Zappos.com's little sister loses $1.6m in pricing cockup
Handbags at dawn going, going, gone for $49.95 or less
Posted in Management, 24th May 2010 12:11 GMT
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A sister website of online shoe retailer Zappos.com lost $1.6m on Friday morning when a pricing engine blunder mistakenly switched some of the company's product line to being available for no more than $49.95 a pop.
Over the weekend 6pm.com coughed to the embarrassing technical glitch, in which it confessed that customers had benefited to the tune of more than one and a half million dollars.
6pm.com is aimed at brand junkies who want to get their retail fix while not having to pay a premium for the product. The US site is known for offering steep discounts to customers.
"The mistake started at midnight and went until around 6:00am pst. When we figured out the mistake was happening, we had to shut down the site for a bit until we got the pricing problem fixed," wrote Zappos brand and biz development boss Aaron Magness in a blog post.
"While we’re sure this was a great deal for customers, it was inadvertent, and we took a big loss (over $1.6 million - ouch) selling so many items so far under cost."
Magness said the company would "honour all purchases" during 6pm.com's "mess up". He apologised to customers and urged them to "continue to Shop. Save. Smile. at 6pm.com."
We at Vulture Central are quite certain punters will indeed do all of the above, especially if 6pm.com's pricing engine goes haywire again.
In July last year, online retail mammoth Amazon bought Zappos for $49.95 $850m. ®
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COMMENTS
Good for them
Honouring the agreement, when most others have tried to wheedle out of it.
That's one of the reasons Zappos are doing well, whilst Dixons are dying on their asses.
thumbup
honest mistake, customers benfited and they are honoring it. Just from this alone im now going to use these guys to shop. Not for the fact i may get a bargain, but for the fact that when they screw up they dont shaft their customers.
Watch and learn dell ( btw you still owe me that 2.4ghz for 50 quid from 2003!)
No, but....
keeping your consumer base happy and confident is.
How much is a bag anyway?
How much does a bag cost? If they sold them at $49 apiece, and still lost $1.5million, they must be some hellaciously costly bags.
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