An Unqualified Success

My company is running a “special promotion” for free shipping on certain camera accessories. There are three rules to the special:

• The order total has to be over $100.
• The order has to have only items that are part of the special.
• It has to ship ground to part of the contiguous forty-eight states.

These rules are pointed out in a bright red banner on the homepage, on the page of every single item that qualifies, and on the checkout page. We could not make it any more clear without actively interfering with people’s ability to place orders. We also deal directly with resellers, who run their own unique promotions and should know about rules and regulations for them. And yet…

This conversation (and many like it) takes place over email, spread out across several hours, and the reseller’s sales representative has been CC’d on it all.

Me: “Thank you for your order, and I see you noted to apply free shipping. Unfortunately, it does not qualify for the free shipping promotion.”

Reseller: “Yes, it does! I bought [promo product]!”

Me: “Yes, you did, but unfortunately, your order total was only $78, you purchased two items that are not part of the promo, and this is shipping to Hawaii via next-day air. All of those factors disqualify.”

Reseller: “You gave me free shipping on my last order! Just give it to me on this one!”

Me: *Looking it up* “Yes, your previous order, [number], was valued at $750, was a single qualifying product, and was shipping ground to California. That order qualified. This one does not.”

Reseller: “It’s close enough. You should just give me to free shipping anyway.”

Me: “I am unable to do that. If you would like to cancel this order and place a separate, qualifying order, we can arrange that, but as it is, the system will not allow me to add the free shipping promo to your order.”

This was only half a fib; it’s a manual process anyway, but manager authorization could be considered part of “the system”, right? I’ll admit several rounds of back-and-forth repetition without ANY intervention from the sales rep even though I go to him directly; it only stops when I go to the manager of the sales department to speak with the involved people.

There’s a happy ending, at least; the customer kept their order as-is and did not get free shipping!