Aw, Amazon. This is just rude.
The holidays are a competitive time for retailers and shoppers alike—that’s just obvious. Each year, the day after Thanksgiving is just a ticker-tape of stories about the new, deranged lengths to which shoppers have gone on their literally murderous quests to take advantage of sales. Rioting over a waffle maker, pepper spraying other shoppers, trampling people. Black Friday sales produce the kind of footage that on a good day makes me want to start praying and on a bad day makes me want to hide in my closet and quietly weep.
Of course, companies do the same thing over the holidays, albeit in far less trashy ways.
One example I read about this week is Amazon’s offer to all shoppers who have downloaded Amazon’s Price Check app. Starting December 10th, the online retailer is encouraging people to go out to physical stores, scan three items they want to buy and then walk out of the store. If you then place the item in your Amazon shopping cart, the retailer will apply a 5% discount up to $5 on up to three items, for a total of $15 in savings.
I’m sure I should be more cynical—businesses are supposed to be competitive, and Amazon’s technique is smarter and more straight-forward than subliminal messaging like flashing a frame of the golden arches during a TV show, or trying to convince women they’re ugly if they don’t use eye cream. And as Tech Crunch pointed out:
It’s a great idea for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it could help potential buyers get over one of Amazon’s biggest stumbling blocks: experiencing the product. Reading reviews and looking at pictures online is enough in certain instances, but it can be a poor substitute for actually touching and seeing a product in person. With their Price Check promotion, Amazon can actually help people to make purchasing decisions and at the same time giving them an incentive to buy from them.
That said, it’s pretty rude. $15 doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but multiplied a couple hundred times for, say, a small town bookstore, it could make a dent in their holiday revenue. But what’s more—it’s just mean and un-Christmassy. (At least given Hollywood’s definition of the holiday.)
I say resist the urge to do take Amazon up on this one, shoppers. You’ll miss out on savings that could buy a new shirt at H&M or take someone to the movies, but just think of it as a $15 Christmas present to small-town American businesses and human decency.
And throw away your pepper spray, too.
December 08, 2011 at 1:44 pm, sohum said:
To get the full $15, it appears you’d have to spend at least $300 (given that the discount is 5% per item up to $5). Factor in shipping costs and the actual time you spend waiting for the item to be delivered and you come out about even.