Nothing draws attention like a “Buy One, Get One” free offer from an airline. Recently, Spirit Airlines ran a two and a half day sale, from December 22 -24, promising just that.

The asterisk leads to the inevitable phrase:

*MOUSE PRINT: “Additional terms and conditions apply.”

One expects there to be rules such as registering for the promotion on their website, being a member of their frequent flier program, etc.  What travelers may not have expected was lurking in the fine print.

*MOUSE PRINT:

On or about 7/15/2009 Spirit will e-mail qualified vouchers.

[Spririt will] issue a voucher in the name of the passenger that traveled in the amount of the reservation purchased less taxes and fees (please note that for domestic tickets the base fare includes 7 ½% Federal Excise Tax which will also not be included in the created voucher). 

Translation: You have to wait until seven months from purchase — next July 15th — to get your voucher!  It is not for the full price you paid. And further down in the fine print is the notation that the “free trip” is only good Sept 9, 2009 through November 18, 2009 — nine to eleven months after purchase.  The voucher will also be sent in your name and is not transferable.

Who knows if Spirit Airlines will even be in business next fall?

Return policies in some cases are more lenient this year, but in others, they are more strict than ever. An example of the latter is the Buy.com policy, that used to be called “easy returns”.  This year they could just have well have renamed it “hard as nails” returns.  Note the almost nastiness of the wording at the beginning:

*MOUSE PRINT:

Returns Must Meet ALL Applicable Criteria
If your returned product does not match all applicable criteria listed below, it will be rejected by our Returns Warehouse and returned back to you at your cost. Consequently, your RMA will be nullified, any credit request will be denied, replacement orders will not be made, and you will be charged for all shipping to and from our Returns Warehouse that may be incurred by Buy.com. By requesting an RMA and/or shipping a return in violation of this policy you hereby agree to accept our shipment of the return back to you and to the payment of all shipping costs to and from our Returns Warehouse. Our arrangements with our suppliers and manufacturers allow us no room to make exceptions.

Before you make a return, therefore, you better understand the particular store’s rules (including restocking fees), so you will know what you are  or are not entitled to.

Here is a list of leading retailers with generous regular return policies and those with extended holiday return periods (so you may be able to grab the after Christmas bargains rather than wait in long return lines just after the holiday).

*MOUSE PRINT:

Holiday Return Deadlines and Restocking Fees

Many happy returns.

For this holiday week, a change of pace to a lighter subject. Most people don’t read the credits at the end of television programs. Even fewer folks have probably noticed what appears to be a screen full of boilerplate language at the end of the CBS programs “Two and a Half Men” and “The Big Bang Theory.”  The microtype fills the screen and only appears for two seconds.  No one can read it, even if they wanted to, unless you can freeze frame that moment on the screen.

While the casual observer may have assumed this was some type of elaborate copyright notice, in fact, the screens of tiny white letters on a black background are called “vanity cards” authored by the show’s executive producer, Chuck Lorre.  And they change every week.

Here is the very first one he wrote in 1997 when he produced the show Dharma and Greg:

*MOUSE PRINT:

Mr. Lorre has now authored over 200 of these vanity cards, that range from Seinfeldian rants about nothing, to chiding the brass at CBS for some slight, and everything in between.

Even the Wall Street Journal noticed his two-second treatises and wrote a story about them.  For a slide show of a few vanity cards, click here. His entire collection of vanity cards is immortalized on Chuck Lorre’s own website.  Enjoy.

Here is part of an ad for a recent Macy’s “one day sale” (yes, I know, they are never really only for one day):

(Note: the ad above is from the main section of the newspaper, and not the Macy’s color circular itself. But, it contains the same items for the same sale.)

While shoppers may have hoped to scoop up these items at the advertised bargain price, that was not to be the case. Why? Because most shoppers probably didn’t pay attention to the little “we’re sorry” box that appeared in the first few pages of the newspaper. It corrected the errors in Macy’s then current print advertisement (Dec. 6, 2008).

*MOUSE PRINT:

It is interesting to note that the five items mentioned with pricing errors were all advertised at a price lower than the correct price, so consumers will be asked to pay more than they expected at the store.

While it may appear that Macy’s is trying to bait customers with low advertised prices that they will not honor, it is hard to find a pattern in their corrections to substantiate this.  Many times, the actual price is lower than they advertise, and they correct that too.

The ultimate questions are, why are so many errors being made, and where are the corrections for all the other retailers?  Surely their prices are not perfect, and sometimes they run out of goods too.

We all know that toilet paper has been downsized for decades.  Charmin has gone from 600 or 650 sheets on the roll all the way down to 200 or so over the years. Other brands followed suit.  Even Scott’s 1000 sheet roll was downsized in a sneaky way in 2006 by making each sheet shorter.

The case of Cottonelle’s downsizing is a bit unusual, however.  Look at these two packages of their toilet paper purchased at the same time last month:

*MOUSE PRINT:  Both packages give the exact same dimensions for the contents — they say there are 304 sheets on each roll, and that sheets are 4.2 inches by 4.0 inches.  Clearly the package on the left is taller by about 3/4 of an inch (with rolls stacked on top of one another core to core).

What is going on here? The company said:

Because of all the precautions taken in our manufacturing plants, it is difficult to explain how the product you received escaped our detection.  Please accept our apology and our assurance that we will do our best to prevent a recurrence.  The proper roll height is 4.2 inches.  During 2007, we reduced the size of our COTTONELLE® bathroom tissue slightly to align our roll height [number of sheets per roll] with other premium tissue products on the market.  At that time, the sheet width was reduced from 4.5″ down to 4.2″.  The length of each sheet (4.0″ between the perforations) did not change.

So it looks like some of the older 4.5″ width rolls were put into a newer wrapper that had the new lowered sheet count and narrower width on the label.  One can only wonder if this was truly a “mistake” or rather an interim step in the downsizing process to hide the change for anyone comparing the older label to the newer one.

This then appears to be the industry’s latest ploy — downsizing toilet paper by making each sheeter narrower. Toilet paper has historically been 4.5 inches wide as demonstrated by Quilted Northern:

If you peruse the supermarket aisle you will notice that very few brands are 4.5 inches wide anymore. (Scott 1000 sheet role still is, for the moment.) Others are 4.3 inches, 4.27 inches, 4.2 inches, or even 4.0 inches.

  

If this trend continues, soon they will be marketing products to us that look more like dental floss than toilet paper.