Oops?

I know people will get salty that they're not getting the 12 plates for the advertised price, but I feel this is a fair resolution as long as they get to keep the one plate and have their money returned.

I buy the explanation. That price was too good to be true.

@Ameer Hashw: And yet too poor not to be true. For 12 plates the price is amazing, but for 1 it's even LESS believable. Outrageously overpriced.

There should be some responsibility on the part of the seller. When you list something to sell, you should check that the UPC code is correct and displays accurately. If I were to sell a softcover book, but the Amazon listing says it is a hardcover, I can't sell my copy even if it has the same UPC code.

@winshape: Apparently its a function of how the Amazon Marketplace works. One seller changes the description, and it can sometimes be reflected across the entire UPC listing. I've seen this argument before somewhere with colors not being available or something like that. It's purely on Amazon for how their system works.

Just because a price was inaccurately offered doesn't mean it wasn't offered, and it wasn't entirely out of the realm of believability so that the person accepting the offer by making the purchase should have known something was wrong.

Basically, Bealls Florida should have shipped what they advertised at the price advertised and gone after Amazon for their loss. Or, perhaps, not shipping anything at all. But giving people ONE plate instead of the twelve that the ad clearly stated (several times) for the same price was just wrong.

@Darrone:

Ah, but the price stickers on the plates themselves actually read $4.99

...!!!!!!

No love for Lee Merriweather?

@Wit:

i didnt go to their site to view this, but it sounds like the sku was matched wrong, so they wouldnt have KNOWN they were sending the wrong product till someone complained...

@Wit:

This is pretty much how I see it too.

I still don't entirely buy their explanation, but at least they got around to it eventually.

What gets me is that it seemed apparent that they knew very well that people were expecting to get their "boxes of 12" but did absolutely nothing to correct the "mistake" before any merchandise was shipped out. No notification beforehand, no confirmation, nothing. That seems a bit sketchy to me. Especially considering how snippy they've apparently with the unlucky customers who dared inquire about it.

@Oranges w/ Cheese: I agree that Amazon's system is teh suxxors, but unless you are the original author of the listing you can only change certain parts of it - not the title of the product. In this case, the title contained the reference to "12 pieces".

This is what happened:

Boss: IT guy! We got a shipment of plates, but some are broken. List the unbroken plates on our website as single plates.
IT Guy: Will do!

IT Guy (to self): Hmmmm... our database requires a UPC, but these single plates don't have a UPC. I'll just use the UPC from the box.

Boss: IT guy! I want to sell our products on Amazon.com. List everything we sell.
IT Guy: Ok boss! I'll just export our product database as a list of UPCs and the current price and inventory, and I'll import that on Amazon's site.

Some time passes, someone notices the price discrepancy, it gets posted to deal sites, people clamor for the great deal, sadness ensues.

@MattO: If that's the case, then I can let them off the hook... but their site says exactly what's quoted above, so there's no more help there.

@veg-o-matic: Yep, that's what I thought, too. If nothing else, the sudden influx of orders on the item probably should've raised a warning flag somewhere.

Amazon uses Mechanical Turk to merge listings in their catalog that are the same. It's quite possible that the bots people use to do that work which just say YES to everything (so they can leave it running and just get paid for doing nothing) said YES to the 12 piece and the 1 piece. That would explain how they got merged.

@veg-o-matic:
goodness.. someone's going to injure themselves tripping over all the words I'm dropping.

should be.. "how snippy they've apparently BEEN"

Firefox eated my present perfects!

I'd have been just fine with the mistake if they had contacted me prior to shipping the items to let me know, and offer me a refund or the one plate, bowl, and dessert plate. That's how it should have been done, and no one can really argue that.

Instead, now I have one place setting, and am pretty disappointed. I said as much to Bealls when they let me know I needed to file a claim with Amazon, and their response was basically "Too bad."

It was an AMAZING deal. Good enough that I was expecting that phone call. Bad service all around.

Looks like amazon still hasn't fixed it as of 1142am EDT

[www.amazon.com]

@I_am_Awesome: this is why IT guy shouldn't be in charge of posting items. IT Guy enables sales or marketing or pricing to post items on site.

/IT Guy who is sick of posting crap on sites

@Oranges w/ Cheese: This was sold directly from Amazon, not via "Amazon Marketplace".

I also ordered the plates. I am sorry, but if it was advertised at 12 pieces, It should show up as 12 pieces. Anything less than 12 pieces is purely criminal. I have actually filed criminal charges against this company for intentional defrauding of consumers. All the comments on amazon.com and here have made the detectives in a small little Illinois Town get the FBI on the horn fast, as well as the Illinois Attorney General.

As someone who has got free stuff in the multiple six figure bracket in the history of the interwebz i will say if you thought this deal was what it was you were a fool. It was obvious from the start it really meant one based on the pricing and the fact that they would losing money with shipping the way amazon run its 'zshops' or seller accounts.

Give it up you're owed nothing. If you had an issue you should've called if you legitimately expected a deal. Yes i know the first rule is you don't call. But that rule is a scammer rule. We don't call because we're dishonest and don't want to alert others of their mistakes.

@DjDynasty: Purely criminal? No, just an error - one they have offered to refund.

I surely hope the FBI has better things to deal with than this.

I think Consumerist should be applauded for their complete lack of interest in helping anyone out that got stuck in this mess. I guess we could have gotten more info on who to contact or what to do to remedy this if Consumerist didn't post the listing in the first place, then decide they would be better off avoiding the whole thing like a fat guy avoids a salad bar when it blew up.
I think the "gee, look at that. whoops!" approach they bravely took will remind me that "Morning Deals are purely an informational resource." (their new disclaimer...though I guess they don't care if the info is wrong?)

I'd like to thank Amazon for their complete apathy in the matter. I can't wait to hear back from them nearly three weeks after my initial order to find that my order was wrong (it was???) and that I am more than welcome to a refund provided I pay to ship this garbage back to them.
I guess since Bealls is claiming it's Amazon's fault, and Amazon doesn't mind losing customers to save $$$, that I will not be offered the full order I requested directly from Amazon. You know, seeing as how they were able to pick up the slack after Bealls crapped out and all.

Also a great many thanks to Bealls Florida for calling Amazon out on having a terrible system that allows you to confirm your listing before releasing it with errors that might cause you to lose money/business/prospective customers. Their complete lack of knowledge in how to sell online, their commitment to the word NO, and their can't-do attitude reminds me why I no longer live in Florida, let alone shop there.

Honestly, I know it's not a big deal for some, I know you think I should have been surprised that the price was so low and then not surprised when I didn't get what I asked for. I spent a lot of breath and typing on this. I'll have to defer to a one-word response to the entirety of this matter - BULLSHIT.

@DjDynasty:

I seriously, deeply doubt that you filed criminal charges on Bealls for this. In fact... if you have filed criminal charges and can prove that you have done so and that the FBI is involved any deeper than saying "No thanks" to the case, I'll send you 50 bucks.

@Shadowman615:
I don't think you understand what happened here. The box of 12 plates IS a product that Amazon sells. Bealls accidentally listed single plates under that 12 plate listing. There are no third party listings of any type under that product, so everything is kosher (except the fact that 9 people left 1 star reviews because a third party seller screwed up; yet another case of abuse of Amazon's feedback system, but Consumerist only reports when companies abuse it for their benefit)

@pezstar:

I'm guessing they are hamstrung by the constraints of Amazon's third party seller program. They probably don't even have your payment information; Amazon would handle all of the payment processing. The purchase happened within that system, so the refund has to go through that system.

@Randy Treibel: I'm sorry, how should I have known it was a mistake if I don't sell through Amazon and it was posted on a reputable consumer advocacy website?
I've seen a number of things on the internet for free or at might as well be free prices.
Sorry to be rude, but your 20/20 hindsight in the matter seems more foolish than my perception at the time of the sale.

@DjDynasty:

If you want your plate to be 12 pieces, I suggest you use a hammer.

@Shadowman615: Thing is, Amazon's selling it now. You think maybe since it's their error and all (so sayeth Bealls), Amazon might want to honor the pricing on their site and fill our orders through their stock?

@NoThru22: Yeah, for that special day when we all sit down to watch one person eat, the plate will come in really handy.

@Randy Treibel:

Hold on. First of all, It's a big leap from being "a fool" to being cunningly "dishonest."

Secondly, there was no way to have "known better." I said it on the original post, but apparently it bears repeating: unless we're all wholesale plateware distributors who know prices per unit, how are we to distinguish between "mistakes" and legitimate deep discounts? After all, that kind of thing is what Amazon has built its name around.

Further, had the price been really strange, like $1.83 for one box of 12, but the other boxes at the correct price, it would have seemed odd. ALL 3 items were offered in boxes of 12 at the exact same price. Where are the red flags that are supposedly so obvious?

I'm not überpissed about it enough to fight with Bealls for ever and ever, but it did seem perfectly reasonable.

dishonest fools? really? come on..

@DjDynasty: Unfortunatly what's happenned here isn't while uncommon, wouldn't be particularily unheard of. I've seen it on bulk shipments of other goods that arrive at retail outlets.

Ie, A case of product has the same SKUs as the individually packed product. I've seen a single nail cliper sell for $100 which is the price of the whole box. Causes much confusion at retail level until the main office fixes the price point.

I believe that this is what may have happenned:
The manufacturer intends the plates to be for individual sale and as such marks the SKU for the individual units on the outside of the box as this facilitates shipping/recieveing of the product.
Someone else decides that they would rather sell the plates wholesale and sticks up the SKU thinking it's (the SKU on the outside of the box) a per box code rather than a per plate code.
Craptacular stuff happens when someone else decides to sell the plates individually which would then have the same SKU as what someone else listed the box as.

Not saying this is what happenned, but this seems like a sceneario that could have occured to produce this result.

@Tony Sina:
I think the reason he's saying it should have been obvious is that Amazon sells the same item for right about 12x as much as the Bealls price. I don't know if that Amazon listing was there when people made their purchases, but if it was I think I would have figured it out.

@DjDynasty: I sorry to hear that you were temporarily defrauded out of $2.99. Did you call 911 too?

@Ameer Hashw: If I see something like that, I assume it's a clearance/close-out item, possibly bought from a liquidator.

@MattO: I agree this is the likely case.

I mentioned in another comment thread, but it's entirely possible that IF the manufacturer labeled the Case of 12 with the SKU for the individual plate (ie, they're mean't for individual sale) rather than a case code (if you aren't mean't to sell by the case, I've seen some manufacturer's do this as it facilitates the shipping/recieveing process for businesses as they can scan the box rather than having to open one up to find a scannable sku to receieve product from).

Now if someone decided they wanted to sell by the case and ASSUMED that the code on the case was a case code and listed it, anyone who then tried to sell the plates individually as intended would have the same SKU as the person who originally listed the by the case item and then we have this happenning.

Now, I haven't seen what a full case set looks like for this product, but I've seen this sort of SKUing on the outside of plate packs at retail outlets before, so I wouldn't say it's outside the realm of possibility that this is what happenned.

@Tony Sina: I'm not sure it IS Amazon's error - It sounds like Bealls was using the UPC for the whole item to signify a single item - in which case that's on them, not Amazon

@DjDynasty: No, it's not purely criminal. It's a price mistake, and they happen all the damn time. Have you never shopped on the internet before/

@Tony Sina: This mess of...3 bucks?

Consumerist has followed up on this twice already. What else are they supposed to be doing? It wasn't their item for sale, it wasn't sold on their website, and they were just reposting a deal someone else already found. How were they to know the deal was wrong when they offered it - you'd have to have had the item shipped first, and obviously no one had.

@coren: I have shopped on the internet before, and I have mis listed an item on eBay by accident using their sku system, and guess what. Someone filed criminal charges on me. The sku I entered was for the original british harry potter, but in soft cover. It listed as a Canadian Hard Cover. I paid no attention, but someone else did. They filed charges with their local police station in oregan. Got an arrest warrant because like me, a refund wouldn't do, they wanted the correct item. It came all the way to court here in Illinois where I was arrested, and lost.

No I didn't call 911, I went down to the police station with the print out of the e-mail order, FROM BEALLS, as well as from Amazon. Both confirming the same thing had been ordered, the canned e-mail response, print outs of the negative reviews on amazon, the comments from the previous thread about this issue. The detectives looked at it, and said a refund doesn't make it right, they need the honor their original advertised price, or "sell out of it, and not offer rain checks" seeing since they SENT out 1 of each plate, that is where the fraud comes in.

@I_am_Awesome: That I might understand. Just to clarify though, it wasn't.
Even still, as dr. o-matic pointed out, we're not in the plate business. this is not the business we have chosen. maybe they wanted to lighten inventory? it's a moot point, this whether we "should ahve known better" or not.

So someone help me out here....Do I ship this stuff back or do I just stash it away and wait for my $14 from Amazon?

For those who have purchased. The corporate numbers to Bells is 941-747-2355 Press 9 to Dial by name. Stephen Knopix is the CEO, and it goes to his desk, not his assistant. I bet that will be changed by the end of next week!

206-266-1000 is Amazon.com's corporate office. Both CORPORATE offices are completely unaware of this situation, but Amazon has stated that a refund is not a solution, they have to honor the order, or they will no longer be allowed to sell on Amazon.com

@coren: contacts to escalate complaints? clarification on the seller's process and rules regarding pricing online? insight as to how amazon/bealls/both might be responsible for the matter?

pick one of those that remained absent in the two "follow-ups," maybe then i wouldn't be so down on a site i enjoy so much. is it because it wasn't comcast/walmart/someone big that caused this mess of 3 bucks?

or in my case 9 bucks plus shipping plus package that contained 3 dishes instead of the 36 i thought i was getting. Multiplied by all the people that got screwed.

Holy crap i was wondering why i got 1 plate

"If you have ordered and received this merchandise, you will be contacted by Amazon and will be given a full refund." um Amazon never contacted me .. have they contacted anyone ??

@DjDynasty: Cue "Dragnet" theme music.

@DjDynasty: You can't arrest a corporation. And there's no way you should have been arrested over a mislisted item - no judge in their right mind would uphold that, no jury would convict on it.