To answer directly, I'd be very unhappy and disappointed, especially
if as a concientous and bargain hunting shopper, I'd found a good deal
and either my ethics or intelligence were called into question by the
vendor.
I understand what Mark is saying, yet I agree with P.J.
Does not the seller, a very large retailer at that, have some
responsibility? If I walked into a Best Buy and found a mis-marked
item I would insist it be sold to me for the marked price and I'd take
it up the chain to Store Manager, and then to regional offices, if
necessary. Quite frequently employers are at fault because they have
either not hired competent people or have not trained them properly.
They should bear that cost as a consequence.
Putting myself in the seller's shoes:
As an *individual*, if I accidentally sold my one and only personal
K-7 on a 'Buy it Now' basis, at half of the intended-price, which is
what this essentially is, I would probably contact the buyer and let
them know that the auction was in error, and I couldn't sell my K-7
for half of it's value. I don't even know eBay's policies in this
regard, but I'd hope the buyer would understand. I've purchased an
item from Ebay where the seller miscalculated the shipping and
essentially sold me the item for about 1/3 of what was intended. She
contacted me and I suggested that I split the difference in shipping
with her and she agreed that was fair and we both took a hit.
As a *corporate vendor* with thousands of customers and millions of
items sold, with the money not coming out my own personal pocket, I'd
more than likely considerate it a cost of doing business, sell the
item as advertised, fix my database behind the web page, flog the
person responsible for the bad data, and know that I made the customer
happy by honoring the sales agreement. I'd not view it as much a loss
of revenue, as I would an investment in goodwill and customer
relations. Each and every happy customer is one that will likely
bring repeat business or additional business through word of mouth.
If for whatever reason that was not possible, I'd still try and make a
goodwill gesture. In this case as the corporate vendor selling the
speakers, I might offer to send the second speaker if the buyer paid
the shipping, or sell the speaker at my cost with no markup,
essentially acknowledging my mistake and taking a meaningful measure
of responsibility, yet still managing to mitigate the disappointment.
We're only talking about $250 here. For a high volume retailer like
B&H to engage in such penny ante behavior over 1) such a small amount
and 2) a situation at which they were at fault... well that's why I
shake my head and find this onerous and preosterous.
Tom C.
On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 3:46 PM, P. J. Alling <webstertwenty...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It's not catching it before you got the camera, it's:
>
> 1.) You see the unbelievable price for the K-7 and you hit buy,
>
> 2.) You give them your credit card number,
>
> 3.) They debit your credit card,
>
> 4.) They mail you a link to an online receipt that shows you bought a K-7.
>
> Now comes conjecture since they probably wouldn't send you 1/2 of a K-7.
>
> 5.) Your purchase is delivered and you discover they shipped you a K-x
> because that's what the amount of money you authorized pays for.
>
> 6..) Whey you contact them to complain, they then blame you because you
> should have known that a K-7 just wouldn't be sold for such a low price.
>
> That's the equivelent to what B&H did.
>
>
>
> On 2/1/2010 2:41 PM, Mark Roberts wrote:
>>
>> Here's a thought experiment:
>>
>> What would you do if you went to the B&H web site right now and saw a
>> Pentax K7 listed for $514.00?
>>
>> If I were in the market for a K7 I might try to get it for that price.
>> In fact, if the Sony A850 showed up on B&H for $1000 I'd hit the "Buy"
>> button so fast there'd be skid marks on the mouse pad. But if they
>> caught it before I got the camera I'd just shrug my shoulders and
>> think "Damn, they caught that one..." I certainly wouldn't throw a
>> wobbler over it.
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> {\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0\deflang1033{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0
> Courier New;}}
> \viewkind4\uc1\pard\f0\fs20 I've just upgraded to Thunderbird 3.0 and the
> interface subtly weird.\par
> }
>
>
> --
> PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List
> PDML@pdml.net
> http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
> to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and
> follow the directions.
>
--
PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List
PDML@pdml.net
http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow
the directions.
