Reader Chaely C tried to return a gift to Urban Outfitters, only to find that the website in the store showed that her item was on sale for $19. Chaely knew her friends paid $58 for the item via Urban Outfitter’s website, and told the cashier this.
The cashier pulled up the Urban Outfitter’s website on her computer and showed Chaely the bag with the sale price of $19. After calling her roommate to confirm that the “real” website still showed the bag at $58, Chaely complained to the manager, but was refused additional store credit. She took her bag and went home.
Sure enough, when she got home, the website said the bag was $58. She was never able to return the item for its full price and now it’s just sitting in her closet. She’s wondering if there’s anyone out there that can explain why Urban Outfitter’s website said one price in the store and another price when viewed at home from her computer.
Anyone?
Here’s Chaely’s letter:
I was just reading the latest Consumerist update about the Best Buy secret in-store only website (dated 12/27/07) and realized that it sounded strikingly similar to an experience I had with the mega hipster-magnet store Urban Outfitters. I wonder if anyone has any experience or insight into this particular company and their undoubtedly twisted pricing scams.
Back in August I had a birthday and my roommates decided to pool their money to buy me a single gift. They ended up purchasing a handbag from UrbanOutfitters.com at the cost of $58. It was gift boxed and sent to our house with a gift receipt (no bar code, no price, just a packing slip basically). I opened it and unfortunately didn’t quite fall in love with the handbag like my roommates had hoped I would. No worries, I work only a few blocks from our only local Urban Outfitters retail store. I’ll just return it. I checked online to make sure it was, indeed, still worth $58 since some time had passed between the order and my actual birthday (maybe 3 weeks). It was definitely $58 on the website when I checked from my office at about 4pm.
My first attempt to return the bag at about 5:15pm that same day was a feeble one. The girl at the register (with the help of her manager – maybe she was new) couldn’t scan any tags or slips to make the return because there weren’t any included in the package. Manager found the bag in a different color and attempted to scan THAT tag but the tag had fallen off. He then told her to look it up online to get the SKU number and just type that in to make the return. She looked it up on their website, copied down the number, then proceeded with the transaction. I was handed a gift card and a receipt and I wandered off into the store to shop. For some reason I was struck with an urge to check the receipt and realized that the card she had given me only had about $21 on it. She had refunded me $19 plus tax for the $58 bag.
I went back to the girl at the counter and informed her that she had only given me $21 when the website had, in fact, listed the price at $58 only an hour earlier. She apologized and pulled up the website on her computer. She flipped the screen around and presented what appeared to be their regular website, only this time it said that the bag was $19 – about $20 cheaper than any comparable sized handbags were on that site, to my knowledge. Exasperated, I told her that I couldn’t even buy the OTHER bag that I wanted with the gift card (which was also $58 but ONLY available through the website) so I might as well take the original bag back. She pulled the gift box out of the trash, re-packed the original bag, and cut up the gift card.
I immediately left the store and called my roommate to ask her to check the website. “According to the website it’s still $58,” she said, “it’s not on sale as far as I can tell.” I walked back into the store and asked the girl to get her manager. I explained to him that my roommate was on the phone with me and looking at the website and only seeing the original $58 price on the website. He apologized saying that he couldn’t change what price came up when the SKU was typed in. “It’s in the system that way,” he said. He suggested that maybe it’s GOING on sale this week but wouldn’t do anything to help but to offer to issue another $21 gift card.
For various reasons I still have the stupid bag sitting in its gift box in my living room. My roommate probably could have used the e-mail confirmation to return the back online for its original price but that’s another story completely. My concern, however, is how their website, which I accessed from several different computers to check its authenticity and my sanity, showed the price as being $58 for about three solid months. I can’t understand how the website in-store, which I witnessed with my own two eyes, twice showed that the bag was on sale months before it ever changed on their public website.
Are any readers Urban Outfitters employees or just loyalists who can explain this? Has anyone else had this problem with the already overpriced, soul-sucking retailer? I would love to know if this was an isolated incident or another case of the mysterious Secret In-Store Website.
Thanks,
Chaely C
(Photo:emilybean)
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urban outfitters and anthropologie are the same group. my GF found her $35 anthropologie sunglasses at UO for $18. Always check both places for accessories and crappy chinese-made turds before purchasing! also, we recently found UO $35 t-shirts at Nordstrom for 1/2 the price. yowza!
by the way, UO and Anthro donate a lot of $$$ to the republican party, so if your leftist style is that important, try to remember that the ironic tshirts and skull-screenprinted plates are helping to kill innocent people on the other side of the planet in the name of religion and oil. sorry for being a debbie downer! waaa wahhhhhhhhhh!!!
iPhone + Safari = Identifying scams
Not sure if somebody already said it, but there’s always a chance that the room mate was pulling up an old (locally cached) version of the site, which would explain the discrepancy.
@Buran:
Dunno, I’m just going by what *she* said.
I actually work for Anthropologie and we have the same inventory/register system as Urban Outfitters and Free People. We even occasionally get our internet and catalogue return invoices on UO paper. Part of the protocol when making an online/catalogue return is to call “Catalogue” to let them know the customer is making a return using the “order number” that is found on the invoice. The Catalogue has all the information necessary to make the proper return (sku number, amount paid, method of payment). Even if you don’t have the invoice, they’re able to look it up using the name and address of the person who made the order.
Addressing the “secret website” issue… yes, there are sometimes discrepancies between instore systems and online prices but our main priority is customer satisfaction and we always give the customer whichever price is more beneficial to them. There is no “secret website”. Just lazy assholes who work at your store.
i work at urban and i’m a cashier that has been there for almost 2 years and i can tell u that we do not have a secret in store online store. i use it all the time and we use the same exact one that you see at home.
the only explanation that i can give for this is that when your friend purchased the bag she received a discount that she might have not noticed and when we pulled up her order on our register it showed that your friend actually paid $19 and not $58.