays" (or whatever) to "everyday", I would be MORE inclined to get me some sushi. So that's just another reason why I don't think this is broken (my original reason was that it doesn't say ALL sushi is discounted -- it's only broken to assume that's what it says).
Actually, the original poster was not slamming sushi or people who like sushi. He was jokingly saying "I don't want to eat sushi every day and, in fact, if it's gonna be 50% off every day, then I don't want it any day."
Certain perishable foods, by virtue of being discounted or put on sale, discourage you from buyng them. Think diary products, meat, and fish. "50% Off" signals to consumers that the perishable food is not fresh. The signal may not be accurate, but it's still being sent.
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Previous: Parking sign instructions | Main | Next: Faux-Chinese tattoos
What's "I'm not sure I want to eat there any day." supposed to mean? You don't like sushi? Lots of people DO like it.
50% off everyday is broken, but we don't need commentary and opinions...
Posted by: Jim King at April 4, 2006 12:23 AM