Let the (online) buyer beware
I was doing our family’s monthly shopping, when I noticed this odd pricing. Amazon had actually marked up the price by ₹65. Sure, I can think of many explanations. Like the price shown is the right price, but the pack is the wrong one. Or the special offer was discontinued but Amazon forgot to change the pack shown. Or even the usual “Anyone can make a mistake.” Yes, I did complain to Amazon, and I’m sure the super efficient folk there would no doubt have corrected it by now.
But I’m not buying those explanations. Who’s going to check how many pieces were sold at the wrong price? Who will ensure they refund the excess charged? If 10000 pieces were sold, Amazon gets to keep an extra ₹650000 ($10000) for goofing up. With such huge incentives, why would Amazon even bother to avoid such mistakes from recurring?
There’s another aspect to this. A lot of stuff is automated these days. The seller is shown as Cloudtail, which I believe is a company owned by Amazon. I’m guessing whoever at Cloudtail uploaded that item would have just scanned the barcode on the pack to get the price. Now machines can read barcodes. But they might not be configured to read that in-your-face discount emblazoned on the pack’s front face.
In which case, this is a warning of the risks in blindly handing over our lives to machines. Too often, we assume machines won’t cheat us, but forget that they may miss what’s obvious to the human eye. And it’s just such loopholes that the new generation of online crooks would give an arm for.
The funny thing is I think the solution is inbuilt into the problem. Amazon has too much going on for their overworked employees to be able to keep an eye on everything. They need to use other resources. In this case, I reported the issue to them. But maybe others noticed it before I did, and just didn’t bother to take the time and effort to report the price discrepancy. Why? Because no one has the time these days.
So what should Amazon do?
They should reward customers who point out such errors, because they are acting as unpaid bug hunters. The reward doesn’t have to be a huge amount, and could even be in the form of a Amazon pay gift voucher for ₹1000 or so. Just enough for the buyer to be motivated to take a moment off to report a bug. Apart from this, Amazon can also send gift vouchers for ₹100 to those customers who paid up the extra ₹65. Think about the goodwill that would generate for Amazon.
It’s not that Amazon does not know the power of its customers. In fact, what really makes me shop at Amazon are the product reviews by actual customers. I once read that sellers were using fake reviews to promote their products on Amazon. I think Amazon got around the issue by making sure reviews were being written by verified buyers. They also added a ‘Helpful’ button to these reviews to create a sort of rating system for the reviews. In the course of all this drama, ‘paid reviews’ became an undesirable term.
Sure, there will always be people trying to game the system. But I’m just as sure Amazon can figure out how to sort out the genuine reviews from the fakes. If Amazon rewards those customers who write highly-rated, insightful reviews, the quality of product discussion on the platform could actually rise from the current amateur level to an almost professional level.
Of course, Amazon would have to put in checks and controls on how these rewards are given. For instance, instead of monetary rewards, Amazon can reward the reviewers in kind, with say a heavily discounted offer on the product whose review was highly rated or received lots of ‘helpful’ clicks. Or some such system. But Amazon can only do this if they really believe in the importance of convincing customers to write detailed reviews.
Oops, I think I have wandered off-topic.
Coming back, what I was trying to say is online shopping may look straightforward. But looks can be deceptive, and you would do well to double-check prices before clicking the ‘Buy’ button. I always compare prices at an offline store, and also at Amazon competitors before plonking down my money. In fact, I bought my last two big ticket items from Amazon’s Indian competitor, Flipkart, who was offering much better deals.
If more customers become wary like me, we can turn the tables on Amazon.
‘Let the seller beware.’
