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Comment by Alterlife | Hacker News Reader

> making sure people don't need to call.

Almost every IVR I have ever used makes me believe business invest in making sure people can't call or at least have a very hard time reaching a human.

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Amazon makes it so easy to get help from a human that they call you...

I'm reminded of a policy of the southeastern US grocery store chain Publix: if there's a pricing error, the item is free. It will probably come as no surprise that pricing errors are extremely rare there.

When a company creates a significant incentive for itself to get an aspect of its business right, it will probably get that aspect right. I don't think I've ever wanted to call Amazon on the phone, and nearly every issue I can recall has had a satisfactory solution within their UI.

This rule is basically standard in supermarkets in Australia even though not legally required. In my life I have only once noticed a pricing error.

> nearly every issue I can recall has had a satisfactory solution within their UI.

They started shipping me books bound tightly in bubble-padded manila envelopes. The binding was so tight that the books arrived with damage caused by Amazon's own stupid packaging choice. I repeatedly returned these books with the explicit note "book was damaged due to bad packaging; please use different packaging". They were not capable of fixing their problem.

You assume enough customers complain to make it worth changing.

One is enough, if your definition of "worth changing" refers to profit margins.

> I'm reminded of a policy of the southeastern US grocery store chain Publix: if there's a pricing error, the item is free. It will probably come as no surprise that pricing errors are extremely rare there.

I have never shopped at Publix, but I can't even recall being a victim of a pricing error in another grocery.

I think you may find that pricing errors in grocery chains are extremely rare, period.

I've experienced numerous pricing errors at Walmart. You could argue that Walmart belongs in a different category, but a large part of their business is groceries.

I've experienced one pricing error at Publix having shopped at them for the better part of two decades. My item was, indeed free and the cashier sounded excited to be able to use the policy.

> if there's a pricing error, the item is free.

I love Publix, but I think this is marketing blargh. They once had a cuisinart dish marked with a $9.99 price tag so I bought it. The cashier rang it up as $199.99 and I brought it to her attention. She brought over a manager who said it was an error in labeling and should have been marked down to $99.99 and they would honor the intended sale price.

I mentioned the policy and she shrugged and asked if I want it or not. I declined and she put a new price tag on it at $99.99.

There was only one item and it was in the deal section. This is my only experience of Publix being lame in decades of use. Really surprising. This was also the only pricing error I’ve ever encountered.

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