A couple of tips came in on Wednesday morning from a few surprised guys pointing to the Jos. A. Bank website.
The Allen Edmonds “Nathan” Shoe, basically the 5th Ave, was on sale for $39.98.
Forty. Dollars.
Put an order in? Sure… why not? But something wasn’t right. That deal was just way too good to be true. When Jos. A. Bank realized that something was amiss (it was a “glitch”), they started to cancel some orders. Yet some people heard from customer service that some orders might end up getting fulfilled (See Joe C. and Sweyn V. over here).
But should they really have had to fulfill any of those orders?
Haven’t we all made a simple mistake, a typo, or crossed a wire a few times in our lives that led to a serious misunderstanding?
And was this really a misunderstanding at all? $40 for a pair of Allen Edmonds, all sizes available, in three shades?
Forget the goody-two-shoes/do unto others side of this debate. What about not killing the goose laying them golden eggs? (And no, Jos. A. Bank isn’t a goose many of us take a gander at all that often, but stay with me here…)
Take the practice of adjusting, or hacking cookies in order to get a higher % off code. This can happen during “mystery deal” or select-customer sales. A retailer sends out an email blast, you click through to their site, and you get a pop up notification of either 30% off, 40% off, or if you’re lucky, 50% off your order. Someone pretty damn clever figured out that the level of discount was triggered by a signal within the guts of your web browser. And to get that greater discount, you could adjust the “cookie” responsible for that signal, and get the 50%.
That fair game?
And if it is, if you were a retailer… would you keep running those sales?
In a way, expecting the fulfillment of a deal that’s too good to be true is a little like always using your DVR to watch TV. If you have a favorite, can’t-miss show, yet you always set your DVR and wait 20 minutes until after it’s started so you can skip the commercials… aren’t you killing what you love?
Hunting for a good deal is great. Being a smart consumer is… smart. But game the system, and a chilling effect might cause the attrition of otherwise decent, plentiful promotions, since retailers now have to make up the financial ground they’ve lost to the every-so-often “glitch”.
The problem is, where do you draw the line?
Top Photo Credit.
Nah they don’t have to honor any of the orders if it’s a mistake.
I part-time at a retail store and I recently tagged a men’s suit jacket for $23.70 instead of $237.00 by mistake. A customer yelled at me because I wouldn’t honor the price even after I explained and apologized over and over again. In the end I just said “NO” and he walked out saying he’d never return. He came back a few weeks later during a 40% off sale though.
They’re under no obligation to fulfill any orders as a result of this. In almost any website or store’s terms of service, it states clearly that they will not be held responsible for mistakes in pricing. From Jos. A. Bank’s ToS:
“Jos. A. Bank reserves the right to correct errors and to update product information at any time, including after an order has been submitted and confirmed. Prices and merchandise shown on this website do not represent an offer to sell.”
I think it’s hilarious that folks take the argument of, “when I clicked, ‘Buy,’ they agreed to sell me those shoes for that price! It was a contract!” Come on. If YOUR company accidentally “sold” 1,000 (a conservative estimate) of your product at 1/10th the actual price.. what would you do? Say it was a $100 product. You can’t honestly tell me you’d take a $90,000 loss when all it takes to allay most customers is an apology of error, and maybe a 10-20% coupon on a future purchase. Use your head.
I placed my order at 1:20. They didn’t honor it.
Of course they don’t have to honor it. What I’m more worried about is the fact they processed my order, their charge cleared my credit card, and i’ve yet to recieve my money back.
I don’t think it’s really the consumer’s responsibility to correct the retailer’s mistakes. I say go ahead and put in the order, delete your cookies or whatever, and let the business decide how to handle it. Consider it a win if they fill the order, and don’t get upset if they don’t. It’s their job to get us to pay more for their stuff, not ours.
Wow come on. They said “orders received on July 3, 2013, prior to 1:30pm Eastern Time, for the Allen Edmonds Nathan shoe will not be filled’
I know its not the best wording but prior to means even if you ordered before 1:30 pm they will not honor it. So at 1:30 they probably fixed the price so if you ordered at full price of course they will honor your purchase.
As far as the 1:30 PM “cut-off” time. Jos.A.Bank said they would cancel all orders prior to 1:30 PM. This is because pricing was corrected by 1:30 PM so of course they would honor orders placed after 1:30 PM, which would have been for $335.
May be a typo above and I know a lot of people are misreading the email from Jos.A.Bank. It states:
Due to a pricing error on our website, orders received on July 3, 2013, prior to 1:30pm Eastern Time, for the Allen Edmonds Nathan shoe will not be filled.
>> …orders received … prior to 1:30pm … will *not* be filled.
At 1:30p the mistake was fixed. Some people who ordered very early in the deal may have had their item processed & shipped before the issue was found, but those are the vast minority.
This seems to be the case with mine. JAB even told me they are in the process of rerouting the shipments back… while they hold onto my cash.
I was disappointed that I didn’t get the shoes, but certainly they were well within their rights to cancel the order. What annoys me is that they take a while (I forget how long – I think it’s 3-5 business days) to trigger the refund. That means they’re earning interest on my money. I’m fine with “oops, price mistake, order cancelled, money refunded”. I’m less fine with giving them a no-interest loan.
The email said that all orders PRIOR to 1:30 will be cancelled. They didn’t fix the error until after 1:30
It’s weird to see this sort of hand-wringing concern here, considering that Wednesday you were telling everyone “It’s going into the cart at this price.” Where is the “cheating” here? You put your order in and they either honor it or they don’t.
This is a lot different than manipulating cookies to get a deal that was intended for someone else.
If you read the article, joe mentions a rumor going around that orders placed before 130 were being honored. I responded to say that, for me at least, that wasn’t the case.
Yep, I used to Paypal to expedite the process, and it has yet to be credited back as of 9:38 this morning.
Yeah, I know. The email Jos A Bank said they canceled orders prior to 1:30. So just clearing it up.
I’m not that upset. I’ve yet to find one person whose order was honored. Anyone? Bueller?
I think that there are two separate issues here: 1) taking advantage of pricing errors, and 2) gaming flash deals and mystery coupons.
As far as I’m concerned, taking advantage of an insane discount that is probably a mistake is a victimless crime. When I clicked “Confirm Order” I did so while fully anticipating a cancelled order. Anyone who feels entitled to this price is not thinking clearly. That said, if it had turned out that it WAS a legit sale – or that Jos A. Bank was planning on honoring the sales – those who didn’t take part would feel like schmucks.
With regard to gaming mystery coupons: I am a little more conflicted on this. Presumably I could get a different discount on my phone, iPad, and computer, and would ultimately take advantage of the best discount there. So, while there is a bit of chicanery involved with disabling or altering cookies to get the best rate, the nature of these deals means that I’m not depriving anyone else of a deal (in the present, at least) by getting one myself, and the company is ultimately getting their sale.
Companies have known since the beginning of time that discounts drive business. If Bed, Bath & Beyond was losing a significant amount of money on the 50% deals, do you think they’d be sending new coupons to my wife every other day? These coupons get people in the door, and people taking advantage of them just means more business. They may alter their deal structure because of gaming, but companies know what keeps the money rolling in.
People, including myself, were just very disappointed because everybody thought they won a freaking jackpot but deep down, they also knew it was too good to be true and it was just simply a matter of… greed, lol
Yeah, that part was what’s really wrong here. Too good to be true deal is fine but how they handle it was poor, imo. Their little email was simply crappy and now they got thousands of customers with pending credit card transaction. Not even a discount coupon to cheer things up, ha
You can either try to take advantage of a “too good to be true” deal or not. The main reason not to take advantage is because you feel that it’s wrong. Retailers will continue to run sales even if people manipulate the system, but how they run sales may change to minimize the negative impact.
The upside of an influx of activity is that it puts a spotlight on an exploit. The part I have trouble with is when a failed attempt turns into consumer anger and entitlement.
Ditto. That’s my issue with Banks; double-stupid and taints me from looking at their actually priced goods.
Don’t hate the player, hate the game. If companies don’t want to have complicated discount codes and schemes, they don’t have to. If they want to have them, the need to be prepared for some to take advantage as best they can.
And yes, when there’s a legitimate mistake, a company can reserve the right to cancel. Just be prepared for complainers…
AH. Got it now. Thanks. Totally misread that. There were also others in the comments who talked to customer service reps who said some orders might be fulfilled (if you had ordered only one or two pairs, etc… seems like that ended up not being the case?)
I didn’t get one of those emails. I received a “Sold Out” email on the 4th (I ordered before 1PM on the 3rd):
“Thank you for your recent order. Unfortunately, the
merchandise listed below is no longer available. Prepaid
orders will be refunded.”
Regardless…they do not have to honor pricing mistakes. Just my two cents, however, it was not blatantly clear that it was a pricing mistake. This is a company that routinely has 75% off sales. For example, we’ve all heard about their buy 1 suit, get 3 free sales! Ha… so a shoe for 75% off isn’t out of the realm of possibility. The point is… people did nothing wrong by adding the product to their carts and checking out.
Seconded. I have no problem putting in an order on the off chance that they decide to honor it. But to me, it’s weird to want to enforce a pricing mistake in court, and it’s wrong to manipulate cookies to game the deal.
Unfortunately, this is not an especially easy thing to fix — even if Jos. A Bank processes a credit, you may not see it for several business days. Given the holiday last week, I’m not at all surprised that many people don’t yet have their money back. It’s not necessarily a failing on Jos. A Bank’s part.
You’re not really giving them a no-interest loan, though — chances are, they’ve already credited you, and there’s a bank somewhere getting a no-interest, short-term loan.
You’re probably right – they probably partner with a finance house, and the finance house keeps the breadcrumbs that occur as noise / slack in the system. But the bottom line is that means that someone, somewhere in the chain has an incentive to do this (additionally, how many of us spent 1000% more time on the Joseph Banks website than we ever would otherwise that day? How many of us gave tracking / marketing information they’d be willing to pay (a little) for?). I don’t think it’s a conspiracy, and I don’t want my $0.00001 of interest back. It’s the principle, and the incentives – when they screw up with the price like that, they gain in more ways than they should (and only lose in one, though it’s a big one). I just feel like a price mistake has a moral obligation associated with it not to profit from it, even in small ways. The exception is in the smart apology – “I’m sorry about this price mistake – here’s a free shipping coupon code, or 10% off your next order” – something small (that a deal-oriented shopper who jumps on a price mistake would already find with a quick google search before buying, anyhow) to put material weight behind their “oops”.
This happened to Suitsupply in the fall, they had a brown check suit listed at 269 instead of 469. I called them and told them about it, as they’re a great company, but if it had been a suit I wanted I’m not sure I’d have been as honest.
$40 out of $355 is 90% off…
Plus, it’s Allen Edmonds. No AEs are 90% off, lol
Am I the only person who’s going to argue the other side here? I think that modifying cookies to get a bigger discount than you’re entitled to is clearly cheating. But if they post a price, I think they should honor it.
When I did some consulting on the side a few years ago, I’d estimate the workload and quote a price. Sometimes, I’d come in under, sometimes over. Once or twice, though, my estimates were clearly off – and I didn’t realize that until the process was well underway. When I signed a piece of paper saying “this will be $7,000-$10,000” and it was clearly going to be more like $20,000 when looking at the hourly rate I was charging and my expenses, I let the client know, and capped the cost at just under $10,000. Why? It was my fault for estimating wrong.
It’s Jos A Bank’s fault for posting an incorrect price. They may not legally have to honor it, and they may put a disclaimer on their ToS saying they don’t have to, but I still think when you post a price, as a merchant, that’s your promise with your customer. If they really were losing an insane amount on this (retail markups are huge, buy not that huge, and who knows how many orders they had), they should have issued an actual apology to customers AND given them a genuine “I’m sorry” gift that would ease the pain (like a $40 gift certificate, with no minimum, for example).
Less hand-wringing, and more eye-rolling of those who feel entitled to a pair of AEs for $40, when its clearly a mistake. I didn’t order a pair myself.
I think everyone was aware the price was probably a mistake, and actually receiving the shoes at that price would be “getting away with it.” That said, I wouldn’t blame people if this experience soured them on Jos. A Banks.
I think there’s a difference between estimating wrong, and what appeared to be some sort of typo on the website.
I tend to think if the cookie altering was causing BR/Gap/Old Navy to take a big enough hit, then they would have quit doing it by now. Fact is, they’ve done it half a dozen times in almost as many weeks. I’m betting that they are still making a ton of money even at 40-50% off and the thrill of people thinking they are scamming the system is bringing in a ton of money. For all we know, they are doing way better on those sales as a result of the cookie alterations.
It’s still a posted price. My girlfriend does web content stuff for a major accessories chain’s website, and nothing goes on without being checked and rechecked.
My point is that the mistake clearly is the retailer’s, not the customer’s. And the way to treat your customers right is to not blame them for your mistakes. If you can’t honor the price, truly, then tell them that, but also, make it clear that you know you’re in the wrong and do something to make it up to them.
If we don’t allow for the fact that people sometimes make mistakes, then unscrupulous and/or insane people will be scouring the Internets for pricing typos and demanding satisfaction when they can’t actually get their Coach purse or whatever for $4.99 instead of $499. The people who frequent this site aren’t going to shop at Jos. A Banks anyway.
Isn’t that the cost of doing business on a deal that is too good to be true? You place an order that’s too good to be true and may or may not be honored. You as the consumer are placing an order banking on the idea that the deal will pass. If I cancel an order or return an item I do so with the knowledge that the money wont automatically return to my credit card, but some lag time exists. I consider this the same type of circumstance. You rolled the dice and it didn’t pan out. You’ll get your money back, but the cost of taking a chance is the lag time it takes for your credit card to cancel the charge. The way I see it is that If you don’t want to deal with the cost involved, don’t play the game.
It’s 11:30am.
You walk into the store and see the shoes.
You squint, rub your eyes, pinch yourself, double and triple check but the price does indeed say $39.99.
You open your wallet, you pay and walk out.
Should you expect a knock at the door at 1:30 saying: “Sorry! We’re going to need those back.”?
That’s my problem with this.
I wouldn’t call it “cheating” – however, the amount of people whining that they didn’t get the Allen Edmonds Fifth Avenue shoes for $40 shows me a sense of entitlement. And that’s the upsetting part out of all of this.
A lot of people live in this imaginary world where they try to find a quick fix or take a short cut and feel entitled to the results. The people who saw this “deal” (in reality, a mistake) and got in before Jos A Bank fixed it thought they found a shortcut and suddenly actually deserved this for their cunning and for going around the actual system. I think that’s the bigger problem here.
And some of the responses have been kinda sad. “Jos A Bank frequently runs stuff 50% off”, “they should give people free credits”, “they made the mistake, they shoudl honour it”.. come on, you knew what you were getting into. Don’t be like that. Move on with your life and, hey, if the Fifth Avenues come on sale for $240 during Nordstrom’s Annual Sale… grab them, because they’re worth every penny.
Oh come on, these two situations are not at all analogous.
1) The magnitude of losses of one pair of shoes in one store would be in the hundreds or thousands of dollars. This one very easily would have been in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
2) In your situation, you interacted with a salesperson, physically had the shoes in your hand and went home with them. Did that happen in this situation? No, you got an automated confirmation through a computer system. And it was for a major oversight
3) You are not entitled to take advantage of every mistake out there.
I don’t know. If Jos a Banks was the type of company to realize that they had made a mistake, accept that it was their mistake to make and honor it, I would likely be a Jos A Banks customer. They would likely have a mentality that said they valued their customer relationships and their word.. As a matter of fact they had a chance to really make this a positive. Had they honored the price, sent an email to those customers with a statement of “We made a mistake, we’re going to honor it, we hope that you will continue to visit our site and store” they likely would have gained quite a few new customers. You likely would be writing a post not about how people shouldn’t take advantage of Jos. A Banks, but how well they handled themselves.
If I go to a restaurant, mean to leave a 20 dollar tip and leave a 100 dollar bill there instead should I be able to go the next day and say “sorry, I left you too much, I’m gonna need that back?”
I must respectfully disagree with you.
1) I’m not talking about losses. I’m offering an example. Yes, this example would’ve cost them a lot less, but the point is that the deal was completed in spite of the price being a mistake.
2) In the example, there was interaction with a Salesperson. In reality, this example would’ve proven accurate had it happened. The salesperson would’ve had to honor the price it rung up. The only difference here is that in e-commerce, you don’t need to deal with a salesperson. However, many folks called and did indeed talk with a representative.
3) It wasn’t too far fetched for JAB to offer such outlandish deal. It was a mistake, but many didn’t know with 100% certainty that it was. We now know it is a mistake, but in the example… you got the shoes – even though it was a mistake.
The worst thing about giving this JOS a bank sale a shot isn’t that the deal wasn’t honored, that was to be expected. The worst thing is that my cookies now think I’m a jos a bank shopper and I have to see their ads everywhere I go.
I take part in price mistake (online only) and simply move on if it’s cancelled. I do the coupon hacking at BR if I can get 60%-70% off. First, retailers will never fulfill all the orders and if some slip by it’s usually random. Secondly, only a minority seek “true” deals or mistakes, the majority looks only at advertized deals, so there is very little loss for retailers. Lastly the markup for clothes retailers (at least for clothes made in Asia) is huge.
yeah unfortunately it wasn’t. I ordered one pair around 10 am CDT as soon as I saw them post on SF and it still was canceled.
I love threats like that. “Oh no, I’m going to lose some business from a sociopath. Please don’t tell all of your similarly defective friends about this experience, I worry they might stay away.”
I don’t think there’s anything necessarily unethical about taking advantage of seller mistakes. The seller has the power and authority to set its prices, and the seller is the one with the financial incentive and manpower to monitor its business for price accuracy. It is not incumbent on the buyer to do the seller’s job for it.
However, I don’t think the buyer has much cause to complain when the seller does catch its own mistakes and chooses not to honor deals made under mistaken terms, especially when the mistake is so dramatic (basically a 90% discount on an expensive, desirable item). It is a little amusing to see so many people upset when they thought $40 was peanuts to blow on a pair of shoes, but now it is some kind of moral crime that they haven’t gotten their whole $40 back yet – as though they’ve never gone through a multi-day refund process before, or they never anticipated that JAB could possibly cancel and refund their order.
Additionally, I do wonder about the long-term wisdom of trying to take as much advantage as possible of every deal and loophole that comes our way. The ability to “cheat” on things like this and random cookies-based sales really depends on everyone else NOT cheating. If BR offers me 20, 30, or 40% off my order and one person switches their 20 to 40%, that isn’t going to have much impact on the overall business. But if BR allocates 5% of its randomly generated discounts to be 40% discounts, and it suddenly finds that 50% of discounted purchases are being made with that 40% discount, how many more discounts like that do you think they’re going to offer? At some point, when armies of buyers are marching through the loopholes, the business will figure out what’s going on and close the loopholes entirely. Taking excess advantage of the loopholes may ultimately be counter-productive in the long term.
Regardless of whether or not they honor the deal, their suits are still going to fit like burlap sacks, so I don’t know how many from the Dappered crowd would be converted by a pledge to honor the $40 price.
The two situations are not remotely similar. They’re not forcibly taking back shoes you already had in your ownership and possession. That would be called theft. This is more like you placing a special mail order with the store at 11:30, and the store calling you at 1:30pm the same day to apologize and tell you the listed price was grossly mistaken and they need to cancel your order.
Maybe if JAB actually shipped you the $40 shoes, then called you commanding you to ship them back, your analogy might make sense.
Right – the level of apparently un-self-conscious rationalization here is nothing short of alarming. You can’t possibly tell me that anyone with half a brain and any familiarity with Allen Edmonds’ pricing could believe that a 90% discount is not an error. Even pre-owned AEs on eBay typically sell for well over $40.
I don’t hold it against people for trying to take advantage of the error (heck, I tried myself) but to pretend that the obvious error might have been a legitimate deal, or that JAB should be held to its error anyway because, well, I don’t know, just because and dammit I caught the error before they fixed it so I want my cheap shoes NOW, is pretty pathetic to me.
Ha! Collateral damage. Damn.
There is a pretty significant difference between JAB’s self-branded, made-in-China stuff, which they give an artificially inflated MSRP specifically to enable seemingly massive markdowns, and highly desirable, US-made, third party merchandise from a reputable seller like Allen Edmonds, from which discounts almost never exceed 30% off even on the rare occasion when they DO go on sale.
Additionally, 90% off a single item with no other strings attached would be unusual, even if it were for JAB’s own branded merchandise. JAB seems to offer its best deals and discounts for bulk purchases (buy 1, get one half-off… buy 3, get 2 free, etc.). And even those discounts, as you noted, seem to top out at the 75% mark.
If you managed to convince yourself that 90% off Allen Edmonds shoes could possibly be a legitimate sale price, it is only because you wanted it to be true, and not because it was a reasonable thing to believe.
What? You guys didn’t get your shoes delivered? I received all three pairs this morning. Finest $108 I’ve ever spent (I used a 10% discount code).
“The salesperson would’ve had to honor the price it rung up.”
No, they don’t “have to” do anything. This is the entire problem with your argument. No one owes you anything.
Bond,
This is merely an example, I am not saying anyone owes me anything.
If a salesperson rings an item and it comes up the wrong price, maybe double checks their internal system or their website and the numbers match… would the salesperson say: “Sorry, no can do!”? In this case, many folks report making a call and speaking to a representative and all went smoothly (so they report). I understand this is just a theoretical and not fact but try to see it from that side.
BenR,
You are most certainly correct, it would be theft. The only reason I framed it the way I did is to highlight the difference between doing business over a brick and mortar and online. Same store, same product just different modus operandi.
I’m shocked that it wasn’t obvious to you because is was obvious to everybody else. If you looked at the comments for the Dappered post or any other forum, you would have seen nothing but disbelief about the price and people hoping (and praying) that it could possibly be true.
I’m pretty sure their poor quality suits and borderline predatory pricing strategies should sour customers on Jos. A Bank more not allowing customers to take advantage of a gross pricing error.
Quoting California B&P Code, 12024.2.
(a) It is unlawful for any person, at the time of sale of a commodity, to do any of the following:
(1) Charge an amount greater than the price, or to compute an amount greater than a true extension of a price per unit, that is then advertised, posted, marked, displayed, or quoted for that commodity.
(2) Charge an amount greater than the lowest price posted on the commodity itself or on a shelf tag that corresponds to the commodity, notwithstanding any limitation of the time period for which the posted price is in effect.(b) A violation of this section is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of not less than twenty-five dollars ($25) nor more than one thousand dollars ($1,000), by imprisonment in the county jail for a period not exceeding one year, or by both, if the violation is willful or grossly negligent, or when the overcharge is more than one dollar ($1).
(c) A violation of this section is an infraction punishable by a fine of not more than one hundred dollars ($100) when the overcharge is one dollar ($1) or less.
(d) As used in subdivisions (b) and (c), “overcharge” means the amount by which the charge for a commodity exceeds a price that is advertised, posted, marked, displayed, or quoted to that consumer for that commodity at the time of sale.
(e) Except as provided in subdivision (f), for purposes of this section, when more than one price for the same commodity is advertised, posted, marked, displayed, or quoted, the person offering the commodity for sale shall charge the lowest of those prices.
(f) Pricing may be subject to a condition of sale, such as membership in a retailer-sponsored club, the purchase of a minimum quantity, or the purchase of multiples of the same item, provided that the condition is conspicuously posted in the same location as the price.
that is a bit different. In some states if an item is tagged as a specific price it is technically against the law to not give that customer that price as marked.
First, there is no indication that the original commenter is in California. So I’m not sure why you would assume a California law is relevant.
Second, quoting from a law is not helpful without context – for example, whether simply refusing to make a sale still counts as an “overcharge” (seems unlikely), or what qualifies as a “commodity” for the purposes of the law, and so on.
What is wrong with you people? It was a mistake that you knowingly took advantage of… and now you’re trying to quote law here?
1) They obviously have A LOT more than their usual number of refunds to process these past few days–two of which the banks were closed.
2) Even once a retailer processes a credit or debit refund on their end, it can still take a day or two (or more) for your CC company, bank, or CU to credit it back to your account.
so many people rustled on the styleforum thread because they couldnt work the system for a pair at $40.. not enough to grab seconds from the shoebank or Krystle at Jefferson with, at most times no known defect, at a deep discount,, people were legit upset at the outcome hahahaha
there was a picture on MFA of a guy who got an instore pricematch on 4 pairs. whether that was legit or not, I dont know. but that’s the only instance I’ve heard of.
I don’t really have a lot to say about the JAB pricing error; I can’t help but imagine that the sort of person who is seriously upset at an obvious mistake not being resolved in his or her favor would also be viciously defending the right not to fulfill orders if the positions were reversed.
Exploiting the flaws in client-side data (be it cookies, javascript, whatever) however I’m going to absolutely call cheating (at best, in bad taste and either way killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.) When sellers start seeing more high face value coupons being redeemed than they send out, they’re not necessarily just going to upgrade infrastructure to validate discounts or implement unique coupon codes or anything that an engineer might come up with, the discounts might (as other posters suggest) simply dry up, to our collective loss.
False. You can simply refuse to make the sale, like BenR mention above.
I did receive a pair in the store. Called ahead of time, let the employee I spoke with know that I did not know if it was a mistake or not, but he printed off the website price and said he would honor it.