What's Too Much Work For A Price Match?

What do you do when you’re unhappy with a transaction and the merchant wants to make things right, but you think their terms are unreasonable? That’s what Raymond wants to know. He tells us that Aldo is willing to price match after sending him a marked down item that he paid full price for online, but thinks they want him to go too far to prove it.

On October 20th, I purchased a tie from the Aldo store on Amazon.com, and paid full price for it ($15). It was promptly shipped to me, but when I received it there was a Sale tag attached to it, and the price was marked down to $9.98 but Aldo still charged me full price for it.

I tried to contact their customer support (via e-mail first) and they told me they would pricematch this item to the lower price if I sent the original invoice, plus a hand-written statement describing the problem, plus proof of purchase and proof of lowered price; to CANADA. I responded back, informing them I can walk literally .2 miles from my house to the nearest Aldo store, and that it made no sense to mail all those things to Canada. They agreed, and said I could go to the store to process this refund.

I thought, great, so I went into the store, and they told me physical stores can’t process any Aldo orders made from Amazon. I called customer support, and after being on hold for way too long, I was informed the only way they could help me was if I mailed those things to their center in Canada.

I don’t know what to do about this. On one hand, it’s only a $5.02 difference, and I DID get free shipping on the order. On the other hand, I was sent a sale item when I paid full price for it. Had I known before ordering it would be a sale item at full price, I would probably still have bought it anyway, but the fact still remains, the item was misrepresented. Also, I’m certainly not going to spend $1 on international first-class postage (plus even more if I get it certified etc) just to get a $5 credit.

All of my friends told me to file a merchant complaint with Amazon, but I feel somewhat hesitant to do that because Aldo DID offer an avenue for this conflict resolution, it’s just that I feel the option they gave me is unreasonable.

What would you do?

(Photo: The Consumerist)

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