...but always read the small print.

Magazines are excluded from the offer.

The other day I received a discount voucher for a special offer on the high street which was so good I just had to share it with other shoppers. The offer is available at WHSmith and the voucher gives you a generous 20% off every time you shop throughout the store. They even underlined the words 'every time' on the voucher to highlight just how great the offer is.

However, before you get too excited, I should probably mention that as with many offers, there are one or two exclusions mentioned in the small print, namely:

"Excludes Newspapers, Magazines & Bookazines and all Post Office products."

Oh, well. That's not too bad, I suppose. There are still plenty of other products you can buy to get the 20% discount.

Or are there? When you read further into the small print you also discover a few more exclusions, namely:

"Offer excludes CDS, DVDs, games and gaming consoles, stamps, gift vouchers, phone cards, Book Customer Orders, eBooks, Kobo eReaders, eReader accessories, Day Out Vouchers, Gift Experiences, eTop-Up, iTunes, eGift cards, gift cards, book tokens, theatre tokens, Stickers and trading cards, tobacco, Lottery products and WHSmith Travel Insurance."

By now I was starting to think it would have been easier to list what the offer didn't exclude!

20% off on 'selected' items.

To limit the offer even further, the 20% off was only available at certain stores, as the small print also contained the following exclusions:

"Excludes Outlet Stores, Online, 'Books by WHSmith at Selfridges', Harrods, Arnotts and Fenwick's stores, WHSmith 'Local' and all Travel stores including those at airports, railway stations, motorway service stations, hospitals, garden centres and workplaces."

And as a final limitation, the small print added:

"Cannot be used in conjunction with any other promotional voucher, discount card or privilege card."

So to summarise, the offer can be used for a discount on, em ... well .... er ... em, well there's ... er ... hmm ... nope, I have to admit that after the exclusions have been taken into account, I'm struggling to think of anything that's left!

I think I should point out that I actually really like WHSmith as a shop, and in particular the staff in the Newcastle branch of WHSmith are excellent, and are always very helpful and cheerful. If I was going to name my top three shops for customer service then I would definitely have the Newcastle branch of WHSmith in there, possibly with my local Aldi and also the local Wilko, so as a shop I really like WHSmith.

However, for the benefit of whoever came up with the discount voucher, when producing any future vouchers for similar offers I think perhaps it would be easier to list what the offer does include.

To assist any marketing staff who happen to be reading this blog, I've produced a couple of more concise sample designs for future vouchers which they may wish to consider...

Terms and conditions apply.

Or how about...

Always read the small print.

Once again I do actually really like WHSmith as a shop, and despite my amusement at that discount voucher, they do actually have lots of good offers. You can check out their current offers at the link below:
WHSmith - Special Offers




Please note, all quoted terminology from special offers mentioned in this blog post remains the copyright of the respective promoters and is used in accordance with 'Fair Use' legislation for review purposes.