I want to email a shop in the US and ask if an item has been reduced in price.Here in the UK 'The Sale/Sales' is when a shop discounts their products at the end of the season and we would ask "Is it in the Sale ?" Would that phrase make sense to an american or is the word sale only used to descibe the general act of selling ?
Viv

I would ask "I'd like to know if X has gone on sale (yet)?" or "wondering if X is included in the season ending sale?"

Or I would even say "I'm interested in purchasing X but I am wondering if there are any upcoming sales?"

Something I noticed moving to Canada is that, here, everything is constantly in a sale/at a sale price (i.e. discounted) if it's on sale/for sale (i.e. available for purchase) at all; the winter sale merges into the spring sale, which becomes the summer sale, which becomes the back-to-school sale, which takes us to the pre-holiday-season sales and so on.

I don't think it's actually possible to pay list price for stuff.

quote:

Originally posted by newnickname:
Something I noticed moving to Canada is that, here, everything is constantly in a sale/at a sale price (i.e. discounted) if it's on sale/for sale (i.e. available for purchase) at all; the winter sale merges into the spring sale, which becomes the summer sale, which becomes the back-to-school sale, which takes us to the pre-holiday-season sales and so on.

I don't think it's actually possible to pay list price for stuff.

The French, serious and bureaucratic as ever, allow no such thing.Shops are allowed only two sales a year and these all must occur at the same time and for the same period as that for other shops in the area. Exceptionally a business may hold a sale outside these times but the owners have to obtain official permission, give a valid reason to be checked by the authorities, and affix the official notice of consent which gives that reason, the duration of the permitted sale and the terms on which permission is granted, in the shop window. The French have tried ingenious ways around this restriction. The only one that works in practice is that the shop is being refitted and the interior rebuilt. The shopfitters come in and, say, move a partition stud wall or two and the shop has its sale because of the works. Some shops seem to get refitted quite often , though not more than once a year

I forgot the "pre-season" and "mid-season" sales.

I don't know if this is an Americanism, or if they use it in the UK, too - one bookstore here discounts "hurt books". I like that word 'hurt'; it doesn't matter what the thing is actually about, you just want to take it home, smother it in love and nurse it back to health.

Fred & dg know about everlasting Sales like at Dixons www.dixons.co.uk (only genuine bargains are the Managers specials ) And the Sofa companies sale every Public Holiday (Pay in 2years 0% interest)

quote:

Originally posted by newnickname:
I forgot the "pre-season" and "mid-season" sales.

I don't know if this is an Americanism, or if they use it in the UK, too - one bookstore here discounts "hurt books". I like that word 'hurt'; it doesn't matter what the thing is actually about, you just want to take it home, smother it in love and nurse it back to health.

Only last night I took a whole blue box of 'hurt' books from the library to the kerbside for recycling. It broke my heart, as I gently set the box down, and muttered, "Bye bye books"

Hurt books?Not in Britain, unless that's the same as 'remaindered'. Remaindered titles are books which have long ceased selling at any retail price, they are often out of, or going out of, print. They are offloaded to dealers who sell them very cheaply.There are bookshops here that sell little else.

Yes Bedstor, the sofa sales have become such a joke that one company DFS is currently running a campaign where a crowd shouts "Not another sale!" to which a voiceover explains that DFS has only two sales a year. ( I don't think that means that the first runs for 26 weeks and the second for 25 weeks and 6 days )