Integrity is integral Correct pricing, adequate availability, and balanced user reviews are issues that online shoppers care about most.

By Rik Fairlie
(2/6/02)

Sometimes companies need to be reminded that honesty really is the best policy. Sure, puffy promises of utter customer satisfaction and globally significant inventories can be alluring, but what keeps shoppers coming back is on-the-nose pricing, adequate availability, and balanced product information.

There's nothing more irksome than deceptive pricing. Just ask Alfred Coppola, who found seesawing price discrepancies between the print ads of Zony Systems and the company's Web site. "After checking the site, it was obvious the whole [print] ad was a come-on," Coppola says. "All the prices were wrong."

There's nothing more irksome than deceptive pricing.

Numbers don't lie--or do they?
The ad, for the record, does carry the standard stipulation that the company is not responsible for typographical errors, and advises shoppers to consult its Web site for current pricing. Still, the parade of incorrect price tags is deeply suspicious, and Coppola rightly complained via e-mail to Zony Systems. The reply? A stinging message saying the company has no interest in his feedback.

Zony Systems tells me that the two-month lead time required for magazine ads, coupled with unexpected rising prices for memory and processors, caused the pricing variations. That explanation may be valid for products that employ CPUs and memory, but it doesn't explain the differences for other products. While we can't expect merchants to always accurately predict future pricing in their print ads, they should demonstrate a good-faith effort to do so. Zony Systems appears to have failed on this count, and Computer Shopper is no longer running its ads (and will not until the company changes its business practices).

Another reader, Scott Happel, took issue with Best Buy's rain-check policy after trying to buy a PNY 128MB CompactFlash memory card, on sale at Best Buy's site for $59.99. He initially had spotted a print ad for the product and went to a local store in Tampa, Florida, to snap it up. The card was unavailable in the store, so Happel headed online and plunked it into his shopping cart. At checkout, he was informed the PNY card was out of stock on the Web, too. Happel fired off a complaint via e-mail that requested a rain check; instead, he got two mostly canned responses, neither of which adequately addressed his concerns.

Eventually, he checked back with the local brick-and-mortar store and found the card at the sale price. But Happel adds: "Once the sale ended, the price returned to $89.99 on the Web, and it was available online. Isn't that strange?"

A Best Buy spokeswoman says the store states on its printed ads that rain checks are available "on most items specifically advertised, except where noted." Still, to avoid the appearance of trying to entice customers with unavailable products, Best Buy ought to offer a back-order or rain-check option. That might keep customers happily shopping, rather than tapping out grievances to me.

Rave reviews, all the time
A third reader demonstrates how praise can turn pernicious. Companies that post only gushing user reviews are deceiving customers, says Tony Whiteley. He makes this observation after shopping at NewEgg.com, which, as he discovered after attempting to post a negative review of the 128MB Mr. Flash CompactFlash card he bought, lists only positive user comments.

Companies that post only gushing user reviews are deceiving customers.

Note that Whiteley has had no problems whatsoever with NewEgg.com's service and reliability. What's more, the site carries the logos of BBBOnLine and TRUSTe, and has a 9.2 rating from BizRate.com.

But it's true that NewEgg.com is pop-eyed enthusiastic when it comes to user reviews. For the Mr. Flash product, the site listed a whopping 97 five-star reader ratings, out of 104 total reviews. Other user comments were similarly slanted or entirely positive.

"NewEgg is deceiving customers into thinking the product may be better than it is," he says. "They never get a chance to see any criticisms, warnings, or suggestions about the product they are thinking of purchasing."

The company maintains that its user comments are for marketing purposes only and that, as a store, it's not positioned to officially evaluate items. What's more, says Vice President Jay Tong, negative remarks from unscientific or unqualified sources expose NewEgg.com to legal liability with the product manufacturer.

Nonetheless, Tong says NewEgg.com plans to add a disclaimer alerting shoppers to the fact that it does not publish unflattering user reviews. The company should post that proviso prominently; there's no sense bulldozing hard-earned street cred.