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Ethics really.
No it doesn't exist but I bet if there was a keying error by a web employee there how many of us would create an order or alert wiggle?
Employee pulled into room 'thankfully someone alerted us to the error so only a few orders got through'.
Or 'already thousands of pounds of orders were dispatched before the mistake was spotted, unfortunately we are going to have to let you go/discipline you'.
Who loses? The employee or tough its a big business it can afford it?
only if I can try it on in my LBS first.
It always amazes me how bored some people must be.
Or to put it another way, before an offer is uploaded to the system any well run business would have an approval process that ensured it was firstly well thought through and secondly could not be entered wrongly without being spotted - eg they can't type in 40 instead of 10 by mistake without it being validated or corrected.
If they can then IMO it's not the fault (alone) of the person keying it in.
Where's the code?
GIVE ME THE CODE!
I WAS PROMISED A CODE!
It always amazes me how bored some people must be.
If something bores or mildly irritates me I click out and graze for something of interest. Its obviously annoyed you i.e. you were looking for the code inside my post. No? Hence you answered one of my questions in my OP.
I don't need a code. I use my lbs.
Has petrolheads crashed ?
If I was running a web order business and sending out a discount code, I'd check and double check, then get at least one other person to check and double check, that I hadn't written £ instead of %, before posting it out.
bikeneil - Member
I don't need a code. I use my lbs
Of course sweetheart, of course.
company's fault - poor processes if they put out the wrong discount like that.
business is business. at the end of the day there here to make money from us. there is no loyalty or sentimental crap towards the customer. this goes for every business, lbs, supermarket, hairdresser etc etc so if they do make a mistake, then fine, if we as a customer can take advantage of that then great, doesnt happen often. lets not forget a "business" certainly takes advantage of the customer day in and day out.
and if an employee does make a major mistake, if that means getting fired, then fine, thats business.
if you went a restaurant and ordered rump steak and the waiter brought you fillet steak by mistake and you started to eat it who should pay for it ??
mistakes happen, its how we rectify them mistakes which is important imo.
I reckon that most halfway competent companies have terms and conditions that cover this
For example Wiggle says:
[i]When you place an order, you will receive an acknowledgement e-mail confirming receipt of your order. This email will only be an acknowledgement and will not constitute acceptance of your order. Wiggle retains the right to accept or reject this offer before processing the order. A contract between us for the purchase of the goods will not be formed until your payment has been approved by us, the prices have been verified, and the order has been processed and dispatched. A second email will be sent confirming these arrangements.[/i]
Whereas [url= http://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/psa-40-off-decathlon ]certain other companies[/url] say:
[i]Generation of an order confirmation e-mail means that Decathlon.co.uk has accepted your order, which will then form the sales contract between the Parties.[/i]
And then after they have sent you the confirmation email, try to wiggle out of it!
How are you/we to know the code is an error and not just a decent promotion? Do you email every e-tailer with every code saying "oh, are you sure?".
Assuming this is a spin-off from the decathlon thread, Decathlon hopefully learned some of the above lessons. If youre going to create a single-user code, make sure it is single user (CRC can manage it) and dont have in your T+Cs that a confirmation email forms a contract. As ninfan says every other e-tailer sends a series of emails from acknowledgement to confirmation and dispatch to give them a stage to (lawfully) cancel the order.
If youre talking ethics generally with mail order, I had a boxed headset tucked in with some forks I bought from Merlin. I emailed them about it assuming it was a packing error, and there was an angry punter somewhere missing a headset. They replied it was an old promotion they'd run but stopped advertising and had found a few more headsets, so it was mine to keep. Conversely I got 2 codes to stack at Start Cycles, PSA'ed it and no one else did. So I assume they didnt intend them to be stackable and fixed it. Their error, my gain, I have no moral/ethical issue with using mutliple codes if the e-tailer and their site allows me to. The headset looked like an obvious error, the codes didn't.
this'll be the most clicked on thread in stw history
I do like this forum, but the 'holier than though', look at me, I'm Mr ethical type guff is boooooorrrrrring! 😕
When I created the thread I firmly had in mind that any posts that were irksome/even almost angry(?) would be out of frustration of being let down..
business is business. at the end of the day there here to make money from us. there is no loyalty or sentimental crap towards the customer.
there's a limit to this - it's called reputational risk - if they screw some customers over and that becomes well known then they will do serious damage to their reputation and they will suffer a lose of business because of that, which might take years to get back.
In this case, or the case of the steaks, then the company might/would be best to suck up the error, which might be covered by their margins on that product anyway, and then fix the process that allowed the error to propagate out.
Or just sack the employee - lowering employee moral with all the effects that will have - and not fix the process - and suffer the same error again in the future and more problems with reputational risk.
A few years ago Oakleys customisation site went a bit wrong and was going prices about 50% off. Initially they canceled the orders, then they resistated them at no charge. Someone had obviously done the calculation of raw cost of materials version amount of publicity and goodwill this generates.
It depends if the company wants to go down the Ryanair or the John Lewis customer service model. Both ways seems to be profitable but one seems to have a glow of can do no wrong and the other gets a constant kicking.
skeetsgb - lets not forget a "business" certainly takes advantage of the customer day in and day out.
Really? Or maybe they offer a service for which they expect to make a profit enabling them to remunerate their employees and show a return on their investment. Even in barter, one party normally comes out of it better off.
I am a 'web employee', and the kind of scenario described is my worst fear. Anytime I see a mistake like this, my first thought is [i]I'm soooo glad that wasn't me.[/i] Then I grab the discount code and place my order 🙂
The recent decathlon code was obvious to me a mistake due to the wording of the code itself, so did not even try to oreder.
But if a Identical PSA thread was posted but with a code that consisted of random letters/numbers I would have been all over it.
Ten years ago I was looking to buy a new motorcycle leather jacket from a shop.
The one I liked the most was priced at £400 and more than I could afford.
They had about ten on the rack and as I thumbed through them I saw one had a fairly large half price lable on it.
Result, took it off the rack and take to the checkout.
Oh no sir that jacket is £400.
But it says half price.
No it was half price last week as part of a sale, but we must have missed that lable when we removed them after the sale finished.
But it says half price.
As I have explained.
So last week I could have bought it for £200 but today I will have to pay £400.
That's correct .
But it says half price.
I cannot help you.
OK could you call the manager please.
Manager comes out and repeats the sale assistants story of a missed tag from a previous sale event.
I then pull out my phone and explain my aunty works for the citizens advice bureau and Would just give her a call with regard to the law in such a situation.
How would you like to pay, said the manager.
I walked out with a smug grin.
the citizens advice bureau and Would just give her a call with regard to the law in such a situation.How would you like to pay, said the manager.
I walked out with a smug grin.
your aunty would have told you that [i]you[/i] didnt have a leg to stand on as a listed or labelled price is an "invitation to treat" and is not binding. If she's told you otherwise you've identified a training need.
http://www.tradingstandards.gov.uk/cgi-bin/brighton-hove/con1item.cgi?file=*ADV1011-1111.txt
The price on display, such as the price on the actual goods, the shelf edge price, the price given in an advertisement or on a website, can form part of what the law describes as 'an invitation to treat'. This means that the price given by the trader forms part of an invitation for you as a prospective buyer to make an offer to buy, which the trader is entitled to either accept or reject. You cannot insist that a trader sells anything at the marked price, whether or not the trader has made a mistake
I did not get as far as making the call, so I did not know wether I was right or not, but just goes to show neither did the manager. 😀
Maybe he thought £200 was a small price to pay, to get this little smuggins out of his store 8)
Probably , either way not bothered.
And in true stw sensationalism I can say that jacket went on to save my life, well my skin anyway .
I remember a few years ago I was browsing t'interweb looking for mobile broadband deals as I was working away from home and staying in digs, I popped onto PC Worlds website and in their sale section there was a Laptop reduced from £329 to £99, hmm I thought; so I checked it out on Currys and Dixons sites and they had them at £299.
I hit the buy button / collect in store, got the email saying the order was ready to collect so off I toddled. Not before 3 others in the office had ordered one.
We all went to the same store to pick up our bargain laptops and walked out with them under our arms, much to the dismay of the store manager and as he put it "the incompetent IT muppets at head office", he also mentioned how we were the 2nd batch of people who had been in and had them that day.
So companies mess up every once in a while, oh well
Store priceing: On the flipside Co-Operative stores are a lottery with their store shelf offers and correlation with what it'll scan at at the till.
"Sorry that promotion ended sometime ago"
So why didnt the label come off?
"It will be done"
A couple of times post-event I've been in said store and removed the sign for them.
I remember years ago my dad bought a toyota estate from a mazda dealer in Southport. The price on the screen was £6995, so father takes out the car, loves it, deal done paperwork signed.
This was on a Sunday. Monday morning the dealership manager calls him, "errrr i am afraid there is a problem with the car, "
Father..."oh right, what is it?"
Dealer..." errrr the price should have been £9995....we put the first number on wrong"......
Father....."oh dear......and...paperwork signed deal done"
In fairness to my dad he gave the dealer an extra £500, but nevertheless it was a great deal.
He loved the car too. 🙂
Thanks OP, saved £££s!
Nice one hora I'd call this one "virtuous trolling", clever...
In the hypothetical web balls up you describe I doubt anyone's head would roll actually.
Think about it, for starters the release of any promo discount code has to be a group decision/approval process so it won't just be some solo IT minion enabling 200% off every purchase over 20p or something.
Secondly if such an error were to occur you'd probably be quite wise to keep those employees involved for the simple reason that, after a sharp bollocking, they are pretty much guaranteed not to make the same cock up again.