A coupon mix-up at Walt Disney's online store over the weekend led to a surge of orders--and a huge headache for the company.
Using a coupon code that was passed around on shopping discussion sites, such as FatWallet.com and DVD Talk, consumers flooded DisneyStore.com with four times the normal volume of orders. After seeing the site's order volume increase, Disney modified the offer, limiting customers' ability to use the coupon and started combing through the orders to determine which were legitimate, said company spokeswoman Maria Gladowski.
Disney is still going through those orders and hasn't yet determined what to do with orders from customers who shouldn't have had access to the coupon code, Gladowski said.
"We're processing the orders as quickly as possible. As we review and verify them, they will be shipped out," she said.
Disney had given a $15 gift certificate to customers who bought $65 or more of goods in one of its physical stores or over the phone or Internet in August and September, Gladowski said. The coupon had no minimum purchase requirement, she said, meaning that customers could potentially receive goods for free using the coupon.
To redeem the coupon online or over the phone, customers were initially required only to give the code for the gift certificate. Although Disney stated in the terms of the coupon that it could be used only once, the company took no initial technical steps to prevent customers from using it multiple times or passing it on to other people.
Instead, the company used two different codes on all the gift certificates it issued, one for customers who had previously shopped in its brick-and-mortar stores and one for those who had previously shopped online or over the phone.
Word of the latter code quickly spread on the Internet via the shopping discussion boards. Some board users later claimed to have made as many as 12 orders using the code.
... [via intern.de]
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