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Black Friday Inventory Blowup Hits Target, Buy.com, Fry’s
Target
At Target, the sale in question was a Lord of the Rings trilogy on Blu-Ray disk for $7.99, an powerful deal for a product that regularly sells for nearly $80.
One consumer who got caught up in Target’s situation was Omaha, NE, resident Scott Krusemark, who happens to work as a product manager at a payments processing company. (Krusemark, as did other consumers interviewed for this report, shared with us E-mails and copies of receipts.)
Editor’s Note:
Two days after receiving confirmation of his order, Krusemark got an E-Mail from Target that didn’t cancel the order but informed him there would be an “unexpected delay” in shipping, a lag that might mean the movies would not show up before Christmas Eve. The cancellation didn’t become clear until Sunday (Nov. 28) evening, when Target.com sent Krusemark an E-Mail informing him that, “Unfortunately, due to the high demand for the following item” it was no longer available from any of Target’s sources.
“So now it’s Sunday evening,” Krusemark said. “And since they took so long to cancel the order, the sale is over. I’m wondering if I can price-match the copy that I bought on Wednesday.” After a lot of back-and-forth, Krusemark got a Target store manager to give him the product at the $7.99 price.
Target spokeswoman Jenna Reck provided a short statement from the company that blamed the whole mess on a pricing misprint. “The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, rather than the individual DVDs, was incorrectly featured during the 2-Day Sale last week in stores and online at $7.99 instead of the actual retail price of $74.99. Target.com honored the lower price for our guests for as many units as were in stock, but unfortunately had to cancel additional online orders when the product quickly oversold our supply.”
But that’s the key issue. The Target system never should have confirmed any orders once its stock was emptied, making this not a pricing glitch but an inventory-checking glitch.
-Marc
December 2nd, 2010 at 10:21 am
In Brick and Mortar operations we called the time between customer selection and inventory update (ie. the time between the customer removing it from the shelf and the POS system deducting it from inventory) the “buggy factor”.
Something we all(should have)learned to address in warehouse and online systems long ago …..
December 2nd, 2010 at 11:29 am
This is NOT the first time that major retailers have included “doorbuster” black friday deals online. I have sucessfully purchased them online several times in the past. Fry’s has a history of “inventory glitches” on Black Friday year after year. More like, bait and switch to sabotage our competition.
December 2nd, 2010 at 11:29 am
Our warehouse software reduces the “on-hand” inventory and increases “committed” inventory when an order is placed, and then reduces “committed” and increases “pending” when the order is being picked. “Pending” is reduced when the order is shipped, and the sale is posted. If the order is canceled at any point, the quantity is “returned” to “on-hand”.
It would seem that using this technique would work for online shopping carts: “committed” means in the cart and “pending” means the shopper is checking out.
Perhaps the problem is that the software for managing website sales wasn’t designed by people with warehousing experience?
December 2nd, 2010 at 12:25 pm
Having managed a warehouse with only On Order/On Hand inventory, and no Work In Progress (WIP) flags I can’t begin to tell you the times that causes problems with overcommitment to meeting a customer’s needs, with the corresponding anger from both sales and the customer.
December 2nd, 2010 at 1:47 pm
These types of inventory “glitches” are much more common than the article implies. Doing a search for past snafus, you’ll eventually find many instances of these questionable practices where the customer receives nothing but poor treatment from the retailer. This is especially true with Frys.com.
December 2nd, 2010 at 5:16 pm
@Bob – Having to commit inventory when items are put in a online shopping cart is a bad practice as > 90% shopping carts are abandoned, and depending on the system, may not be reclaimed for up to several hours. That would lead huge opportunity costs. Additionally, it will allow a potential Denial of Service attack by someone adding a large amount of items in a cart and walking away from the browser.
December 6th, 2010 at 8:53 am
The more idiot retailers continue their gimmicks, the more they get burned. See what happens when people with IQ’s in the single digits try and think?
February 3rd, 2011 at 6:50 pm
isn’t this the same problem faced by vendors like ticketmaster for concert tickets? anyone who has ever bought tickets for a concert there gets the message, “complete your purchase in 3 minutes or else your seats get released.”
seems like a fairly easy solution, no?