Tom C wrote: >Ugh! :-) > >I agree that the retailer should not suffer *huge* losses because an >item was mismarked, especially in the electronic online ordering >scenario where word gets around and they are flooded with orders. On >the other hand, being aware of this possibility, any large online >retailer who does not have software in place to monitor transactions >and send out an alert when there's a spike in orders of any given item >in a given time period, and automatically suspend sales of that item >is foolish.
Good idea, but I'm not aware of any software that does so. And, by definition, it could only react *after* a spike existed. It would be tricky to implement, too, because most of the time a spike in sales is something you *want* to see. You'd need algorithms to differentiate between "good" sales spikes and "bad" ones. (And staff to deal with pissed off customers when the algorithm - eventually - made a mistake.) >Same goes for selling items at or below cost unless they >are specifically flagged to allow it. I'd guess that's exactly what happened in the case that started all this. The company running the web site has the *price* of the items for sale but it's unlikely that any large retailer would allow their *cost* information out of house. So the discrepancy won't be detected until the web host forwards the order information to the retailer. >On an individual transaction basis, Bill's mis-priced milk scenario >stands and the online store has exactly the same responsibilities to >the customer as a brick and mortar store. The money is the same, why >is everything else not the same? The cashier in Bill's mis-priced milk scenario can see if there are 1000 other customers in line with mis-priced milk. The online retailer can't (until it's too late). If the online store is required to sell just one mis-priced item because the loss isn't "huge", what do they tell the second person in line? For that matter, how does the second person know they're not being lied to and they really *are* the first person in line? (I think that's what Cambridge Camera Exchange would do!) The answer to pretty much all of the above is that a lot of best practices for the real world simply don't scale to the virtual one. Comparison of one to the other is fundamentally flawed. I looked for online retailers who promised to honor the prices advertised on their site even in the event of a mistake. I couldn't find any. (They're probably out there if you look hard enough, but I'll bet they're small, newbie operations that haven't been bitten yet. Or sellers of v...@gra, pr0n, etc. who have no intention of honoring the promise.) -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
