One of the most popular online shopping services, Zappos.com that has been well known for its vast product line including some of the world’s most cherished brands such as, Nike, Oakley, Nine West etc. has apparently lost a combined sales of a whopping $1.6 million, due to an error that happened in the company’s sister site, 6pm.com. This error was related to the prices of the products, that somehow showed all products being available for $49.95.
6pm.com is known to offer the users with incredible discounts of up to 70%, but on Friday morning, the user woke up to much steeper discount, ,when they saw that every product in the catalog was listed at a single price of $49.95. As soon as the company found the glitch, 6pm.com was immediately shut down for repairs and bearing the loss in stride, Zappos has stated, that it would honor all the sales made during that period, irrespective of the price differences. Zappos employs a pricing engine for its services that, sets prices for the products as per the rules set by business owners.
However, editing such rules to accommodate new products and pricing structure is quite complicated and requires skillful coding. In this case, the company states that, during the coding process a couple of symbols were missed, that led to the capping of prices to $49.95. Zappos has highlighted this error and its subsequent ramification on both Twitter and the company’s blog site.
According to Aaron Magness (Director, Brand Marketing & Business Development, Zappos),
“While we’re sure this was a great deal for customers, it was inadvertent, and we took a big loss (over $1.6 million – ouch) selling so many items so far under cost. However, it was our mistake. We will be honoring all purchases that took place on 6pm.com during our mess up.”
Via Las Vegas Sun
