Borders is having a sale on DVD box sets. Use coupon code CM2008 to get 40% off. So I went to look at their price for the The Wire Season 5. (I previously got a great deal from Amazon on seasons 1-4.)
The list price is $63.99 and it sells for $57.59 (a 10% discount). I entered the promo code and it said "40% Off List Price on DVD Boxed Sets Limit 2 - Unless Better Online Discount Already Applied" and also "Promotional offers and coupons are calculated off of the item's list price." The reduction shown was -$19.20 for a total of $38.39.
Not bad, but something didn't seem right. $19.20 is neither 40% of $63.99 nor $57.59. It's actually 30% of $63.99. The email sending me the coupon and the shopping cart say it's a 40% off coupon but the price applied is 30%. Grrrrr.
40% of $63.99 is $25.60. So the final price should be $57.59-$25.60 = $31.99.
For comparison, Amazon shows the list price as $59.99 (why is Border's list $4 more?) and has a regular price of $38.99 which is correctly labelled as 35% off. But Borders should be $7 less.
So how do I complain? There's Borders' customer care site and a link to Contact Us. There's an email form and a phone number. Since a human might be able to get the site fixed before any email was read, I figured I'd call.
"Thank you for calling Borders Customer Care Center. Due to the overwhelming success of our new web site, we are experiencing extended hold time."
And just how does that work? Is everyone calling to say how thrilled they are with the site? It goes on to suggest sending email which they might not get to for 48 hours, by which time the sale is over. I sent some anyway. Since it's a web form, I couldn't include a screen shot of the shopping cart.
I partially agree with them, the web site is overwhelming.
Update: Ok, their math isn't wrong it's just misleading. If they show a list price of $63.99 and "Your Price" of 10% off or $57.59 and then you apply a 40% off coupon, the price you're going to pay is just 40% off the list price or $38.39. This is actually reasonable. What threw me is that their shopping cart prominently shows useless info like "Your Price" and "Item Total". They have two sentences in bold "Promotional offers and coupons are calculated off of the item's list price.The amount shown here reflects any additional discounts from Your Price." which give the right explanation but I was apparently too dense to figure it out.
The end result is that Borders 2 day only 40% off sale is only 60 cents less than Amazon's everyday price.
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