How to go from a pricing error to lost customers

By Jacob Allred | Published: November 11, 2011

JCPenney.com recently had an amazing deal on Melissa & Doug block sets. These sets are regularly around $50, but with this deal you could get 2 sets for around $24. I immediately placed an order. One set for my baby, and one set as a gift.

Sadly, my order arrived yesterday with just one set in it. I waited for an email letting me know where the other set was, but none ever came. Today I got an email saying that my order was complete. Odd, considering I ordered 2 sets but got only 1.

Knowing that mistakes occasionally happen, I go to JCPenney.com, hit up their contact page, and see that they advertise 30 second response times on their CS toll-free number. Great!

I call them up, wait on hold for 10 minutes (hmm.. seems a little longer than 30 seconds..) and eventually get a guy that decides to blatantly lie to me. Instead of telling me the truth (that it was a pricing mistake and they were only honoring one set per person), he decided to tell me that it was UPS / “the factory’s” fault that I only got one set, and that they were no longer available (despite showing “in stock” at a higher price on the website). I was given a 50% refund on my order. Keep in mind I wouldn’t have gotten refunded for the unshipped item if I didn’t waste 25 minutes on the phone calling them. They would have happily and knowingly stolen my money.

So I started out thrilled that JCP had a great deal that would help with my Christmas shopping, and now I’m so upset with them that I’m not likely to ever shop there again (with the exception of amazingly good deals that probably lose them money anyway).

So what went wrong? How did they go from a simple and common pricing mistake to losing a customer for life?

  1. First, they had a pricing mistake. It happens. Some companies choose to honor pricing mistakes (yay!), and some choose to cancel orders before they ship (oh well). Shipping half an order really isn’t acceptable. You either ship it all or you cancel it all.
  2. Then they didn’t notify customers that their orders weren’t going to be fulfilled.
  3. To make it even worse, they didn’t refund customers for the parts of their orders that weren’t shipped without requiring a lengthy phone call. They knew they only shipped me part of my order, but they were going to keep my money and pretend that they shipped the full order.
  4. They told some customers the truth — that they weren’t going to honor the price even though the item was in stock — and those customers posted about their experiences on the internet. Telling customers the truth is a good thing. The problem is…
  5.  They told some customers a lie — that the item was no longer available and that their system claims both sets were shipped — after wasting 25 minutes of their time on the phone.

So what should they have done? In my opinion they should have honored the pricing mistake and shipped the units at the agreed upon price. They could have put the loss in the advertising budget, because you know JCP got a lot of positive exposure from this.

Alternatively, they could have cancelled all the orders before they shipped, and reversed any credit card charges that had already gone through. This would have been disappointing, but wouldn’t have hurt their reputation in any way (people anticipate great deals getting cancelled before they ship).

Posted in Rants | Comments closed

Replacing the hinges on my Lenovo IdeaPad Y530

By Jacob Allred | Published: November 10, 2011

There I was, minding my own business, doing something uber productive (like stumbling or something), when suddenly the screen on my laptop went *smack!* against my legs. In other words, the screen decided it was tired of being told where to be and it was going to just flop around wherever gravity would take it.

Needless to say, it isn’t easy to use a laptop screen if it doesn’t stay up on its own. So I ran to my good friend eBay and found some replacement hinges for $7.40 shipped.

Next, I found this awesome post on replacing the hinges on a Y530 (or Y510). An hour or so later, I have brand new hinges in my laptop and am happily aimlessly browsing the internet. Seriously though it took a lot of effort. Not the easiest laptop repair I’ve ever done. It didn’t help that my replacement hinges were bent (insufficient packaging).

Anyways, I always feel a sense of accomplishment when I manage to beat planned obsolescence. I’ve had this laptop a couple of years, and I could easily have just bought a new one, but for $7.40 and a little effort I’ve saved my laptop from the landfill and my bank account from a hefty transaction.

Posted in DIY | Comments closed

Phone charger caddy thing

By Jacob Allred | Published: November 2, 2011

A few months ago my wife and I got a bad case of insomnia, so we decided to create a cell phone charger caddy thing. Basically it is a little phone holder that sits on your phone charger plug, so you don’t have to set your phone on the floor.

We used a piece of cardboard from the back of a pad of paper to give it some strength, and created a loop to hold the phone. Some designs use a pocket, but we decided a loop would allow it to hold my phone, my wife’s phone, or a friend’s phone, without having to worry too much about how big the phone is.

We also found that phones are heavy and the plug didn’t hold the whole thing up too well, so we added a small piece of velcro to the pack to attach it directly to the outlet.

Anyways, it was fun to make, looks great, and lets us charge our phones in the living room without taking up any extra space.

Posted in DIY | Comments closed

2011 Goal Update (October)

By Jacob Allred | Published: November 1, 2011

This is my tenth monthly report on how I’m doing with my goals for 2011:

  • Read the Book of Mormon again. I’ve abandoned this goal because I’ve started taking a Book of Mormon class.
  • Earn as much from my side business as I was earning from my day job. October was another awesome month. Earnings are way up, and I’ve exceeded my October and November and December goals, which means I’ve met this goal! I’m now earning as much from my side business (which is now my only source of income) as I was earning from my day job before I resigned back in July. I’ve increased my home business income by over 30% since July and I’m very excited to take some time next year to branch out into new revenue streams.
  • Build a dining room table. Build a piano keyboard desk. Build something. Still nothing and I’m running out of time.
  • Launch twelve new websites. I’ve been wanting a recipe site for quite awhile now. I started a small recipe blog called Recipe Kabob. Still needs work (it will always need work) but I’m happy with the progress I’ve made.

I’ve also been working on a few goals that I didn’t originally blog about:

  • Start an email newsletter. I don’t think this is going to happen.
  • Create a game for mobile phones. I’d like to play around with making a game using HTML 5, canvas, JS, etc. Should be fun.

Goals I’ve accomplished this year:

  • Go back to college. I’ve enrolled in a distance learning program with BYU-Idaho.
  • Max out my 401k and Roth IRA contributions. The 401k and Roth IRAs are maxed out. Yay!
  • Quit my day job. I’m basically retired. I play with my daughter, work on hobbies, and sleep all day. Its a pretty good life.
  • Become a dad. I’m a dad! Yay! My daughter Anna was born in late May.
  • Publish my first book. I’ve published my first book (paperback, Kindle, and Nook). Took me a couple years, and I already found 2 typos (grr!) fixed the typos, but at least it is finally in print.
  • Paid my taxes. I make money from a lot of places which makes my taxes really complicated, so getting this finished was awesome. I also started paying quarterly taxes because my self-employed income has gotten pretty high. It is uber painful to write a big check every couple months to the IRS, but oh well, that is the cost of making money..
  • Get out of debt. We’ve paid off the last of Becca’s student loans which means we are now debt free! Yay!
Posted in Goals | Comments closed

Boo-ing Your Neighbors

By Jacob Allred | Published: November 1, 2011

For Family Home Evening on 10/3 my family decided to “boo” a few friends. I don’t know how popular this is where you live, but where I grew up in Folsom, CA, this is the thing to do in October. Pretty much everyone I knew would get boo-ed by Halloween.

The premise is pretty simple: put together two small baskets of Halloween novelties and treats, include a sheet with instructions and a paper to put up in your window or on your door, then doorbell ditch. The recipients are then expected to repeat the procedure with two people who haven’t been boo-ed yet.

Someone has put together a very clean and nice looking site called You’ve Been Booed that provides the printouts needed for this activity. Or you could make your own.

Anyways, we had a lot of fun doing this! Becca did the first house and came back to the car with her heart pounding. She said she had never doorbell ditched before, so it was quite a rush for her. I had a little more experience, but it took several rings and some knocking before the door was opened for me, so I was a little tense, too.

Posted in DIY | Comments closed