secret codes on price tags

Secret Codes in Price Tags


Target: Any sale item with a price ending in "4" is considered the final markdown and will not go downfurther in price. Clearance stickers have a small number on the top left corner which represents the percentage off. It starts at 10, then goes to 15, 30, 50, 75 and the lowest it gets is 90, then it goes back to the manufacturer. Items are thrown away it they are perishable, but it gets noted for the distributor. Clearance prices don't always make it to 90 percent though because the store stops getting the product in shortly before it goes clearance, and onceit's gone, it's gone.

Sears: Prices ending in 99 are regular, 98 is no coupons or sales, 88 is closeout, 97is clearance/discontinued, 93 is refurb/open-box. A letter, followed by a number indicated what the original price of the item was. A=10, B=20 and so on. So an item marked A7 would have been 17.99, an item marked C9 would be 39.99.

Circuit City: 98: local price match 97: open box item 96:limited stock item, either oop (out of production) or so new that supplies are not regular yet 95: clearance oop product

Best Buy: Frigidaire items have a code on the tag 0000*****00000. The numbers in between the zeros is the dollar amount they can reduce the item by.

Office Depot: Prices not ending in 0, 9 or 5 are final markdowns.

Gap & Old Navy: prices ending in 7 are the final markdown and will not go down further in price. Usually,unsold items with this code are supposedly sent to closeout stores within a few weeks of the markdown.

Abercrombie & Fitch: anytime an item is $xx.50, it is full price, and anytime it is $xx.ANYTHING ELSE, it is on sale. 99.99%, the item on sale will end in $xx.90, but sometimes we do $xx.89 just to confuse people.

JC Penney: If the price ends in a 7; that's the lowest price the item will be sold at. Gift receipt code: letters correspond to the numbers on a computer keyboard. Q=1, W=2, E=3, R=4 etc. If the gift code ends in the letter U (corresponds to 7) you know the person bought your gift on clearance.

Lowes: there's a number underneath the bar code before a decimal point. That number is the commission amount the sales person makes on the item (called the "spiff").

Ace Hardware: uses letters to tell the employees what the cost of a product was. VICKSBURG: V=1, I=2, C=3, K=4, S=5, B=6, U=7, R=8, G=9. So a toaster with a price of $12.99 might have a code under that listing BCS or $6.35 for a cost.

Home Depot: Prices that are green tagged always end in 6. That way all the employees know for sure that it is a clearance item and if it does not sell within X amount of days, it is thrown in the dumpster!

Sam's Club: prices ending in 91 means that item is clearance. (Ex: $12.91).

If you purchase any lawn and garden product made by John Deere you can take the retail price x75%, that will give you the JD dealers cost.

[via Lori]

100 Things

Online entrepreneur Dave Bruno has issued the world a challenge. He's daring all of us to reduce our worldly belongings to just 100 items.

That may sound crazy -- until you start digging into your closets and cupboards. How much of the stuff gathering dust in your home have you actually used lately? A less cluttered environment might actually make you feel more peaceful and productive.

call him Norman

Big Island resident Norman Allen plays a significant role in "Enlighten Up," a feature-length documentary about yoga, providing a strong local tie to a film that's making waves in a grass-roots fashion around the world.

"He's the most unconventional guy," explained filmmaker Kate Churchill, who added that she needed to meet with Allen and work on his farm several times before he permitted any on-camera interviews. "He's very special. His wisdom definitely has its own style. He's someone who's walking his talk."

When asked if he should be referred to as a yogi or guru, Allen, who has studied yoga for 40 years in India and other parts of the world, laughed. "Just call me Norman," he said during a conversation from Kona.

At one point during the film, which premiered last month at the Maui Film Festival, Nick Rosen, the yoga neophyte who became the guinea pig/star of the documentary, asks for help dealing with his daily emotions, which he admits can revolve around food, sex, greed and jealousy. Allen tells him simply, "Go (screw) yourself."

Later, Allen explained what he meant. "(Nick's) got to be complete in himself." The big Self is a unit complete unto itself -- unselfish. The small self is selfish and needy, when you bother people. The goal of yoga is to be the big Self, to be completely liberated, free and un-bonded. This, he continued, can be done at all different levels of sophistication.

follow that trash

That plastic water bottle tossed in the recycling bin could become new carpeting. The beer bottle next to it might be ground into gravel for construction. And yesterday's newspaper could see new life as an egg carton.

With the city poised to extend curbside recycling across the island, some residents are wondering what happens to the stuff they put out on the curb -- from yard clippings to empty milk jugs.

"Every material we collect has a different story, and it's a very interesting story," said Suzanne Jones, the recycling coordinator for the city, which will offer curbside recycling to 37 percent of Oahu households by the end of the year.

Guerilla Gardening

More than a dozen people, some wearing orange protective gear, pulled rakes and shovels from a dingy shopping cart and started working on a parched patch of land along a busy off-ramp of Highway 101, the Hollywood Freeway.

It was a Saturday night and drivers whooshed past on their way to the Sunset Strip club scene.

But the crew was undeterred, and by the wee hours, the group had transformed the blight into bloom with green bushes and an array of colorful flowers.

City workers on overtime? Nope, no budget for that. These were "guerilla gardeners," a global movement of the grass-roots variety where people seek to beautify empty or overgrown public space, usually under the cover of darkness and without the permission of municipal officials.

"What we're fighting is neglect," said guerrilla gardening guru Richard Reynolds of London, founder of the Web site guerillagardening.org.

Going Green requires 1%

According to the Stern Review, compiled by Sir Nicholas Stern, Former Chief Economist of the World Bank, an investment of just 1% of the world’s GDP is required to mitigate the effects of climate change. If not done so we could face a recession of up to 20% of the Global GDP.

Most countries in the world today spend atleast 5-10% of their GDP on arms, military and defense equipment - and yet we excuse ourselves saying that we do not have the funding to invest in environment policies, alternative energy or in advanced technologies for reducing carbon pollution in the air.

All we need is 1% !!!

-- Chirag [via investwise]

The Experience Dividend

With millions of Baby Boomers poised to leave the workforce within the next decade, many of us want to find ways to contribute from our vast wells of experience and knowledge. We want more freedom of expression in our lives instead of continuing what might be a lukewarm commitment to a full-time job.

Willard Wigan

Willard Wigan MBE (born 1957) is a sculptor from Birmingham, England. He was awarded an MBE for services to art in July 2007.[1]

He is the creator of the world's smallest sculptures, often taking months to complete one, working between heartbeats to avoid hand tremors [2] "You have to control the whole nervous system, you have to work between the heartbeat - the pulse of your finger can destroy the work." Wigan uses a tiny surgical blade to carve microscopic figures out of rice, and fragments of grains of sand and sugar, which are then mounted on pinheads. To paint his creations, he uses a hair plucked from a dead fly (the fly has to have died from natural causes, as he refuses to kill them for the sake of his art). His sculptures have included a Santa Claus and a copy of the FIFA World Cup trophy, both about 0.005mm (0.0002in) tall, and a boxing ring with Muhammad Ali figure which fits onto the head of a match.

[via Donna spam]

cheap weed killer

Betty's caregiver (one of them) told me to use salt water to kill off koa. I figured if it could kill koa, it should be able to kill weeds. I wasn't sure if it was true, but apparently it is.

If there is an area where you don't want *anything* growing back, salt water is a great way to kill off weeds and keep them from coming back. I use 1 part salt to 2 parts water.

(And more)

*** [7/9/13] Just looked up natural weed killers recently and sure enough, I see this post from Roy on facebook.  The recipes are similar, but the first one recommends pickling vinegar since it has higher acetic acid.  But I didn't see it when I went to Foodland.  Maybe I'll try apple cider vinegar since we have an old bottle.

*** [5/7/14] more from facebook

*** [5/9/14] the truth about Natural Weed Killer exposed

[5/14/14] 9 Natural Ways to kill weeds (from Bob Vila.com)

[5/24/14] Weed-Be-Gone (similar to previous)

recycling shoes

As part of the Nike campaign, athletic shoes also may be dropped off at any fire station on Oahu between 9 a.m. and 8 p.m., if the companies are in, except for meal times -- noon to 12:45 p.m. and 5 to 5:45 p.m. -- said Honolulu Fire Department spokesman Capt. Terry Seelig.

Any brand of athletic shoe is accepted, as long as it does not contain metal, cleats or spikes. Also, make sure the shoes are not muddy or wet, tied together or placed in plastic bags, Seelig said.

The shoes are recycled into material used in sport surfaces, such as basketball and tennis courts and playgrounds.

what good is travel?

Travel shows us that Americans are among the haves in a have-not world. In contrast nearly half of this world's people live on $2 a day. And travel teaches you that, if you know what's good for you, you don't want to be filthy rich is a desperately poor world. It's just not a pretty picture.

[so that's how the world views the United States?]

-- Rick Steves, Costco Connection, February 2008