Musings of a technophile

So my wife found a deal a couple weeks ago – basically Target.com was selling a Britax Car Seat for $42, when the real price was supposed to be $279. The website quickly sold out of the item, as news spread around the internet and people rushed to get in on the deal – perhaps even to just resale the item on Ebay. Unfortunately we didn’t make the deal on time, and so we were not one of the lucky one’s to have bought a super cheap expensive car seat at the expense of Target.

A few days later, we found that Target had sent an email to each of the individuals who had been able to purchase the seat online. The email basically told them the real price of the item and that they would not be honoring the mistaken price.

Stuff like this actually happens quite often, not just online either. I read a story just last week where a lady at Saks Fifth Avenue had asked the price of a pair of earrings and a broach. The clerk informed her it was $28,000, and the lady paid for the items and went home. A day later, the manager of the store called her and told her that the earrings were $28,000, but the broach was $48,000, meaning the total price should have been $76,000. The manager asked to have the items returned, to which the lady said no, and the store is now suing her for the broach and the lawyer fees.

I myself was able to get Dell PowerEdge server for about $300 off when Dell made a mistake a few years ago. Dell had honored the deal then however, delivering my server as promised.

I don’t think there is any question that it is the fault of the store for mislabeling items and/or not training the clerks in the proper value of items in the store. The question then is should the store honor the mistaken price for the people who were lucky enough to get in on the “deal”.

Really I guess it just depends on a few things. The first is whether or not the store cares about goodwill. After all, I know I hold Dell in a high regard for going ahead with my Dell server, since it was their mistake. I’ve even gone so far to tell other people about it and how nice it was that they were able to admit they dropped the ball. That’s the good type of press you want. Right now there are people threatening to sue Target for not honoring the car seat mistake. Obviously – not the type of press you want. As my economics teacher in college once told me, goodwill is something that can’t be measured in value, but it definitely is a valuable thing for a company.

On the other hand, we all know that everyone makes mistakes. Can you really fault Target or Saks Fifth Avenue for not wanting to lose lots of money over a typo?

I guess the problem is that there is no clearly defined boundary right now on when the sale is “final”. Should the sale be marked final as soon as the item is bought? When the item is shipped or leaves the store? In the case of Target, although people had bought the car seat, it had not been shipped yet – therefore it would be the same as if the lady had bought the earrings and broach and yet she was still in the store.

In any case, the forthcoming case with the earrings and broach will put a legal boundary on this when the judge makes a decision, but I think that will only be for physical sales. In the online world, this boundary might not be defined for quite some time, if ever.

How do other people think this should have been handled? I know I read another story where this jewelry store owner (part of a big chain, although I can’t remember which) was commenting on the Saks Fifth Avenue case. He said that he had sold items as mislabeled prices before, and he just calls the person up and says “Congratulations, you got lucky. This is the real value of the jewelry you bought, remember that you got it at (insert name of store here)”. This let’s the person know that they got a great deal on some jewelry that was more expensive than they originally thought. The owner asked (paraphrased) “Do you think that person will go and tell someone else and also come back to our store? I guarantee it”.

Also, one final note – I found out that last night Target was trying to “make amends” with the people who bought the car seat. Unfortunately, they just turned it into a even bigger fiasco. Apparently they sent some people anywhere from $10 – $50 in credits, however since it was a varying amount, now people are complaining about why one person got $10 while another got $50. Some people even received the car seat as ordered. Totally not the way this should have been handled I would think. Not only are you ruining goodwill by not shipping the item as sold, but now you anger people by your mismanagement of the ordeal.