A Shopping Rant

I was a little peeved by an experience I had this morning that I had to rant about it here - hope you don't mind.

I was looking for an item for Bear for Christmas and found what I was looking for on two websites. The item I was in search of was similar but slightly different between the two websites I narrowed my search to. One website had a ticker at the top that stated 'holiday special, free shipping, free gift wrap and additional 10% discount on orders applied at checkout' - so after heming and hawing between the two, I chose the website that had the additional 10% discount to save a few bucks, although I was drawn to the other item on the other website. Sometimes, your gut feeling alone should be worth following, right? Well this is where it went downhill for me.

So I went through the checkout for the product and I never get the additional discount. I shrugged and thought maybe there was a glitch or something, so I sent an email to their customer service to see when/how I can get the additional 10% discount.

This morning, I get an email from the owner of the website stating that the discount only applied to orders over $100 and that my purchase did not qualify. I reacted w/ a 'WTF???' because I knew what I read, (I'm pretty OCD when it comes to reading terms and conditions for discounts and there wasn't a reference about the amount you had to purchase to obtain this discount). So I went to the website again and read the ticker. It said the same thing it said the day I made my purchase w/ no reference to an amount to purchase to qualify.

So I sent an email, this time more as a comment from a customer standpoint, and explained it would have been nice to have the ticker indicate the amount you had to purchase to qualify for the additional discount. It wasn't a complaint necessarily, I just thought maybe it was an oversight or something and at this point I wasn't actually expecting to get the additional 10% discount and was going to go through w/ my purchase anyway.

This is where it got ugly for me. Shortly after I sent that email, I get another reply back from the owner staying "The ticker does say that you need to purchase over $100." WTF??? So I go to the website yet again and all of a sudden, miracle of miracles, the wording that the owner claimed had been on the ticker all along was suddenly showing where it had not just a short while ago. This sent me over the edge. How freaking insulting is that??? It's one thing to send an email stating that they fixed the error and thank you for catching that, but I'm expected to believe that that wordage was there all along when I know for a fact what I had read several times before I even made my purchase? I was SO insulted. I wasn't expecting the additional 10% discount necessarily, but I wasn't expecting some sleazy changeup like that either. At this point I was really angry and ended up cancelling my order with that company and buying from the other company. I didn't even bother sending another email to make a complaint - I was done with this company and just wanted my money back.

The funny thing is, the company I initially chose not to purchase from just so happened to send an email newsletter this morning with a 20% discount code for holiday savings, so the one I really wanted to get was even cheaper than the cheap-o website. Go figure, eh?

So folks, this goes to show that it's not always about the price. And for Mr. Sleazo Cheapo - there's something called principle. I would've kept my purchase w/ you if you didn't stoop so low to do what you did. Karma's a biatch and shame on you.

End of rant, thanks for listening :)