Saw this news the other day:
6pm.com is where brandaholics go for their guilt free daily fix of the brands they crave. Every day, the site highlights discounts on products ranging up to 70% off. Well, this morning, we made a big mistake in our pricing engine that capped everything on the site at $49.95. The mistake started at midnight and went until around 6:00am pst. When we figured out the mistake was happening, we had to shut down the site for a bit until we got the pricing problem fixed.
While we’re sure this was a great deal for customers, it was inadvertent, and we took a big loss (over $1.6 million - ouch) selling so many items so far under cost. However, it was our mistake. We will be honoring all purchases that took place on 6pm.com during our mess up.
Via Zappos' blog. Very interesting development there at 6pm.com/Zappos. They
- Admit that there's a pricing error and it's their fault
- With full explanation on what actually happened (see the notes near the end of the blog post)
- Actually honour the sales at big amount of loss.
Another name-less computer manufacturer who also occasionally made pricing mistakes but seldom honour the sales should probably take notice.
Very interesting. This is precisely the reason why name-less computer manufacturer doesn't honour their pricing mistakes. With the frequency they occur it would result in many lost millions.
Personally, I don't think a company should have to honour a pricing mistake in circumstances like this, and I don't see why people get so upset when they fail to get below-cost wares at the manufacturer's expense.
We'll see how this plays out for Zappos.