Raising prices and calling it a sale does not make it so.

Yesterday I took my girls out shopping for school clothes.  Mostly, I took Madeline out shopping for clothes.  I have enough hand me downs from Madeline for Ellie's current size to clothe the quadruplet version of Ellie. (God help us all if such a thing existed.)  Ellie clearly picked up on the lopsided shopping and did her best to use her Sniffy-hopper charms on me to get me to buy her a few shirts.  She was incredibly grateful for the few items she got in sharp contrast to her big sister Madeline who got lots of things but still wanted more.  That girl can never be satisfied.  I could give her the world and it still wouldn't be enough.

So my total annoyance came about when we went to Kohls.  I took Madeline there on Tuesday and brought her some shirts and a pair of shoes for school.  They had a pretty good sale going on and most of what I brought was 45-50% off.  Generally, I won't buy clothes at Kohls for my kids unless they're 40% or more off.  I don't think the clothes are worth anything near the original retail prices Kohls has set.  I can get nicer stuff at the Gap (full priced) for less than Kohls prices.  So all day on Thursday I kept seeing ads about this big sale Kohls was going to have this Friday and Saturday.  I had also received a 15% off coupon in the mail and a few emails with the same offer.   I figured I'd take the girls back over there and see get Madeline sneakers for gym and see if there was anything else Madeline wanted.  After wandering around the store I became incredibly annoyed as I noticed that all the things that were on sale on Tuesday were now being offered at much lower percentages off.  So much so, that even with the extra 15% off coupon the things would still cost more.  It goes without saying that Kohls didn't get any of my money yesterday.

I'm sorry, but I despise when stores play these games.  Why waste all those advertising dollars promoting a lousy sale?  This is why I frequently have to play what Bryan has dubbed "The Game" where I rebuy (at a lower price) and return.  Now, Kohls does have a decent price adjustment policy (in case you were unaware) where you can get the difference if an item goes on a better sale within 14 days.  A lot of stores have changed their policies on price adjustments in the past year or so (most likely due to the economy).  I know Old Navy and Gap will only do price adjustments within 7 days and other stores have eliminated the practice altogether.