I like to shop online. Sometimes, I will keep returning to an online store for days while I go through the catalog. So if I put something in my cart, I expect the price to stay the same.
Sierra Trading Post appears to have a sneaky little trick where prices go up (I have never seen a price go down) when they are in my cart. What? Do you feel that since I like it enough to put it there, I’ll pay more for it? And it wasn’t just for one or two items. I had 8 items in my cart, and the price went up for EVERY SINGLE FUCKING ITEM. Some items jumped up by over 10 dollars.
I’m pretty sure the bastards got away with it in my last order. This time, I had a sneaking suspicion, so I kept an eye on my cart. Fuckers. I closed the web page, and I’ll never return. And I’ll tell every single person I know.
You’ve lost a customer for life, and I hope I’ll make everyone aware of your shitty practice.
That happens when you ignore the closing date of the special offer! Do you have the email that reminds you the warehouse sale of 60% off ended yesterday. You got burned by not checking out in time.
I certainly think that, if the price goes up, they should inform you that it’s changed before you pay for the items.
But exactly how long should they honor a price just because you happen to put the item in your cart? A day? A week? A month? If Sierra Trading Post is like most online stores, putting something in your cart incurs no obligation to buy, and you can remove it at any time. You haven’t actually bought the item until you pay for it.
What they probably should do is have an expiry time on items in your cart. For argument’s sake, let’s say three days. If you buy something within three days of putting it in the cart, you should get it for the original price, even if it has gone up since then. If you wait more than three days, they should warn you that your item is about to be booted from the cart, and give you the opportunity to keep it there. and, if the price has gone up in those three days, it would be reasonable to ask you to pay the new price, i think.
Also, on preview:
It seems, according to chela, that there was a specific sale on. Do you think, for example, that you should be allowed to fill your cart with sale items, and just leave them there until you’re ready to pay for them down the road, even if the sale has ended?
There’s a bike site where I shop online that’s like that. You have to keep an eye on their e-flyer like crazy! The deals are legit, but they have very short windows for some of them. I got a $105 bike saddle for $44 and I love it.
But if I leave it in my cart for too long, I miss the 80% deadline, and may only get the 60% off from the second deadline. Then, if I wait too long I’ll lose the deal and just get their “regular deal” which is often still lower than any bike shop around here.
Some of their sales are only good for that day, and if you miss seeing the “coupon” on the splash page, you may not know about the deal at all. So when the price chnges tomorrow, you’ll be wondering what happened.
While I can’t be sure that’s what happened to you, it certainly seems likely. I’ve ordered from STP for the past 15 years and they are far and away the best mail order/online place for gear. They will also take care of you if you have a legitimate complaint; call their customer support line if you feel that they did something incorrect.
No, I didn’t get the email, but that’s what must have happened.
They still have lost me as a customer. At least put some kind of notice saying that the prices have changed or empty the contents of the cart. How hard can it be?
Wasn’t the new price reflected in your cart when you went back? Or on the page where you actually order? It seems that you’re pitting them because you didn’t notice the change, that’s not really their fault.
IIRC, I’ve been notified when things became unavailable, but I’ve never noticed any price changes. The billing is probably handled separately, since special codes may be added and the system may not know about them until checkout. You also sometimes have to enter the site via the link in their emails to get the discounts. If you just went back to the site without following the link you may have lost the discount.
As I said earlier, STP is among the very best of the online stores and they will make sure things are right with you. I think it’s a mistake to dismiss them for what appears to be an artifact of their billing system. I can assure you they weren’t trying to rip you off.
Did you email STP and ask them to improve the checkout to notify of price increases in your basket? How are they going to know they are doing something irritating if you don’t tell them?
I know they respond to comments via email; I emailed them to complain about the bible quotes at checkout and got a response from the company Prez explaining how they believe in Christ and try to do all things how He would and they want you to know that Christ is the driving force in their lives and …
Tell them you want a shoppping cart like Amazon, where you get a banner telling you that the prices of X, Y and Z increased, but lucky you, the price on A went down.
Take your problem to the source and it may be solved. If they don’t solve the problem, then you Pit them.
So the OP filled her online shopping cart with stuff that was on sale, then went back to the cart days later (when the items were apparently no longer on sale), and was upset that the prices had gone up?
Yep. That’s pretty much my complaint. Only I shop the clearance and Bargain areas, where no sale is posted. STP is a pretty massive catalog, and I look online at it when there is downtime at work. So over the course of two or three days, I’ll have finally made my way through it.
If you have enough time to go through that massive online catalog in one sitting, more power to you. But I suspect that there are a shitload of costumers just like me that feel ripped off. I shop at Amazon the same way, and get a nice notice when they change the price or something gets sold out. I would think it’s a pretty simple step to create, and would go far for customer service.
I’ve programmed shopping carts before. If I recall correctly, we made sure that the prices and even the names of things in the carts were “live” data instead of hard-coded into the database. Meaning, if you put item ID 7 in your cart, that’s all your “row” recorded - that you had Item 7 in there. Then, there was a live lookup AT CHECKOUT TIME as to what the price of the item really was. We programmed it with this sort of situation in mind, as proprietors really wouldn’t want people stockpiling on-sale stuff to buy later.
The ability to save a shopping cart session is a luxury, it’s not like layaway or anything. It’s just a feature sites have because they can.
What you should do is request that this site add a Wish List feature.
Gotcha. I’ve never encountered the problem before, but then again I’ve never bought more than a handful of items from a website at a time (and all in one sitting). I can see how that would be aggravating, as you go back through your cart trying to figure out what went up in price and what didn’t. :smack:
No, I don’t think that’s what she (?) was complaining about. The problem was that the prices went up without any notification. I can see that being an issue, but as a software engineer I can imaging any number of ways that could happen that are beyond the control of STP’s software to handle correctly.
So, in a perfect world, when NurseCarmen logged in the next day, there shoudl have been some kind of pop-up saying WARNING! ONE OR MORE OF THE ITEMS IN YOUR CART HAS CHANGED IN PRICE. Would that be a simple thing to install?
Amazon does it. I keep a bunch of items in my shopping cart (or more accurately, in my “Save items - to buy later”), and almost everytime I check I get a message similar to:
So yes, changes are subject to fluctuation until a purchase actually takes place, at which point they are (obviously) fixed. I don’t expect to put a sale item in my basket or shopping cart and have that sale price honored indefinitely.
And, for the record, both increases and decreases can and have occurred.
