Office Depot - Unethical - Scam - Bait and Switch - Take your pick… Part II
So, I talked to Don Butler, the District Manager, again yesterday afternoon. He offered to take $100 off any other monitor they sell. The offer would hold true for any 2 monitors, as that is what I ordered.
I know he is probably doing the best he can, and I am sure he considers it to be a reasonable offer, but he has got to be aware that an offer like that is not a good deal at all!
Let’s look at their three cheapest 19-inch monitor prices:
KDS K-917S - $369.99
Samsung 930B - $429.99
ViewSonic VX910 -$449.99
Alright, so if I buy the KDS, I spend $203.98 more for each monitor than my credit card was charged for the original order. If I buy the Samsung, I spend $263.98 more per monitor than my credit card was originally charged. If I buy the ViewSonic, I would spend $283.96 more for each monitor than my credit card was originally charged for the original order.
What a joke! They want me to spend a minimum of 123% more— not just 23% more— but a full 123% more to get similar monitors to those that I originally ordered! If I were to buy their third most inexpensive monitor, that figure jumps to 171% more than the product I ordered!
So, digging deeper, I find this 17″ monitor (smaller than my original purchase):
KDS K717s - $279.99
Alright, so, $279.99 - $100 = $179.99.
So, they want me to pay over 8% more than my credit card was originally charged so I can get a smaller monitor! Sure, it doesn’t seem like the size difference between a 17″ and a 19″ monitor is that large. But, when you do the math, you find that a 19″ monitor has 22.8% more screen area than a 17″ monitor!
I did some more digging.
It turns out that Amazon has the KDS 19″ for $269.99. If Office Depot were to pricematch this, my final price would be $169.99. That is a mere 2% more than I originally agreed to pay and was subsequently charged for an item that I was told was in-stock.
Of course, the KDS has lower specifications, but I am not particularly concerned about that. I just need two new monitors for Jaime and me at a good price. We spend a heck of a lot of time sitting at our computers to run America’s Debate and our old 17″ CRT monitors are just not cutting it. They hurt your eyes, and they put off an incredible amount of heat. Jaime’s (which I believe was actually bought at Office Depot) is pretty messed up.
So I call the store and speak to the manager (I believe his name was John) about the pricematch and $100 price reduction. He was aware of Mr. Butler’s offer to give me $100 off on each of any two monitors. I asked the manager if the monitors were in stock, and they were. I asked him if they would match the Amazon price in order to fully rectify the situation in my eyes, and the manager declined. He claimed that they do not match Amazon prices
That was flat-out wrong. I just called Office Depot customer service. According to the gentleman with whom I spoke, Office Depot WILL match Amazon’s price. He said they charge overnight shipping, which seems odd, but fine. I would have no problem paying overnight shipping, if I actually got the items overnight Since I ordered on Tuesday, they were due Wednesday. It is now Thursday. The shipment is overdue– shipping charges should be refunded anyway.
So, now I know that the store manager either does not know his company’s policies (highly unlikely), or he doesn’t like the fact that I contacted Mr. Butler and is intentionally giving me bad information as a result.
I try to call Don Butler— it was busy for about 20 minutes. I just left a message with the friendly lady that answers the phone on his line, and she will ask him to call me back.
The title of this entry is “Office Depot - Unethical - Scam - Bait and Switch - Take your pick…”
I may have to change it to “Office Depot - Unethical - Scam - Bait and Switch - All three?”
<scam class=”bait_and_switch” style=”unethical”>
Bait: Sure, come on and pickup your monitors. You paid for them, and they are in stock.
Switch: Oh, you’re here? Sorry, we don’t have your monitors. But, if you raise a big enough stink, the District Manager will give you a discount that you can use on another product.
Unethical: Oh, you got a discount? OK. Can we match Amazon? No, we can’t. <mumble>yes we can</mumble>
</scam>
Given that they deducted money from my account, and that I spent time to go to the store, and time to research other products, and time to go back and forth with them in order to figure out their policies, I think it is safe to wrap the whole situation in a couple of <scam></scam> tags.
July 21st, 2005 at 11:23 am
I was looking forward to getting a new monitor sooner rather than later. Oh well. We will be buying monitors when the price is right. We are a guaranteed sale. Question now is - who wants to earn our money?
July 21st, 2005 at 2:15 pm
Alright, so, I sent an email to Office Depot, both to their Media Relations department and to one person in particular– Brian Levine, Public Relations Director– whose address I dug out of a press release.
Here is the email:
Now, I have Thunderbird set to automatically request read receipts when I send email. So, if either of the two recipients actually read the email, and choose to send the read receipt, I will receive notification that they have read my email. Mr. Levine in PR read my email.
Now, when I send a complaint email to a company and reference links, I like to track whether or not they visit the links I supply. In this case, it was very simple. I appended ?10 to the URLs that I sent to the general Media Relations, and I appended ?20 to the URLs that I sent to Mr. Levine.
I am happy to inform you that Mr. Levine visited my blog, and read my account of my experience with Office Depot:
Let’s see what happens from here now that I know for sure that PR Director or one of his assistants are aware of Office Depot’s attempt at correcting a problem they created.
Mike
July 21st, 2005 at 11:02 pm
Super shopper. Go in business
July 24th, 2005 at 11:09 am
I got the note on these monitors on RSS feed from one of the hot deal/price mistake web sites at 8:00 am on the 19th. I was at my local OD at 8:30 and grabbed the eight theyhad in stock just as the guy was hanging the clearance tag up.
OD, like compusa and half the major retailers with web reservations, does have some lag in their computer inventory you can try to exploit. So I did order another dozen from three other local OD stores, and magaged to get three of those by following up with phone calls within a minute of the order to tell the manager to hold the stock and get me out in front of other web orders.
Clearance is not the same as an advertised special. With clearance it is a free for all, first com first serve especially with an in-demand item at half price.
I would recommend in future use an RSS feed from the price mistake sites and get to the stores before anyone esle!
still I am going to follow your lead and call and write the people you mentioned at Office depot to try and harrange soemthing from them. you never know we might be able to squeeze somethingout of them even with a closeout! Best of Luck, Hal
July 24th, 2005 at 12:53 pm
Heya Hal! Thanks for stopping by and commenting!
Congrats on getting the monitors! I’ve been trying to get LCDs for about 4 months now, mainly because our CRTs just throw off the heat in amazing quantities. We’ve got our air set as low as we can afford, but with two computers, battery backups, TV, laser printer, and the equipment to do a radio show in our office, it is perpetually 85 degrees in here!
I agree with you that if you want to purchase price mistake items, you have to be right on top of things and be prepared to not get the item. That is why I generally avoid the hassle of having price mistakes. I always end up with money deducted from my account for a week from the ridiculous “precharge” setup that Visa uses, and I never get the item.
I agree with you on clearance items as well. This particular item, though, was never marked as clearance throughout the entire order process. When I added it to my cart, it was not marked as clearance (but was marked as in stock). When I completed my order and was at the “your order is complete” screen, it was not marked as clearance. When I received my confirmation email, it was not marked as clearance.
According to Kimberly Bryant in Executive Customer Relations, I was supposed to know it was a clearance item by the price, even though it was not marked as such. Then, according to Don Butler, the District Manager, the product was supposed to have been marked as clearance. This just adds to the misinformation given by Office Depot employees (I have more from Friday that I will share in my next post).
I’ve got an update to this story that I will be posting later today if I have time. It will definitely be interesting reading to you, Hal.
Oh yeah, and Hal, if you are looking to sell any of these, I would be incredibly grateful if you would consider selling a couple to me! Have a look at our website, America’s Debate. We work our tails off to provide an amazing one-of-a-kind service, and don’t generate a lot of revenue, let alone a lot of profit. The cost of these monitors is a double-digit percentage of our entire annual revenue.
As of right now, I am hoping that we can find a similar deal sometime by Christmas– that is if the money from this purchase is ever returned back to our account (ordered Tuesday, currently Sunday, account is still $350 less than it should be).
Have a great Sunday, Hal!
Mike
November 20th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
I found your site as I was looking to lodge a complaint of my own. I had no idea that Office Depot was competing for a blue ribbon in dishonorable conduct! I am new to the world of computers, so the purchase of my very first was a little daunting; but I did my best. I chose a gateway m-6824, absolutely stuffed w memory n goodies I have yet to even understand. This laptop was on display for $899.99 (white card), aong w other laptops; of those, some had yellow cards, signifying rebate offers. Each computer has sm. white info papers customers can take; a quick reference- these do not have prices on them. Less than a week before I bought the computer, I grabbed 3 of these, wrote the prices on the back of each, any comments, then went off to research them further. I found that my gateway not only was priced well, but I couldn’t get it anywhere else in town. If I ordered it, It cost 1,0??. In your entry, you mentioned price mistakes. I’m not sure what happened to me;
November 20th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
PART2:Sorry ’bout that- now I’ll try 2 wrap it up! I took my info paper w me, the mgr himself was ‘helping’ me. I showed him the computer I was there for, and noticed the price was now the same as the internet site! I told the mgr that I chose the comp 4 it’s price, showed him the info paper, asked him 2 honor the 899.99, as I was in only days be4. He said he’d check, came back n told me he could do nothing because it was a REBATE sale price. YELLOW card. I told him flat out that there was no yellow card. It was obvious that he was nervous about lying to me. I took the comp, told him he made a lame decision, that I’d never b back. I could’ve taken the exta $ and put it into a 22 in screen- told him that& said I’d go somewhere else. Gggrrrrr.
July 16th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Office Depot Scam - I am having much of the same unethical issue with Office Depot. Where they are offering computers they don’t have in stock and trying to “upsell” me into another product. Ridiculous. Plus I was transferred to a call center, where no one knew what was going on.