CyberMonday Sadness

[C_Born]

This year has seen a veritable flood of emails promoting “CyberMonday Madness” sales of all types, none of which have really been of interest to me, however when I saw the one from GHI I really sat up and took notice.

GHI Electronics would like to take Cyber Monday 2013 to say “thank you” to everyone for all of your support this year, by offering you some amazing deals. But wait, thats not all, we will also be giving you 20% off additional items.

[quote]Cyber Monday Coupon
CyberMonday13

Please enter the above code to recieve a 20% discount. This code is not valid for sale items. [/quote]

Great! Good on you, GHI! ;D

I set a reminder in my calendar and eagerly await the great event.
But when the times comes and I try and use the coupon, I get no discount. Perplexedly I email GHI to ask why it isn’t working, and get a response:

The Cyber Monday deals are for products related to Gadgeteering, not System on Module or File System products. While the word module is listed with EMX, you will find this product under the System on Module category.

Well, as you can see in the image from the checkout page, there is a list of “specific categories” covered by the coupon, and clearly states “Module”, on a line of its own, not indented or under any subheading, and if an" EMX Module" isn’t a module then I don’t know what is!

An hour later I receive another email from GHI, an updated coupon into which now has had inserted the words

Please enter the above code to recieve a 20% discount on products related to Gadgeteering.

Look like GHI made a mistake. Under Australian they would have to honour the original offer, but this is the US. Still, not good for customer relations. But sadly it doesn’t stop there…

I then try and place an order for ten EMX modules. Ten is a good number because it comes in under the AU $1000 GST free import level, and GHI has been giving 10% discounts on this quantity for the last couple of years. I’ve spent over $5,000 with them over this period, not huge amount for them perhaps, but significant for me. But this time, no discount. And in response to my querying email, I receive:

[quote]With regards to the discount on EMX modules, that was a volume discount. We have recently removed that volume discount level and all System on Module volume discounts start at a MOQ of 100. Please let us know if there is anything else we can do for you.[/quote] :wall:
Well, I had been hoping to move to G120 modules as a lower cost EMX replacement. I have had ten of those sitting there for the last 6 months waiting for GHI to fix the reported and acknowledged firmware bugs preventing them from being used - perhaps that would be a good place to start.

Well, the CyberMonday promotion hasn’t really worked to reward my support, or make my day better. Quite the opposite, really.

Today is my dad’s birthday. One year since he died, and each time I go to the workshop it reminds me of him, and the skills he had that I’ll never have, now lost.

Bring on tomorrow…

[Gus_Issa]

Not sure i understand but we never offer coupons on anything not under the gadgeteering category, not now and not in any other event in the past, I do not think.

Also, the word module is the sub category, which is simply called module in the catalog. EMX is listed under the SoM category, which we typically do not provide coupons for.

I hope we can still have something that interests you as wet have some real good deals going on now.

[C_Born]

@Gus

Not sure i understand but we never offer coupons on anything not under the gadgeteering category, not now and not in any other event in the past, I do not think.

Also, the word module is the sub category, which is simply called module in the catalog. EMX is listed under the SoM category, which we typically do not provide coupons for.

I hope we can still have something that interests you as wet have some real good deals going on now.

@ Gus, see the attached image of the coupon you emailed me. No mention of gadgeteer anywhere, it only says it isn’t valid for sale items.
Also see the attached image of the “specific categories” dropdown on the checkout page in my previous post. There is no category distinction, whether by indentation, underline, prefix character or other means, only a list of words, one of which is “module”.

I would like another 10 EMX modules, but at the moment I’m a bit p*ssed of that instead of a 20% discount, they are actually 10% more than previously!

I’ve also got a weird DOA from the last batch that I need to talk to you about and arrange for an RMA.

[Gus_Issa]

I see and agree with you that the code is misleading. We will make sure this is not forgotten in the future.

File system and SoMs are targeted mainly to high volume customers and that is why they are not part of the specials usually, like they are not part of the “rewards” given out for example.

We apologize for any inconvenience.