I’ve said it before and I will say it again.
Oh yes I will.
What is the point of having a blog if you can’t have a moan?
UK department store Debenhams are giving 20% off lots of items because it is Black Friday and – if you have a Debenhams credit card, as I do – you get an extra 10% off this week with a SAVE AN EXTRA 10% voucher.
Yippee!! You might think.
But do you get an extra 10% off?
Well, no you don’t.
For the sake of easy mathematics…
If you buy something with a display price of, say, £100 and have 20% + 10% off, you might expect to pay £70.
Not at Debenhams.
Because the “extra 10% off” is actually off the 80% price after the 20% has been deducted.
So, in fact, you don’t get a 20% + 10% reduction off the original price. You get a 20% + 8% reductiion.
This is all perfectly legal because, on the back of the voucher on line 8 of the small print (line 12 of 15, if I’m being pedantic) it says: “An extra 10% will be deducted at the till after any relevant discount is applied.”
The back of Debenhams’ dark and dodgy discount voucher
It does not make any earth-shattering financial difference, really.
But it does mean that Debenhams’ attempt to court a good PR image turns into the PR image of a dodgy second-hand car dealer.
Black marks for Debenhams on Black Friday.
SO IT GOES - John Fleming's blog 