Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Penalize the Purchaser @1800flowers

Recently, I bought a gift online.  I knew there'd be a delivery/service charge and they were wise to hide it until the very end because it was a bit outrageous.

To add insult to injury, the more you spent, the bigger the service charge was.

To add insult to injury, the more you spent, the bigger the service charge was.  It wasn't based on weight or items, but on the price you paid.  Spend more, pay more.

This is a penalty when it should have been a reward.  The service charge should have stayed the same, or gone down as I spent more.  Considering the price of the items/upgrades, they could easily absorb a few dollars into the cost to offset the declining service charge.  You can make the same money while simultaneously making the customer feel like they scored.  

Perhaps it's a moot point... they knew I was already invested and didn't want to appear cheap and didn't want to give up the time I'd already put into choosing my gift and building my order, so why should they bother? They got the sale.

But... they lost the next sale.  No matter how much the recipient loves the gift, I'm going to feel like I got a raw deal.

Memo to self: Use Amazon next time. I can't control the delivery as precisely but I can avoid the service charge altogether and it looks like I can get quite a bit more for my money.

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