6pm.com/Zappos Honours Pricing Error and Lost $1.6 Million

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.

Comments

  • 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.

  • +1

    Good thing for people lucky enough to snap something up for below cost. But I don't think it'd be a good thing for consumers in general if companies honoured extreme price mistakes, as that would increase the cost of doing business, and guess who ultimately pays for that.

    Seems 6pm.com has received quite a lot of publicity out of the apparent cock-up. Wonder how much that's worth.

  • I never knew about them till now!

    I bet there will be hundreds, perhaps thousands of people signing up in the hope that they make the same mistake again.

  • The publicity would probably be cheaper than $1.6 million even if you do lots of advertisement. 6pm.com is operated by Zappos, which Amazon acquired for $850 million mid last year so they are definitely not small fry. Maybe just not as popular here in Australia.

    However I do not think people sign up just to wait for the pricing error again. It is more to do with good faith. Yes I agree that Dell does not need to pay for their pricing mistake — nor is 6pm/Zappos. However because of their prior act of good faith, I am now more likely to shop there.

  • +1
  • Zappos are a massive company that was built on customer service. This is the type of thing they are famous for.

    Ironically they used to be known as the Amazon of shoes

  • Very dignified of them to honour their mistakes and take responsibility.

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