Did You Buy From Torrid Because the Sale Was "Ending Today"?
If you get Torrid's emails, you know the feeling. ENDS TODAY. Gone at midnight. FINAL HOURS. LAST DAY. It is 9 p.m., you have been thinking about those jeans for a week, and now there are three hours left. So you buy.
Then, a few days later, the same sale is back.
Warren Terzian LLP has filed a class action alleging that Torrid's discounts are not real discounts at all. We are now looking at the emails—specifically, whether Torrid's countdown language pressured customers into buying on a deadline that was never going to arrive. If you bought from Torrid and are interested in exploring your rights to recover money, please tell us about it using the form on our Torrid case page.
The emails
These are real Torrid subject lines:
LAST DAY: 40–70% off SITEWIDE!
FINAL HOURS for Extra 70% off clearance
Gone at midnight: 35% off ALL your faves
Ends today! 35% off ALL new
ENDS TODAY: extra 20% off Most Loved styles
50–60% off SITEWIDE starts now
SAVINGS are BACK!
Read one and it looks ordinary. Read them as a sequence and something else appears. Every ending is followed by another ending. Nothing is ever actually gone at midnight.
Look at that last one again: SAVINGS are BACK! For savings to come back, they have to have gone away. We do not believe they ever did.
Why does a fake deadline matter?
Because the deadline is doing the work.
A discount tells you what. A deadline tells you when—and "when" is the part that turns browsing into buying. Every retailer knows this. Urgency short-circuits the ordinary process of thinking it over, comparing prices, or waiting to see whether the item goes lower. That is the entire point of putting FINAL HOURS in a subject line.
Now put it together with what our lawsuit already alleges. In Cruz v. Torrid LLC, No. 25STCV03846, pending in Los Angeles County Superior Court, we allege that Torrid's crossed-out "regular prices" are inflated reference prices Torrid rarely, if ever, actually charges—so the advertised discounts are illusory. You can read more in our post on Torrid's "regular prices."
The emails are the delivery system for that alleged scheme. A permanent sale needs a reason for you to buy tonight rather than next month. "ENDS TODAY" is that reason. We are investigating whether the discount was fake and the deadline was fake—two halves of the same pressure campaign.
Torrid disputes the allegations in the pending case, and no court has ruled on their merits.
Is that illegal in California?
California law does not have a rule that says "sales must actually end." It has something broader.
The False Advertising Law (Business & Professions Code § 17500) makes it unlawful to disseminate a statement that is untrue or misleading—in any newspaper or other publication, any advertising device, "or in any other manner or means whatever, including over the Internet"—in order to induce the public to buy. Marketing emails are advertising. A statement that an offer ends today is a statement of fact. If it is not true, we believe it fits squarely within what the statute prohibits.
The Unfair Competition Law (Business & Professions Code § 17200) reaches business practices that are unlawful, unfair, or fraudulent. Those are three separate paths, and a practice can violate the statute by being any one of them. A recurring deadline that never arrives is, in our view, capable of qualifying under more than one.
The Consumers Legal Remedies Act (Civil Code § 1770) prohibits, among other things, "[a]dvertising goods or services with intent not to sell them as advertised" and "[m]aking false or misleading statements of fact concerning reasons for, existence of, or amounts of, price reductions."
Notice what ties these together. None of them require a company to have hacked anyone's inbox or broken any rule about sending email. They ask a simpler question: was the advertising true?
Who we are looking for
Here is the part that matters most, and we will be direct about it.
A class action needs class representatives—real customers who stand up for everyone else in the case. For the email side of this, the customers whose experience matters most are the ones who actually acted on the urgency.
That is a specific person. Someone who:
Lives in California, and
Received Torrid marketing emails with deadline language like "ends today," "last day," "final hours," or "gone at midnight," and
Bought something from Torrid—on torrid.com or in a California Torrid store, and
Would not have bought right then, or would have thought about it longer, if they had known the same sale would be back the following week.
You do not need to remember a specific email to contact us. But if you still have them, that helps enormously.
What to do right now
1. Search your inbox before anything else. Search your email for "Torrid" and sort by date. Do not delete anything, including emails you never opened. The pattern is the proof, and the pattern only appears across weeks and months.
2. Screenshot the deadline emails. Capture the sender, the subject line, and the date. Two emails a week apart, both announcing that the sale ends today, tell the entire story in one image.
3. Match them to your orders. Pull your torrid.com order history or your receipts and see whether any purchase lines up with one of those emails. That connection is the single most useful thing you can bring us.
4. Tell us about it. Complete the form. It takes about two minutes, costs nothing, and creates no obligation.
Frequently asked questions
Is it illegal for a store to say a sale ends today when it doesn't?
California's consumer protection statutes prohibit untrue or misleading advertising and unlawful, unfair, or fraudulent business practices. A false statement about when an offer ends can fall within those prohibitions. Whether a particular advertisement is misleading depends on the facts, and California courts have often treated that as a question for a jury rather than something to resolve early in a case.
Why does Torrid run so many "last chance" sales?
Deadlines drive purchases. Our position is that Torrid's promotions reset and ran again rather than genuinely ending, and that the urgency was manufactured. Torrid disputes our allegations.
I bought during a "last day" sale. Do I have a claim?
Possibly. It depends on when and where you bought, what was advertised, and what you understood at the time. That is exactly what our free case review is for—tell us what happened by completing this form, and we will evaluate it.
I deleted my Torrid emails. Is it too late?
Not necessarily. Check your trash, archive, spam folder, and promotions tab—many providers keep deleted mail for a period, and marketing emails often survive in places people don't think to look. Your order history is useful on its own, too.