The Coach Store

I am a guy who shops late (Christmas, etc…), so I must shop quickly and efficiently. I know what my wife likes. That is what keeps me going back to the Coach store at the Lehigh Valley Mall year after year. I am on the Coach mailing list.
This year, the Coach email is where I saw a style of purse that I thought my wife would like. The email talked about their winter sale, but I was mainly looking at the style and color. I received the email on 12/​20, and went shopping on ¹²⁄₂₃.
The Lehigh Valley Mall store had the style in the color i wanted. I was happy. The sales associate, Emily M. (961 336) was particularly cheerful. Little did I know that her cheer was a façade.
The purse was sold to me for $ 375.With tax, it was nearly $ 400. I was describing to a friend the style of purse I had purchased, and decided it was easier to show her the email.
Lo and behold, I discovered that the purse was on sale for $ 282! I checked the sale ad for the sale period, and I found that the sale was in effect at the time of my purchase.
I checked the fine print and found that the sale applied to both in-​store and online purchases. I engaged in an online chat with a Coach customer service representative, who confirmed these details a second time. This morning, the store was not open yet, so to vent my frustration I called the corporate service number.
The person that answered (i forgot to write down his name, but he was very polite and knowledgeable), asked the store location and number, model number of the purse, and my last name.
In less than a minute, he had a copy of my receipt in front of him and confirmed that I should have had the sale price. He refunded me the difference, saving me a trip on the day after Christmas (where there is sure to be mayhem).
There are a few of things wrong with this picture:
1. Was the sales associate deliberately deceptive about the price of the product? Sales associates in high end stores KNOW their products. There is no excuse for not knowing about the online price. In the email, there is no stipulation to «show this ad and receive the special pricing». If Emily M. (961 336) did NOT know the prices, she was either very new, or temporary holiday help. Either way, she is damaging the reputation of this store and the brand. At the very least, her integrity took a hit.
2. Why doesn’t the company-​wide Coach Sales/​CRM system automatically show the lowest active price for a product at the time of sale? These retail sales systems are very sophisticated. The systems are capable of showing a sales dashboard /​summary to a central location for all store /​online sales, updated to the minute. If the sales associates are truly not aware of a change in pricing (I still do not buy that scenario), then a few well-​spent dollars an an IT specialist would enable the systems to be linked. Strangely, I think they already ARE linked, evidenced by the ability of the customer service rep to look up my transaction and refund my money over the phone.
Here is what i suspect: the sales team in the store is rated by total sales $. The store is rated by total revenue. They were trying to boost store /​individual sales by deliberately ignoring the posted sales price. The sales price was not posted at the physical location of the store, but today’s virtual presence of all retailers negates that need for a physical connection. The virtual «posting» of a price is, in effect, a stated nationwide price that must be honored by all locations of the retailer. It would appear that this location deceptively and knowingly ignored the stated pricing of the product in order to boost sales.
The corporate office stood by their advertised pricing.
I will add that my disappointment is two fold:
1. I am not quibbling over a few bucks like the recent flap raised by a Harvard professor over a Chinese takeout. I will be refunded $ 98. That’s a lot of fortune cookies. The monetary amount is not significant, if it is multiplied over the number of customers from the start of the sale (¹²⁄₂₀) to this moment. Let’s say that some customers knew about the sale when going to the store (30% ?). So, 70% of the customers over a 5 day time span during a busy holiday season were charged more than the stated price. Assumptions: the store is open 11 hours each day. There were 4 observed associates… assume each associate serves 2 customers per hour (it is probably more, so they can pay for fixed costs). The average sale is assumed to be $ 150. The average discount should be 15%.
This equates to $ 22.50 per sale over 440 sales = $ 9,900. This might seem like a low figure, but this is a very low estimate. The sales margins n the retail business are very thin, so anything helps.
2. The sales associates either do not know the products, or are deliberately deceptive.
Bottom line? The products at this store are good, but the buyer must beware the actions of the sales staff.