Website Checkout Glitches: Two Very Different Corporate Responses

Freshly Exhumed writes "On the morning of December 26th, 2013, an error on the website of Delta Air Lines' produced impossibly low fare discounts of as much as 90% for about 2 hours before the problem was corrected. Delta, to their PR benefit, have swallowed the losses, and the lucky customers have shared their delight via social media. Unfortunately for many buyers of goods from The Brick furniture retailer, no such consumer warmth is forthcoming. The Brick's website checkout had awarded them an additional 50% off, over and above all other costs, but the official corporate response has been to demand the money be returned. Affected customers are now lashing The Brick with social media opprobrium and drawing direct comparisons with Delta's response. So, given that these are not small, mom-and-pop companies, have we reached a point at which online retailers are expected to just swallow such costs for PR purposes, as part of doing web business?"

Comments

Re:Same rules apply

[msauve]

In your haste to comment early, it seems you didn't read the article. They offered items at a discount - but when customers checked out, they were given a 50% discount beyond what had been advertised/offered. They never advertised that additional 50%, never offered it, never did anything which would make a customer expect it. It was an error, and came as a surprise to both the seller and buyer.

This differs from the Delta case, where the low prices were offered before the buyer accepted the offer and went through checkout.

Your comparison fails, because they were (and still are) willing to honor the advertised prices. But, there are people who were charged less than they expected who are complaining that it's somehow unfair for the business to correct this obvious error. Those same people would no doubt be screaming for relief if they didn't get the offered discount when they got to the checkout - "fair" apparently only works in one direction.