Early Holiday Hunting

This past month I did a bit of holiday shopping online and by catalog. On the whole, my experiences were enjoyable, although I did encounter a few snags. I offer them here in case they’re instructive for other catalogers.

I’d been looking in The Sharper Image catalog at a foot massager as a holiday gift for my husband’s two hard-working aunts, but I was unsure about buying it. One day I got an e-mailed offer from The Sharper Image: Get

$20 off an order of $60 or more. “Ah!” I thought. “A perfect time to buy.”

So I clicked on the link that took me to the site, and I found the massager.

But when I dropped the item into a cart, the $20 discount that drove me to the site didn’t register—although the offer was emblazoned across the top of all of the site’s pages! So I abandoned the cart.

But I wanted that item, so the next day I called The Sharper Image. Keith, an efficient and polite customer service rep, answered before the first ring. He asked for my account number and source code from the back of the catalog I was holding, and I gave him the data. I ordered the massager and said I wanted to use the $20-off e-mail offer. He asked me for a source code for the offer, but then stopped and said, “No, Ms. Loyle, I can find that information for you.” Very helpful, that Keith.

He then made a cross-sell offer of half-off a piece of luggage that was supposedly on the back of the catalog I was holding (remember, I gave him the catalog source code). But when I turned over the book, there was an air purifier and a portable CD player pictured—no luggage. I didn’t correct him, though, because he was so polite—plus I didn’t need luggage.

Conclusion: By not linking the e-mail offer to the site’s landing page and accompanying cart, The Sharper Image almost lost this sale. And although I gave the call center rep a source code, he still was prompted to make an incorrect cross-sell offer.

On another day, I tried like the dickens to order a book from Amazon.com as a gift for one of my colleagues. I’ve successfully ordered products from Amazon before, but this time it was a fiasco. The company had an old credit card number of mine, and no amount of work—answering its prompts, keying in new credit card data, trying another card—proved successful. I got repeated error messages, almost as if the site was in some weird cyber loop. I called the customer service number to order the book, but after about 10 minutes on hold, I hung up.

No matter. I clicked over to Barnes & Noble.com, found the book quickly, and it was delivered within three business days. Conclusion: This was my first snafu with Amazon, but since they wasted almost an hour of my time, I bookmarked Barnes & Noble for future purchases.

Next month: More holiday-shopping tales!