The Ol' Bait and Switch
Anyone else getting a lot of e-mails lately from merchants determined to lure you into their stores or onto their websites for BIG BIG HOLIDAY SAVINGS!!!! ? If you’re like me, you may find yourself confronted with an annual greeting from an obscure store you once did business with five years ago. Nobody wants to be inundated with come-ons, of course, but chances are if I haven’t bought anything from you since 2002, I’m not going to suddenly realize a pressing need for your wares.
While I now count on that experience as a bemusing bit of Yuletide tradition, however, there’s another one that I don’t particularly care for: cashing in on an offer, only to immediately be presented with an even better deal once the previous sale has been completed … and finding that I can’t apply the better deal to my just-completed purchase.
You’ve heard of Best Practices. If 1to1 ever starts a “Worst Practices” section, this has got to be near the top of the list.
Such a thing happened to me over the weekend. I’m a member of BMG Music Service, the online “club,” and before you start wondering why anyone in their right mind is paying full retail price for CDs in 2007, let me explain that I have a long history of covering the music industry, with writing album and concert reviews a part of that. (I’ve also done some editorial work for BMG, enthusing about how terrific your Featured Monthly Selection is. Anytime you need to know why Daft Punk Alive 2007 completely shreds Daft Punk Alive 1997, give me a ring.) As such, it's behooved me to know how things like record clubs work from the inside.
Anyway, I’m still treated like any other shmoe by BMG's automated system, meaning that when I was offered “Unlimited $5.99 CDs!” as well as “FREE SHIPPING & HANDLING when you order 5 or more CDs!” (exclamation points are an effective marketing tool, did you know that?), I figured I could quickly cross some folks off my ever-expanding Christmas gift list and move on with my life.
No sooner had I completed my purchase, however, than I received another e-mail: “Holiday Sale - 70% Off CDs!” That meant an additional 30 cents off each CD, in my case – not a huge amount, perhaps, but every little bit counts, yes?
Not so fast, Super Shopper! Try as I might, I could not get around the 70% offer’s clause noting that, “Promotion code discounts … do not apply to previously placed orders.” Not even those orders that had been placed 10 minutes before.
Well, ho ho ho to you, BMG Music Service. Though I’ll never fully understand how you can get away with charging almost $3 per disc for shipping and handling, that doesn’t bother me nearly as much as being the victim of what can only be described as a twist on the age-old bait and switch technique.
And at this time of the year, too. No wonder Chico Marx said there ain’t no Sanity Clause.
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