Recently Amazon ran a special on a Winsor & Series 7 Brush Gift Set at over 75% OFF the normal retail price. Was it too good to be true?
This set had 4 brushes and typically goes for $80 to $120 Now Amazon was selling them for $17.50.
Now normally this could be a price mistake, BUT they have apparently had this sale before, and were honoring orders at this price. They sold it past stock exhaustion and instead of making it sold out or unavailable, they continued to sell them with an estimated delivery date in March-April.
Now this time, the news of Winsor & Newton series 7 brushes at this price spread on social media like wildfire, and A LOT of hobbyists keyed in a bought 1-2 sets, content to wait until MAR or APR to receive their items.
This week though, Amazon cancelled the majority of the orders citing a lack of availability. It was known not to be a pricing error, since it took them so long to cancel the orders, and several people online were stating/showing that their orders were still being fulfilled.
So a lack of availability Amazon says? Well I went and checked that evening and found this
So Amazon is still fulfilling orders for a supplier, just at the regular $84 price.
Now for those of you who don’t know, Amazon has a type of pricelock guarantee. If you order an item and the price goes up, they will not charge you more. Same for if it goes down. The price you pay when you place the order is the price you will pay. It can be on a pre-order 12 months out. Doesn’t matter. I got Vikings on bluray for $10 because of this. It is a nice guarantee to have, if you are savvy.
But in this case it seems Amazon was overwhelmed by a staggering loss. Tons of us hobbyists bought these amazing brushes at about 75% off. Instead of moving inventory, they were loosing money all of the sudden. What do I mean by that. Well, Amazon is a company that uses lean methodology in their warehousing and supply chains to maximize profitability. They try not to keep a lot of inventory on hand (which is why you see a lot of things with “only 2 left order now!”) and they try and turn over inventory as often as possible to keep the costs of storage down, and attempt to make just in time orders to restock. It is the most likely reason why they put the brushes on such a steep sale, they had sat there for a while and needed to get rid a lot of them to reorder a smaller number and store less or store them at fewer locations, or possibly get rid of them all together and cease offering the item. Plus, typically Amazon will sell past supply. It is good for them to do so in some cases, and they just fulfill the order when they restock. If they aren’t going to do this, items go “currently unavailable” and it does not allow you to even place an order.
So what does all of this mean? Well it seems amazon needed a way out of its price lock. What better way than to just not restock and cancel all of the orders.
Well we are wargamers and don’t roll over lightly. This bulk cancellation of course left a lot of hobbyists angry and unimpressed. Particularly since many of us pay for Amazon Prime and the item was Prime Eligible and being sold by Amazon LLC. We should be priority customers, should we not?
So I, among others, took to the Internet and submitted a complaint to their customer service department (as outlined in their email). In this email, I particularly made sure to call them out on how they say availability is an issue, but they are still fulfilling orders for a vendor and how this seemed like to be a loop hole in their price lock.
Strangely enough, the next morning the item they fulfilled has been removed and I get a response saying I will have to call to work this out and it can’t be done via email (as originally instructed). So now I am even more skeptical, as it just seems like they are throwing up road blocks in order to get us to give up. Heck, one person in Spikey Bits hobbies tried to submit a review online and AMAZON BLOCKED IT.
I end up calling and laying out the same argument as made in my email, they cite that “We don’t sell it anymore” (even though they did the previous day…) and that it is available from a 3rd party for $100 with shipping. Well, I bought it from you for $17.50, you think I want it from them for 5 times as much? Can I even afford that? Why should I continue paying for prime if that is my option?
In the end, they offer an “equivalent” product, a “Da Vinci Series 5361 Russian Red Sable Miniature Detail Paint Brush Set” that is $50 (so 1/2 the value of the Series 7 set) at the original sale price of $17.50. Other hobbyists, who stuck to email solely, ended up with a $10 voucher on Amazon.
So in the end, Amazon probably did come out ahead, and there was little we could do, but they misunderstood the popularity of their item to begin with and they then thought they could just leave us with nothing more than a “Sorry, here is your money back.” Sadly, we will likely never see such a great deal again.
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About the Author: Gothmog
