When Retailers Wreck Relationships Because Of Pricing Errors

CyberMonday is becoming one of the most critical days for retailers today. According to IBM, Cyber Monday retailers saw online sales increase by 16.7 percent over last year. Retailers are using email and social offers to get the attention of their customers. In fact, according to IBM's research:

On Cyber Monday alone, IBM clients sent nearly 500M email notifications to consumers around the world – a one-day record high. Mobile push outreach continued its rapid growth and was up 47 percent over 2015.

It was no grand surprise when I received an email from BaseballExpress.com with their CyberMonday deals. What was a surprise was that they offered a Wilson baseball glove deal for $19.88. They claimed it as a $140 savings. Meanwhile, when someone clicked through to the website the price was over $200. What looked like a great attention grabbing deal turned out to be a click bait and switch. Looks like someone made a mistake and didn't check the image when they sent out their email. You can see the image below.

These kind of printing mistakes happen. I think we all understand that. A similar thing happened to Macy's when they priced a $1500 necklace for $47. But, a brand is built on relationships and how you handle mistakes is vital.

I emailed BaseballExpress at around 7:30am.  I told them about the pricing discrepancy and asked them how they were going to handle it. It wasn't until after 4:30pm that I received a reply from them:

How would you feel at this point? Would you feel that they used false advertising to get you to click through to the website? Is there something they could have done at this point to at least make you feel better about their brand, especially after they admitted they made a mistake?

At this point, I re-checked their email and they had swapped out the original image with the corrected price. There was no second email apologizing for their mistake.

I responded to their email with:

I understand that you corrected it many hours later after I contacted you. You published an offer in good faith and should honor what was published. I checked your terms and conditions and there is no recourse for an error in printing of price on your website or in an email. You do say though "We make every effort to honor published catalog prices.”

Please let me know what you can do for me.

What should a reputable company do if they make a mistake in a printed price?

1. Have language for errors in your terms and conditions like Macy's has:

This Web site may contain typographical errors or inaccuracies and may not be complete or current. macys.com therefore reserves the right to correct any errors, inaccuracies or omissions (including after an order has been submitted) and to change or update information at any time without prior notice. Please note that such errors, inaccuracies or omissions may relate to pricing and availability, and we reserve the right to cancel or refuse to accept any order placed based on incorrect pricing or availability information. We apologize for any inconvenience.

2. Acknowledge the mistake as fast as possible. Do not wait 8+ hours to respond to a customer inquiry on your mistake. Send out an email acknowledging the error, don't just swap the image and hope few people complain.

3. Do the math. How much will it cost you to honor the deal? To rebuild goodwill with customers? If too many people were asking to honor the deal that you could not afford the loss at the full deal price then at least offer some kind of significant discount that would make both you and the customer happy.

Here is the bottom line. I understand errors happen. What was important to me was to see how it was handled. I recently launched a new website for my team to monitor the best baseball deals of the week from numerous retailers and publish them. We no longer feel we should include BaseballExpress because of the way they handled this mistake.

Most retailers can not live from the one time purchase, it is all about developing relationships with customers.

Ted Rubin, a leading Social Marketing Strategist, Brand Evangelist, and Acting CMO of Brand Innovators and evangelist for the concept of Return on Relationship shares:

While your website, and possibly app, handle much of the heavy lifting with the user experience, it’s important for customers to know that there are real people behind the technology. To me, customer service is the ultimate marketing opportunity because someone is calling you with a problem. And when someone calls because they want something from you, they listen carefully to every word you say... AND this is when the "relationship" rubber hits the road. 

Many times people block out marketing messaging because someone’s talking at them, but here you’re talking with them, and they’re listening intently. So it’s a tremendous opportunity not only to build your reputation, but to have the customer’s complete attention—when they’re tuned into a conversation with you. Yet most marketing and customer service channels, like in this situation outlined by Bryan, operate completely independently of one another. They have different goals and different reward systems, which doesn’t lend itself to a great customer experience.

Always keep in mind, especially when there is a customer experience issue... Your Brand/Business is what you do; your Reputation is what people Remember and Share. 

Do you think they could have done something differently with our relationship?