This week I was going to write a nice feel good piece about Home Depot coming to St Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, my second home. That story will have to wait for another day because the day after I got home from the island I bought something from Groupon Goods (a new offering brought to you by Groupon). And so a feel good story has been usurped by a feel really bad story – of technology and promotional offerings gone horribly wrong.

The premise of Groupon Goods is simple enough. No need to visit a terrestrial location – just buy the Groupon, go to the appropriate merchant’s web site, order the item, enter the promotion code, and be on your way. And the offering was attractive. An Altec Lansing iPod/iPhone docking station: Suggested retail $99, on sale for $40 plus $5 shipping. Now, the truth is, I could have bought the thing for $79 from Amazon, but I figured I’d save a few extra bucks in exchange for a few extra clicks. So I bought it. And then the nightmare began.

My order seemed to be going smoothly enough, but when I tried to finish the order, the system told me the product was out of stock. Altec Lansing’s web site has a customer service number displayed prominently, so I called to ask “what’s up? ” When the Customer Service Rep (CSR) answered the phone, she sounded just a bit harried. I said “I bet you know what I’m calling about “… she said “The Groupon? ” and I replied in the affirmative. Apparently no matter how many times Altec’s management added inventory into its system, it was snapped up by Groupon holders. It seems the actual inventory exceeds the system’s max quantity, since they solved the problem multiple times by just adding more into inventory. Okay, fine (I guess). Altec typically sells through re-sellers, so I would imagine the site (which is a Venda solution) doesn’t get a ton of direct traffic.

After about 10 minutes on the phone, inventory was replenished and I was able to get a docking station into my cart. At that point, it was time to enter the Groupon number in the promotion code field. I entered it and it came up invalid. I was still on the phone with the CSR, who thought the problem was that my Groupon name was not an exact match with the system entered name (something about Ms…). So she fixed that part. Still no go. Finally she got frustrated and said, I’ll have a supervisor call you back. After 2 hours with no reply, I called Altec again. It was 5:05 and the voice message reported that everyone was gone for the day – try again in the morning. Yes, things were definitely headed downhill fast.

Morning came, and I continued calling. By the time I got through, I’d spent more than 6 hours on this $55 savings.

There are a few things I should let you know:

• I posted a complaint on Altec’s Facebook page. The next day I discovered a message in my in-box (Facebook doesn’t do such a good job in reporting on messages you get from non-friends)…saying the inventory problem had been remedied . Well, that’s all good, but I still couldn’t buy the thing.
• Finally, on the phone with a CSR (the people were really, really nice – I have to say they were just good human beings) we somehow figured out that I had to print the Groupon, and the number required was a number ONLY visible on the bottom of the printout. Who knew?
• Right after I placed the order (yay!!) I discovered another response to my Facebook inquiry saying the same thing – the Groupon number is NOT the same as the promotional code.

In other words, the Altec reps did all they could to help me out. They were overwhelmed by calls, had very little training in the integration between Groupon and Venda, and were barely staying afloat. Good people in a bad situation.

This is the second time in three weeks I’ve had to report on an on-line shopping disaster. As you may recall, Target’s web site took a serious fall when it introduced the Missoni collection on September 14th. At that time I asked “What ever happened to the concept of stress-testing? ” My questions today are broader:

• Shouldn’t Groupon have let me know that the promotional code was not the same as the Groupon number? Shouldn’t they have let SOMEONE know?
• Whatever happened to sales forecasting? In fact, this promotion was also advertised on Twitter and on Altec Lansing’s Facebook page. Did the company miss demand that badly?
• Was there adequate testing prior to rolling out the Groupon? Training?
• Doesn’t anyone care about my TIME?

People wonder why Amazon is taking share from so many other retailers. It’s because 99% of the time, the site just works. They advertise, you buy, they deliver. No muss, no fuss.

This was a whole lot of muss and a whole lot of fuss. Next time, guess where I’ll go to buy my electronics? We can talk about price transparency all we want, and blame our sales and margin shortfalls on that…but the truth is, most of the time service trumps minor price differentials. And poor service is rarely forgotten. This one is burned in my brain. Altec Lansing makes very good products. But as Retailers? I think they were overwhelmed. As more and more merchandise vendors go direct to consumers, we will likely find this situation happening again. Be careful what you wish for. Demand remains unpredictable. When it spikes, will you be ready?