This was a 5-Star deal if you got in AND your order was filled… but chances are you were left out in the rain…

On Thursday July 12, 2006 the website LaRedoute.com held a sale… they were selling approxamately 15 different styles of women’s shirts for $.01 each!!! Was this a price mistake or an actual sale/promotion you may ask? Here’s a picture to help you decide:

The “real deal” they say, let’s investigate…

This graphic was part of an email that was sent out to people who were registered with the site.  There were no disclaimers or limitations stated for this promotion which in my book says that they should then honor every order taken (which wasn’t the case, but we’ll talk about that later). To make this sale even better, there was a free shipping code “LRFREESHIP” floating around which would eliminate the $4.99 shipping charge, and for those super stingy shoppers there was a 15% off code “LRMYFAVPROMO” which would knock a few pennies (literally) off of your order total. And how many shirts could you order in one shot you ask… try 40 shirts per order!!!

Let’s take a minute and do the math on this promotion. If one person puts through a single order using this promotion these would be the costs to the person:

40 shirts @ $.01 each = $.40 cents + Free Shipping minus 15% off which is $.06 for a grand total price of $.34 cents. An order for 40 shirts shipped would cost you $0.34 cents. Amazing!

How much money would this order cost LaRedoute.com? To ship 40 shirts it would cost the company approxamately $10. The cost to produce the shirts would be (and I’m guessing) about $2 per shirt, so 40 shirts would cost $80 to produce. An don’t forget about the credit card processing fee that they would have to pay. An average processing fee is $.35 cents per transaction plus 2.5% of the transaction total. So LaRedoute.com was offering you 40 shirts, which would cost them $90.36 of actual expense to you for $.34 cents!!! In my book that is a 5-Star deal and you don’t find them any better then this.

Once this sale hit the internet the LaRedoute.com website got slammed. Page load times became longer as users tried to order multiple times to cash in on this unbelievable sale. After two days LaRedoute caught on about the free shipping code that people were using and cancelled that code, but they left the penny shirts up on their site for a few more few days.

The first report of an order being shipped happened 4 days later on Monday. And across different message boards a few people were reporting that their orders were shipped. But it seemed that the majority of the peoples’ orders had not yet shipped. Days past and now the talk was of orders mysteriously disappearing from peoples’ accounts. I myself placed two orders which disappeared into the unknown 5 days after I placed them. What happened to these disappearing orders? According to one poster on a message board, “I talked to a customer service rep at LeRedoute.com who said there was a ’system overload’ which was responsible for the missing orders.” This response seemed very questionable to me as I don’t understand how a system overload would only delete some orders but not others. And how did this system overload delete my 2 orders which had been in their system for 5 days?!

Next, there were reports of people not receiving all the items they ordered due to ‘inventory depletion’. Another questionable response in my book. I would think that all respectable retail websites have an inventory system built into their website which would disallow you from ordering an item if there were none left in stock, but hey, what do I know?

The story goes on that now people who were contacting the LaRedoute.com customer service were being told that the promotion was valid only on Thursday July 12 and any orders placed after this date for penny shirts would be removed. How come LaRedoute.com left the penny shirts on their site for sale after this date? And more puzzling to me is reports of people who ordered on Friday July 13 and received their items, while other people who ordered on Thursday July 12 were told their orders were cancelled due to items being out of stock. The phrase “lack of consistency” comes into my mind.

I had to hear the story for myself directly from LaRedoute.com so I gave their customer service department a call. I spoke to a polite lady who explained the situation to me like this…’The promotion resulted in too many orders. The computer should not have allowed people to order items which had been sold out but it did. Anyone’s order who is currently pending will be cancelled’. I mentioned my orders which had completely disappeared from my account and she said that probably my orders had been deleted just like any outstanding orders would be. I asked her a few of my in-depth questions but she stated she didn’t have any more information on the situation.

I wanted to show some of the shirts that were part of this penny deal but it appears as if LaRedoute took down all these items and their pictures completely… hmmmm. So it looks like for the lucky few they got a great deal, but for the majority you got played.

My closing words on this Fiasco are if you can’t hold up your end of the bargain, then don’t offer the bargain in the first place and for this LaRedoute.com you get 5 Thumbs Down.

LaRedoute.com needs a lot of work done on their website maintenance, inventory ordering system, and marketing promotions team. This officially closes the Penny Shirt Sale Fiasco.