Harvey's - "misleading"(in myopinion) advertising

seatzie

just wanted to make people aware of Harvey's advertising methods - what I would call "misleading" but apparently isn't

My wife and I went to one of their stores yesterday looking for a rocking chair, for our impending arrival. We spotted one in the store marked "summer save I've had 25% taken off" the chair was right slap bang beside a big stand up banner declaring that SUMMER SALE EVERYTHING HALF PRICE, so I looked for small print, wasn't any, so I called an assistant over and asked if that meant the chair had another 25% to come off since everything in the sale was now half price, after looking at it and agreeing that it looked as if that was the case, he sought higher authority that yep that was the case,so we decided to buy it. I was sitting at the desk, card in hand giving my details when I, as it turns out rather stupidly, asked if I could collect it rather than have it delivered, the guy went to ask, unfortunately the manageress he asked then took back the offer and said the chair wasn't in the sale and the 25% off was the max discount. Of course I pointed out to her it said summer save etc and was right beside the everything half price, to which she pointed out that yes it said summer saVe not summer saLe. I asked her were we quibbling over 1 letter? she said yes, although she did agree with me it did appear misleading she also admitted she had queried it with head office and they had said it is perfectly legal and above board i.e. they knew what they were doing!.........to her credit she did offer me another 20 quid off, but this wasn't anywhere near the 54 quid extra discount I was looking!lol!

anyways a heads up to be aware of harvey's advertising methods!
Seatz

oscardog

Typical - ambiguity being the weapon of the advertiser.

santana-mx3

I have come across Harveys' misleading promotion offers before. I was interested in a leather suite. They had the usual 50% (or similar) sale notices. There was a separate Monster Discount card on each one saying take an extra x % off the sale price. However, they claimed that the x % had already been taken off the sale price. Since I was actually interested in the furniture, I took photographs (to look at on the PC at home to see how well it matched the carpets etc). However, the next day in another branch running the same promotion, when I took photos of an alternative suite I was interested in (including the sale notices), there was panic among the sales people and two of them came running over to stop me (on grounds of company policy). I would normally ask before taking any photos and no store has ever refused but because I knew they allow it in other branches of Harveys (the one I had tried the previous day and another branch in the past) I hadn't bothered. I strongly suspect they were worried about photos being taken of their misleading advertising.