Is it normal for a small portion of a polarized lens filter to appear unpolarized?

Question

Just picked up my first polarized lens filter from Tiffen — a 52mm SR Polarizer.

It looks like a small portion of the lens is NOT polarized, but this being my first lens, I wanted to confirm this before going through the hassle of returning it. (online purchase, of course)

Answer 1

While their are two types of polarizing filters, circular and regular, they should never look like this. This looks defective to me. Some filters do have areas with no "filtering" such as with a graduated neutral density filter. In this case 25% or 50% of the filter may appear clear such as this. Although for a polarizer I would never expect to see something like this.