Target.com does not honor their advertised price
I was determined last week to hold off on any Black Friday purchases but thanks to Aaron (swoon) I ended up buying The Lord of the Rings Blu-ray box set from Target.com. Or so I thought…
It was an incredible deal at $7.99 + S\H + tax, especially as it was not advertised as a Black Friday deal. There were no disclaimers of limited quantity available or any other signs of a bait-and-switch style promotion. I purchased the box set and within minutes received my confirmation e-mail.
On Saturday I received the below e-mail concerning my order basically stating Target needed my approval to complete the order. I very much dislike when companies require approval for a purchase I already made and gave explicit approval to purchase by completing my purchase. What is the point of ordering something if you need to further approve that order a second time? I appreciate when I get an reminder e-mail when orders are delayed. This gives me the oppurtunity to cancel but why do I need to give approval for an order I made less than three days before? It is a scam. I will frequently ignore update e-mails on my orders but I don’t order from Target.com often (or again) so I decided to read it.
Thank you for shopping at Target.com.
We wanted to let you know that there is an unexpected delay with one or more items in
the order you placed on November 24 2010(Order# 6[]).
This may prevent us from delivering some items for December 24.
Please accept our apologies for this delay.Please approve this delay so that we can continue processing your order.
(Note that if we haven’t received your approval by December 27 2010,
we’ll still try to obtain and ship the item(s) before that date.)
To do so, visit the following Order Update page in My Account:[link removed]
**Important note for Guest Checkout users: If your order was placed without creating
an account, your approval of the delay is not required. We’ll automatically keep your
order open unless you contact us to cancel the order. However, we may need to cancel
the order if we have subsequent delays with shipping and availability. If this happens,
we’ll notify you by e-mail. You can also view your order details and tracking
information, using the link above.**Order status can change quickly, and it is possible that your order may
even be delivered between the time we send this message and the time that you
read it. When items in your order are shipped, you will receive an
e-mail confirming the date, contents, and method of your shipment.Keep in mind that if your order arrives too late, you can refuse delivery or
return it to us for a refund. For instructions on returning an item, please visit
our Returns Center (http://www.target.com/returns).If clicking the above link doesn’t work, you can copy and paste the
link into your browser’s address window, or retype it there.If you used an account to place your order, you can also access this
Order Update page by clicking the My Account button in the upper-right
corner of any page at Target.com. Once there, you can make changes
to unshipped orders, cancel unshipped items, track shipped packages,
modify your account settings, and do much more.We understand this is a disappointment and sincerely apologize for the delay and inconvenience.
We wanted to let you know about this as soon as possible, in case you need to make other plans.Thanks for shopping at Target.com. We hope you’ll visit us again soon.
Sincerely,
Online Guest Services
Target.com
www.target.com
Today, 11/29, I get the below follow up e-mail from Target.com.
Hello from Target.com,
Unfortunately, due to the high demand for the following item it is no longer available from any of our sources.
– The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy (6 Discs) (Blu-ray)
Please note that this item was listed in our 2-Day Sale ad as “quantities limited; no rain checks.” We have cancelled this item from your order and can’t say for sure when it might be back in stock. If you are still interested in purchasing the item, which would be at the regular price, please check back every once in a while to see if it’s available. To view the current status and the costs associated with your order, please visit My Account (http://www.target.com/my-account).
Because you only pay for items when we ship them to you, your credit card has not been charged for this item.
Thank you for being a valued Guest. We hope you visit us again.
Sincerely,
Guest Service Department
Target.com
http://www.target.comPlease note: This e-mail was sent from a notification-only address that cannot accept incoming e-mail. Please do not reply to this message. If you have further questions, please visit our online Help department.
Utter crap. I understand companies, even companies as large as Target make mistakes but don’t lie about it. Make some attempt to make amends and honor the price. I called Target.com customer service twice today. The customer service agent blatantly told me they made a mistake and he could not do anything about it. When I asked to speak with a manager he hung up on me. The second customer service agent told me they were out of stock so they cancelled my order. Does that sound like normal business practices to you?
Like I said, I know companies make mistakes, so I don’t expect anything out of this but what are your thoughts? Should companies honor their advertised priced when they make mistakes? I believe large companies such as Target should honor the price.
Yeah, way to not take care of
Yeah, way to not take care of customers. I’ve had Fry’s lie to me before…to my face…when will they learn this type of service doesn’t hurt them.
On the sidenote, i thought that deal was too good to be true. I just don’t understand why companies feel they have to lie? It makes them feel better? Or maybe they think their customers are completely stupid?
Ironically enough, i had an almost identical situation at Frys.com this weekend. Those of you following my Black Friday Deals post might have seen my late nite post about the Harmony 1100 remote control for $120-80MIR. This was clearly a price mistake, since their one-day saturday ad showed that the remote was supposed to be $120 AFTER the $80 MIR, not before. So I (and everyone over at Slickdeals who caught the mistake) was fully prepared for them to cancel the order. It was clearly a price mistake. YET….here’s the response from Fry’s:
So my problem is two-fold with Fry’s:
1. They’re claiming that the issue with my order was positively not my price, but just that they were out of stock
2. I didn’t get this message until SUNDAY. Since the remote was on a saturday-only deal with Fry’s, i’m SOL
Does fry’s care? Doubtful. Just like Target clearly won’t care. The best way to teach these companies a lesson, is to simply stop shopping with them. I’ve had price mistakes with Amazon and Newegg in the past few years. Sometimes they honor it, sometimes they don’t…either way, they’re always honest about it.
That’s why you’ll never see an affiliate Fry’s banner ad on this website 😉
I got the same email last
I got the same email last night. Total Bollucks
Target.com’s practice here is
Target.com’s practice here is extremely unprofessional. I understand these companies do make mistakes and have the right not to honor the mistake, but what happened here was a ridiculous stunt to cover things up.
If they had even took some reasonable steps such as to offer a decent discount on a future purchase, I might still be interested in doing business with them in the future. In the end, it shows just how the organization is not focused on building their brand through customer satisfaction.
Today, they are running a special on Blu’s where I would normally be interested, but I’ve decided not to give them my future business over this. I’ll buy from some other reliable retailer such as Amazon instead.
swoon wrote:Today, they are
[quote=swoon]
Today, they are running a special on Blu’s where I would normally be interested, but I’ve decided not to give them my future business over this. I’ll buy from some other reliable retailer such as Amazon instead.
[/quote]
And if you do…make sure you use the link on the right side! 😉
*ducks*
Well, if you didn’t say it, I
Well, if you didn’t say it, I was going to. 😉
Regarding Target, though, I agree with Mikinho that this is utter crap. Every company out there makes mistakes and we all understand that. But, to cover it up with some garbage like this is ridiculous. Perhaps the right course of action is the same I’ve taken with my contempt for Walmart (and Sam’s Club) and that’s banishing them from our shopping locations.
It’s crazy that their online
It’s crazy that their online ordering/inventory system even allows this sort of thing to happen.
The Fry’s story should be
The Fry’s story should be your headline considering it is “The Case of The Missing Remote”
Also check this site that is trying to hold Fry’s accountable:
http://www.fatwallet.com/redirect/bounce.php?afsrc=1&mid=15423401&url=http://www.groubal.com/frys-electronics-canceled-tv-orders-offer-no-compensation/
You can also find a ton of comments on this on this thread at fatwallet.com here:
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/expired-deals/1048643/m15423401#m15423401
Ganjagadget wrote:The Fry’s
[quote=Ganjagadget]The Fry’s story should be your headline considering it is “The Case of The Missing Remote” Also check this site that is trying to hold Fry’s accountable: http://www.fatwallet.com/redirect/bounce.php?afsrc=1&mid=15423401&url=http://www.groubal.com/frys-electronics-canceled-tv-orders-offer-no-compensation/ You can also find a ton of comments on this on this thread at fatwallet.com here: http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/expired-deals/1048643/m15423401#m15423401%5B/quote%5D
Wow. I love the internet. But ya know, thank god for it. Fry’s often does some shady stuff…it’s about time they’re held accountable for it.
Ganjagadget wrote:
The Fry’s
[quote=Ganjagadget]The Fry’s story should be your headline considering it is “The Case of The Missing Remote” [/quote]
Good one
It’s the lying that I find
It’s the lying that I find unprofessional. Clearly, this was a mistake. Depending on how many were sold, i can understand them not honoring the price. My guess is this was meant to be 79.99 not 7.99. Thats a huge difference. You call it an “incredible deal.” That is an understatement. You must have known at the time of your order that this was a mistake. I dont really think they should have to honor it, but they should be honest that it was a mistake and perhaps offer a more reasonalbe discounted price to those who thought they got this “steal.” If they only sold 100 or so, then it might make good business sense for them to just honor the incorrect price, but my guess is that much more than that were sold.
Nmarconi wrote:It’s the lying
[quote=Nmarconi]
It’s the lying that I find unprofessional. Clearly, this was a mistake. Depending on how many were sold, i can understand them not honoring the price. My guess is this was meant to be 79.99 not 7.99. Thats a huge difference. You call it an “incredible deal.” That is an understatement. You must have known at the time of your order that this was a mistake. I dont really think they should have to honor it, but they should be honest that it was a mistake and perhaps offer a more reasonalbe discounted price to those who thought they got this “steal.” If they only sold 100 or so, then it might make good business sense for them to just honor the incorrect price, but my guess is that much more than that were sold.
[/quote]
It was clearly meant to be $7.99 as nobody would buy this set for 10x that price especially considering the EE are coming very soon.
It seems pretty clear that the first mistake was that Target only meant to sell a limited number of these for that price in-store (which they did) and not online. I think everyone could accept that mistake if Target had only been upfront about it after the mistake was made.
As of this morning, according to various threads, not a single copy of this has been reported shipped so it really does seem that Target has lied to its customers to somehow try to save face for the original mistake.
Ah, i didnt realize they were
Ah, i didnt realize they were selling a limited number in the stores at that price. Yeah, then i would expect them to honor the price. It seems rediculously cheap to me for a 6 disc bluray set (It’s $85 on amazon).