Ethics and hard drives

**Chairboy** · 12-31-2004, 05:32 PM

Hi guys,

A recent thread made me wonder something. Someone posted a thread about a pricing error making 250GB hard drives available for super cheap. In the anandtech thread (not the mp3car one), the immediate consensus is that it's a pricing error and everyone hopes that their orders will be honored.

I think I have a problem with this, there seem to be a sense of entitlement that people have these days that can be summed up with 'Error be damned, gimme my free stuff! I don't care what it costs you!'

I own some businesses. My wife and I have a pizza restaurant, for example, and it runs on pretty tight margins. We're never going to get rich off of it. But when we make a mistake, we honor the price we gave and learn for the future. The cost can be significant because of our margins, but that's just the price of doing business. Our customers come in for that price because they believe that we're doing a deal, and we trust our customers not to be thinking 'Ha ha! They screwed up! Time for some pizza!'

The difference is, when a company like Outpost makes a pricing mistake that everyone figures out is an error, people STILL try to order it, hoping they can cash in on the error. The real difference between this and our pizza place is that people seem to be deliberately taking advantage of the error for their own profit.

How is this ethical? How is this justifiable?

If you go to a register and a $20 object rings up as $2, the honorable thing to do it to tell the checker. Some stores will say 'wow, you're right. We'll honor this price and go fix it, have a nice day'. After you leave, do you immediately go out and tell all your friends 'OMG, Joe's Hardware is accidentally selling Dremels for super cheap! Go stock up!'?

That would sound like theft to me. The people who, after REALIZING that it was a pricing mistake, STILL ordered the hard drives from outpost.com, seem to be thieves.

These companies are run by people, and yes, people make mistakes. But something else to consider, these companies are run by people, and those are the people that suffer when you latch onto this type of problem and try to suck your share of their blood.

I know that some of you will have no problem with what happened, whether it's from some vague senes of justice (eg, 'I bet there are plenty of things that ring up TOO HIGH at Fryes, lolololol! this is just evening it out rofl') or some sort of righteousness (eg, 'BUSINESS is learning. You PAY for your MISTAKES, outpost.com is just LEARNING THIS LESSON. gimme my hard drive').

I'd like to hear your thoughts on this issue.

Regards,

Chairboy

(PS, this is not aimed at the person who posted the links to mp3car.com. There's no telling whether or not he read the thread and saw the price error conclusions before posting it)

**muldrick** · 12-31-2004, 06:23 PM

Originally Posted by Chairboy

I'd like to hear your thoughts on this issue.

Regards,

Chairboy

I agree Chairboy. But unfortunately I'm guilty, I think we all are somewhat.
I mean, (honestly) if I get to much change from a cashier I tell them.
There are some other things however that most of us are dishonest about, don't think I should mention it here though....copy?

**RedGTiVR6** · 12-31-2004, 07:01 PM

it all comes back around to get you somehow....

honnestly...to all those whiners out there who complain about prices being too high....I bet NONE of them have EVER taken ANY marketing, management, finance, accounting, etc classes.....they have NO idea what all it takes to run a business....

it's like *****ing about Best Buys prices....if they are too high for you get over it. They have a LOT of overhead, and I mean a **** load.....compared to New Egg for example....who doesn't have a store front and doesn't have a bazillion employees to pay, not to mention the cost of damaged or stolen items, or law suits, etc....

it's a mistake.....so let's say they do honor that price for you.....then they will have to recoup the loss somehow....prices somewhere else for something else, maybe even that same hard drive, will go up just a little....it's the fact of the game...there's no way to change that, then after you got your hard drive for so cheap, you go oneo the rest of their site and ***** about how their prices are a little higher on everything else compared to so and so.com....

I just wish that people would think before they blurt out rediculous comments about businesses sometimes.....

that's my take on it

=]

**frodobaggins** · 12-31-2004, 07:03 PM

I try to be as honest as possible, but I did screw Columbia house out of about 45 dvds for around $15

**Hacksaw** · 12-31-2004, 07:18 PM

It works both ways.

I bought an external hard drive last year at a discounted price. The shelf edge label had it at half price, which swayed me to buy it rather than it's smaller capacity sibling.
When I got to the checkout the teller rang it up at the regular price. I queried it and the manager had to let me have it at the advertised price - the offer had ended the previous day but the label had not been ammended.
It's the law that they have to let you have it at the advertised price otherwise you could advertise a load of items at lower prices on the shelf and charge higher at checkout - how many disgruntled customers do you need to be run out of business?

A mistake was made sure, but should a customer be charged for a companies mistake?

I lucked in that time and got it cheaper, why not?

However if it was correctly labelled and rung up for less I would probably have come clean for fear of a hand on my shoulder as I left the store...

**0l33l** · 01-01-2005, 12:41 AM

California law states that the item has to be sold for the lowest advertised price.

**Ashlawn Kemling** · 01-01-2005, 02:55 AM

I work at Eckerd. If I screw up and forget to remove a sign from last week, I honor it for that one customer and take it down. No big deal. The problem with online pricing mistakes is that there is very little employee intervention. So they cancel it for everyone and no one gets it at that price. Fair enough to me.

P.S. American Greeting cards are marked up 75%.

**RedGTiVR6** · 01-01-2005, 09:25 AM

sure, the law says that you have to sell it at the lowest advertised price....but I can guarantee you that that's not ALL that the law states either....

I KNOW there has to be a provision in there to protect the company from going out of business just because of a missprint....

to think that customers aren't going to be charged more on other parts because of a mistake....is ignorant....it's part of business...it's the way it works.....no other way around it....a company has to survive, and if it means jacking up prices because they need to recoupe lost funds in order to survive, then it's what they do....

**Chairboy** · 01-01-2005, 12:06 PM

I understand that they need to honor the price, 0l33l, but that's hardly the point. MY problem is that people discover the error, KNOW that it's an error, and swoop in to 'get as much as they can'.

How can that be ethical? I don't think it is.

**xBrady** · 01-01-2005, 02:48 PM

Most online stores can easily get out of honoring the price. When you create an account with most online stores you agree that they can cancel your order at any time for any reason.
I would agree it is unethical.

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