Early Wednesday morning, august 12, 2009, BestBuy.com listed a 52-inch Samsung HDTV for $9.99 -- a savings of more than $1600. Surely all the customers who knew about the offer jumped into the web and ordered lots of 52 inch TV. It was an offer of a lifetime and they can even make money out of it if they ordered a lots of it. Unfortunately, to their disappointment, this deal of a lifetime was a mistake. Bestbuy took back the offer and promised to refund the buyers whose cards were already accepted by the checkout counter saying that the offer was a mistake.
It is quite unlikely that such a huge company like bestbuy would commit such a terrible mistake. Bestbuy is one of America's highest employer and yet despite all the these number of employees, mistakes like this is still committed. They can always allude to human mistakes and the capacity of human to commit mistakes, and there is no question about that, but this remains to be a lame excuse. The bigger question lies in there commitment to deliver what has been promised. Business is a commitment to deliver satisfaction to your customers. And if by delivering their commitment from this painful and expensive mistake will save them more money by retaining the trust of their patrons, they rather should.
I recall in the past, Pepsi Cola Philippines promoted the 349 raffle promotion for their softdrink. The winning number combination if found in the cap of the softdrink you purchase will entitle you to 1 million peso prize. Pepsi sales obviously shot up because of the promotion. Unfortunately for Pepsi, for whatever glitch they may have had during that time, there were hundred of bottles containing the winning combination of 349. There was a big court battle about this issue and Pepsi fought with all their might. Now, I dont know, but Pepsi in the Philippines is already a thing of the past.
Similarly, if you are familiar with internet service providers were you are enticed to purchase a 20 meg internet download speed and which upon browsing you discover that the speed that you are getting is just 14 meg way below the actual rate that you are suppose to be getting, this is also unacceptable. Then you call the technical support located somewhere in the far flung world, all you just get is an apology and a promised fix.
During the olden times when people just simply to there neighborhood variety store and get whatever they like and whatever is available and pay in cash. These were the days when transacting business is not so complicated compared to how businesses are transacted now. Computerization has made business process so impersonal that you can just be refused upon at a click of a finger. When you complain to these stores, you get to speak to the owner right away and get the resolution immediately. The level of frustration can easily be comforted because of the immediate response from the vendor. All these large companies do is to easily point at the system error when problems arise.
In the case of Bestbuy.com, the prices you post on the website is similar to the price tag you clip on the product you display on your store racks. When you pick up that item, there goes with it the company's commitment to deliver it to you to your utmost satisfaction. It is the same as to clicking on the item and adding it into your online shopping cart from their website ecommerce and pay it with your credit card on the online checkout counter, the level of commitment of the store should still be going along with it. But no, that is not the case! A very impersonal apology is what you get. Yes, a very impersonal apology, similar to the robot you speak with when the internet service provider is having an outage in your area or informing you that your account is already activated.
But it appears there is little else they can do. A spokeswoman for the Federal Trade Commission that investigates consumer complaints told CNN "The FTC act bars unfair and deceptive commercial practices." Those would be cases of phony offers or sweepstakes, rather than a mistake, she said. But how do we know if it was really a mistake or just simply a deceptive move to gain traffic to their site...?
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