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5 "has not sold" vs. "didn't sell"

grammaticality transitivity

I got this email from a colleague:

I am writing because product #55 has not sold and we would like to expand
the list...

Is this the right sentence structure or should it be written:

I am writing because product #55 didn't sell and we would like to expand the
list..

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mql4beginner asked
257 ● 2 ● 3 ● 6 May 22 '16 at 6:30

Ben Kovitz edited

25.9k ● 3 ● 45 ● 101 May 22 '16 at 8:17

3 Ooh, I think this may be a British vs American English issue. "Has not sold" is perfectly correct,
but not common in AmEng, and strikes this AmEng speaker as sounding British, where as "didn't
sell" is much more idiomatic to the left of the Atlantic. Any Brits care to comment? –
 Codeswitcher May 22 '16 at 6:47

4 @Codeswitcher (Native AmE here.) It sounds ordinary to me, not especially British. I could be
wrong, of course. I just posted an answer with a couple examples from the U.S. – Ben Kovitz
May 22 '16 at 8:46

add a comment

3 Answers order by votes

Has not sold suggests that product #55 is still available for sale.
28
Here's a typical example:

My house has been on the market for two months. Why hasn't it sold?

This implies that the house is still on the market. The speaker made the
house available for sale two months ago, and no one has bought it yet. The
 speaker is still trying to sell the house.

Didn't sell suggests that the period when product #55 could have been sold
is now over.

For example:

Your house was foreclosed but didn't sell at auction.

This means that the house was placed for sale at an auction, no one bought
the house, and the auction is now over.

Another situation where you might say that product #55 didn't sell is if it's a
seasonal item and the season is over. For example, if product #55 is a winter
coat, and it's now summer, you might say that product #55 "didn't sell": it had
its chance in the marketplace, and it failed.

In this context, didn't sell can mean "didn't sell enough to be considered
successful". The simple past suggests that we have enough evidence to
conclude that product #55 was unsuccessful. We know. The present perfect
has not sold can suggest that there may still be some way to make
product #55 successful or perhaps you need to allow more time for sales to
pick up. However, if product #55 has been on the market for a long time, has
not sold can mean that you are suggesting that now it is time to give up.

The difference in meaning comes from the fact that the present perfect
tense locates the action in a time interval that starts in the past and reaches
at least to the present, while the simple past tense locates the action at a
certain time in the past. When no time is specified with the simple past
tense, there is usually (not always) an implication that the event finished in
the past and is not continuing in the present.

For more about this, see my answer to this question. (Note that not everyone
agrees with the time-interval theory.)

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Ben Kovitz answered

25.9k ● 3 ● 45 ● 101 May 22 '16 at 8:43

Community
1
♦ edited
Apr 13 '17 at 12:55

As a BrE speaker, both are commonly used. As the accepted answer implies,
3
"product #55 has not sold" is a (possibly informal and/or grammatically
"incorrect") abbreviation of "product #55 has not been sold". It may have
been withdrawn from sale, or it may still be available but nobody has yet
bought it. That usage would apply to a single item, which (obviously) can
 only be sold once. The word "product" is not very idiomatic - the usual
generic word would be "item", or a specific noun like "house", "car", etc.

"Product #55 didn't sell" would more often refer to something which is
produced in large quantities and sold to many customers. The meaning is
not that none of the product was sold, but that the total sales were lower
than expected. For example a processed food manufacturer might say that
"bacon-and-egg-flavoured yoghurt was very popular in specialist
delicatessens, but it didn't sell in Walmart", or a history of the motor industry
might say that "the Ford Edsel didn't sell" - though of course some people
bought that model of car.

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alephzero answered
3,353 ● 7 ● 15 May 22 '16 at 17:26

The phrases look like they have identical literal definitions, but there may be
0
some difference implied by the actual usage.

"has not sold" suggests that the product has two possible states: sold, or
unsold. If you have 1,000 items, not one of them has sold, and so you still
have 1,000 items.

With the phrase "did not sell", the word "sell" might suggest "selling well".
Maybe you sell lemonade and strawberry lemonade for 15% higher cost.
Maybe lemonade was a popular item, but only 0.2% of people chose to use
the strawberry add-on. It just didn't "sell". Although some strawberries were
indeed sold, the product failed to take off.

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TOOGAM answered
798 ● 4 ● 7 May 23 '16 at 1:09

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