For a brief window on Sunday July 15th, Sears.com had set its pricing on the iPad 2 at $69. For those not in the market, that’s nearly a $700 discount off the standard $744.99 price. Like many internet trends, this discount was scintillating and ephemeral. As friends told friends and so on and so forth, the haphazard pricing mistake quickly made its way through Twitter and Facebook feeds alike. Once an alarming number of shoppers snatched up iPads at a discount deeper than Barry White’s baritone, Sears.com finally took notice. As a result, they’ve cancelled all orders made at the aforementioned discount and issued a statement to shoppers:
“We want you to know that, unfortunately, today one of the Marketplace third party sellers told us that they mistakenly posted incorrect pricing information on two Apple iPad models on the Marketplace portion of the website. If you purchased either of these products recently, your order has been cancelled and your account will be credited…”
While it’s understandable that selling the iPad 2 at this price would undoubtedly cause Sears.com to lose money, it begs the larger question of their efforts on behalf of the customers that had purchased from them yesterday. In this situation, Sears.com was stealthily aided by the inherent latency in online shopping — they could cancel the shipments before the iPads ever left their warehouse shelves. Had someone walked into any one of Sears’ brick-and-mortar locations and purchased a waywardly priced iPad 2, it’s unlikely that a Sears salesperson would ring their doorbell hours later and request that the product be returned.
Clearly Sears made a mistake, but what’s unclear is how it should be rectified. Issuing an apology statement is not enough, but beyond that, the best course of action is tough to determine. What do you think Sears.com should have done? Honor the original purchase price? Renege on the sale but offer a conciliatory product or discount in exchange? Give us your feedback!
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I feel Sears has no responsibility to honor the low price on the iPad’s that these customers thought they were going to basically steal. I think that these customers that attempted to buy this product for the stated price knew it was too good to be true and shouldn’t be all that distraught when finding out that it was, indeed too good to be true. At the very most, Sears should give the customers the opportunity to buy the product at a little bit of a discount by either a % off or offer the customers a gift card to use towards their next purchase.
Sears should hire someone to enter the correct data, then hire someone to proofread the data that the first person entered and when they screwed up should have docked their pay the difference after selling the iPads at the “advertised” price.