Zappos Mistake or PR Stunt?

Heather Younger

July 14, 2010

Any news is good news in the world of PR, right?

I follow Zappos because I find their company culture fun and unique. I follow their blog and have bought a couple of books written by their CEO, Tony Hsieh.

You may have caught Zappos in the news recently where they made a huge mistake on one of their sister sites and for six hours all products were listed for $49.95, including high ticket items such as a $2000 GPS system. See the original news article on Cnet.com.

All it takes is one person to see the error and then he can twitter it, facebook it, text message it to all of his friends and the news spread like wildfire. After all damage was done, Zappos was going to lose out on $1.6 million in profit from the blunder.

It was decision time for Tony Hseih. Do you honor these prices or tell your customers "shame on you, you should have know that was a mistake"? Tony, the ulitmate in providing customer service, honored the purchase and told his customers "thanks for being such great customers". Wow, now that is a bold move...or is it? Tony has a new book called "Delivering Happiness" due out soon. Either he plans to make more than $1.6 million on the book or he just really believes that customer service breeds long term company loyalty. On a side note, I didn't know Tony was writing a book until I saw this news article come out. I'll definitely buy a copy when it comes out!

What would you have done if your company made a similar pricing mistake?

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