Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
Pretend you frequent a certain pizza place described below, and tell me what the right play is here.
BACKGROUND: This is a very good, but very expensive pizza place. They have a printable coupon on the internet that has been widely available (and well known) for 4 years running, which still leaves it as expensive, but more reasonable. It is a local chain with about 8 stores, and family owned.
They have just introduced an online ordering website where the coupon is also supposed to apply if you enter it.
A customer, we will call him "Todd", tried to use the online ordering site for the first time, and it did not apply the coupon. He didn't submit the order, and instead called up the pizza place and asked if he was doing anything wrong. The guy answering the phone didn't know, and called the owner to ask. The owner said that the coupon would not show a reduction in price at the time of ordering online, but would on the confirmation screen. That information was passed along to Joe, and he hit the Submit button.
Unfortunately, the owner was wrong. There was indeed an issue with the website (it was a third-party site) and it mistakenly charged full price. It would also be very difficult to back out the transaction, because a third party controls the site.
Joe, who liked the pizza place and didn't want to create a stink, just said, "Okay, no problem. How about you just put the equivalent credit for that coupon for my next order, and I'll pay full price for this one? So after I buy my next pizza, it will all break out evenly like it never happened."
Basically, Joe was proposing to use zero coupons this time and get a "double coupon" next time, which would be equivalent to him using one coupon each time as he normally would have done. In fact, this actually helps the business because it guarantees another sale and if for some reason Joe never comes back, he's paid full price up front.
Surprisingly, the guy on the phone had to again check with the owner about this. The owner responded, "Tell him that we will give him that credit for next time, but he can't combine it with any other offer or coupon when he redeems it."
Joe realizes that this will end up screwing him. Because the coupon has always been usable every time, he could have easily used it BOTH this time and last time if the online system worked right (or if he had just ordered over the phone like he always had in the past). So why should he have to pay full price this time and only get the coupon price next time? Why not both times? Why should he pay a higher price because it's their system's fault?
When Joe went to pick it up, he was told that the owner was firm on this.
Joe had been picking up pizzas here nearly every week for the last year and really loved the food. He also never once complained about anything or got anything free/comped.
If you are Joe, what do you do here?
Do you keep going to this place, eat the relatively small loss, and chalk it up to the idiosyncrasies of a family-owned place?
Or do you stick to the principle, play hardball with them, and threaten to take your business elsewhere if they don't make it right?
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