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When 40%-Off Your Total Purchase Becomes 0.3%-Off
tinjaw:
Posted this on my personal blog today. I'm interested in your comments. Either here or on my blog.
When 40%-Off Your Total Purchase Becomes 0.3%-Off
Posted by Chaim in Uncategorized
I received a “Come Back. We Miss You.” discount coupon from a major technical book publisher. They said that I could get 40% off my total purchase. Great, I thought. They wanted to incent me to buy some books (IOW spend some money with them) that I wouldn’t otherwise have done without the discount coupon. This would have worked, but didn’t.
As many programmers I have two list of books. One is the list of books I want/need. I purchase these books (yes, often with discounts) because I am willing to part with my cash for them. Then there is the second list of books; books that I might like to get, but aren’t will it part with money for because there are other things that would give me better value for my money. However, I can be persuaded to purchase the items on the second list if I get a deeper-than-normal discount. I thought I has received an offer of the latter type. Turns out I was wrong.
Here’s the deal. This publisher sells print and ebook versions of their titles. If you purchase both at the same time, you get a significant discount on the ebook. For example, $44.99 for print, $35.99 for ebook, or buy the $44.99 print version and for $4.50 more, you can get the ebook. Basically add 10% to get the ebook bundled. I put 4 print+ebook bundles in my shopping cart. That totaled $159.46. I expected to be able to use my 40% coupon and get that for $95.68. That’s a great price and would push me to purchase close to $100 worth of merchandise from this vendor that I wouldn’t have otherwise spent.
But that is not the case. Why? When I added the discount code they un-bundled the ebook from the print book. This meant that I got 40% off the non-bundled (i.e. $44.99 + $35.99) price instead of the bundled price ($49.49). This meant that instead of $95.68 my cost would be $158.95. Significantly higher and only 0.3% discount.
I didn’t make the purchase and they lost $95.68 that I was ready to give them.
Am I being greedy? I’d like to hear your thoughts?
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Stoic Joker:
Coupons frequently have something to the effect of "Not valid in combination with any other offers" in extremely fine print on them somewhere. Which is understandable (kinda) to a point. but, I wouldn't call it greedy on your part, because I'd take the same shot hoping it would work.
Carol Haynes:
I suspect it was a bug in their cart system that couldn't cope. Have you tried contacting them?
tinjaw:
It is O'Reilly and it is a bug in their shopping cart. They posted on my blog and emailed me. They said to call them and gave me a name of a person to ask for and they will process my order.
The thing is that I am kind of sad, because my post/comment wasn't meant to bash O'Reilly but point out how unexpected use cases and unplanned events backfire if they aren't properly handled. It turns out O'Reilly was actually having a planning meeting today to work on their new ecommerce website system.
I was also wondering whether people thought I was just being too greedy if their expectations were in line with mine.
Any way, tomorrow I will be purchasing about $100 worth of books from O'Reilly that I wouldn't have purchased if they hadn't sent me the coupon.
JavaJones:
Which just goes to show one or more of the following, I guess: Marketing works (definitely! :D); O'Reilly are on top of their PR and the blogosphere; you are not being too greedy.
I'd say all 3, and given O'Reilly's quick response I'd be happy to be a customer. :)
- Oshyan
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