Wednesday, December 22, 2010

A Little Discrepancy

Ahh, the plot thickens...
Received an e-mail from Anthropologie Community Manager apologizing for the situation with the canceled order (see my last post). She said the items were not recalled as I was told, but that there was an internal error. What does that mean exactly? We shall see.
Went on Anthropologie website, and lo and behold, both the Exbury Gardens Cardigan and the Winter Solstice Wrap are back in the sale section. All sizes seem to be in stock. However, if you actually ordered either of these sweaters yesterday and had your order canceled like I did, you might want to go back to your original order confirmation e-mail and compare the prices listed there with the current prices on the website. See the discrepancy?

Here is a clipping from my e-mail.

If you can't read the tiny print, after the 25% discount, I paid $52.46 for the Exbury Cardigan and $59.96 for the Winter Solstice Wrap.
Currently, the prices on the website are $79.95 for the Exbury Cardigan, which would make it
$59.96 after the discount, and $99.95 for the Solstice Wrap, which would make it $74.96. It's pretty sleazy of Anthropologie, to cancel orders that had already been placed because they messed up and under-priced (as if that can happen with Anthropologie) the items and then to bring back the very same items next day at a higher price. Can they really get away with this? What should have happened, is that they should have swallowed their own mistake and honored the listed prices for the orders that were already placed.
It seems that this switcheroo situation happened with quite a few on-line items, leaving a lot of loyal customers very disappointed. Prices were also marked higher in stores than yesterday on-line (read this post by Anthroholic). Anthro quickly fixed this by cancelling yesterday's orders, pulling the items off the site, and bringing them back today at a higher price. This is appalling and quite possibly illegal. On top of all that, plenty of customers were lied to by customer service. And here we were, being all excited about the bone Anthropologie was throwing us with the "extra" discount. As one of my husband's students said in regards to holiday sales, "Prices that are usually double are now half off".
Will Anthropologie make it up to their customers for this behavior, or will the loyal ranks of Anthropologie addicts be thinning out?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It happened to me too. I would complain to CS and keep complaining until you get the original sale price. I sent a long email to CS today notifying them that they were really blowing it with their loyal customers. We were on to their game, and we didn't like it!

Anonymous said...

As a long time Anthro customer it's very disappointing especially on top of it we were lied to by CS. I'm not giving Anthro a pass for that behavior. I don't think they will make it up to their customers I don't believe they think they have to do that, Anthro customers are already addicted to the stores.

Kristen said...

this happened to me too. did you ever get CS to send you the items you ordered at the original price? I would like to try with mine, but don't want to waste time.

Anonymous said...

yup this happened to me also. i ended up not buying the sweaters i wanted with the jacked up price. also one of the sweaters i did end up ordering did not get the 25% discount. i will have to call CS and have them correct that as well! anthro is totally getting on my nerves.

Anonymous said...

I agree the price change is very strange. However, I must be one of the few customers who did NOT have my order cancelled. I placed an order around 8 am on Tuesday morning for a total of 5 items (4 sweaters and the Hidden Spaces Jacket), and all the items have been shipped (should arrive today) and were charged at the first sale price. One of the items I ordered was the Exbury Gardens Cardigan and it was billed at $52.46. I'm really glad they filled my order and that I got the lower sale prices, but it is still disturbing to me that so many loyal customers did not have a good experience.

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