For a few days, I’ve been obsessed with finding the Prada Fairy Bag on Bluefly. Bluefly keeps sending me emails advertising the bag, and each time I immediately scour the site for it, only to find neither fairy hide nor fairy hair. I emailed Bluefly to inquire about the situation, and received this reply:
Thank you for your email. We are sorry for any difficulty you may have experienced in looking for an advertised item. Generally our ads are photographed in advance of the sale, and cannot easily be changed during the sale. On some occasions, items that are advertised sell out almost immediately after being introduced on the website. This is the case with many of our products, as our site is visited day and night by hundreds of thousands of internet users.
The condescending explanation of how a large retail website works annoyed me, especially after I got yet another email from Bluefly with the Fairy Bag on it. I scoured the site again, then sent them a follow-up email asking them to prove that they ever had it with a screen shot. I also said that I was going to blog about it. The latest reply from a “Fly-shionista” (seriously, that’s what they call themselves) came without a screen shot.
Thank you for your email. The Prada bag was so popular, it sold out immediately. We only received a small quantity of the bag. Often, when a bag is featured in an ad, it does sell quickly.We understand your disappointment and hope that will not deter you from shopping with us in the future.
Meanwhile, this banner is on Bluefly at THIS VERY SECOND:
I already have a Fairy Bag so I’m not in the market for one, but I was curious to see this supposedly limited-edition bag on Bluefly. I’ll accept the Fly-shionista’s statement that Bluefly did have the bag at one point, but if it’s sold out, I think it is wrong to keep using the image in promotional emails and on the site. I know it’s not that hard to switch out the images on a homepage; I’m sure they have quite a few generic banners to throw up there. That was my experience back when I was in the corporate world and used to work on websites that had some money behind them. Of course, if Bluefly stopped advertising the sold-out bag, people who really want it wouldn’t be all over their site, hopefully doing some collateral damage to their credit cards out of frustration, right?
Official verdict: Kinda sleazy. I doubt this meets the Federal Trade Commission’s standards for false advertising, but it meets mine!
UPDATED TO ADD: I sent the link to this post to Bluefly and Fly-shionista (BWAH! I love saying that) Cindy got back to me with some more details. She said they had four Fairy Bags, and that they all sold out within the first hour. In a patient, psychiatrist-like way, she said, “However, as I understand it, you feel that it is not fair for us to display a picture of the product if we don’t currently have it available on the site.” She said she’d pass that message onto the corporate office, as well as a link to this blog and a copy of our email exchange. Just in case the corporate office people don’t automatically delete the email while stroking their Fairy Bags and laughing in an evil way, I’d like to say: Hello, corporate office people! I think it would have been better if you made it clear in the first promotional email that your inventory of Fairy Bags was extremely limited. Then, after they were sold, you should have stopped promoting them so aggressively. If you continue to send out emails advertising these bags, and also advertise them on the site, and you do NOT have the bags — yeah, I think that could reasonably be considered false advertising. This isn’t some image campaign for the Prada brand. Your site is about selling items that really exist. It would have been better to leave the bags on the site with the message “sold out” so people know that they missed out on it instead of suspecting you of nefarious behavior. You could easily have put “Bluefly also recommends …” links on the page to steer would-be purchasers to other Prada items. Feel free to use my recommendations in future, similar situations. I’ll be keeping an eye on you!
UPDATED AGAIN TO ADD: This isn’t the first time I’ve been disgruntled with Bluefly.
UPDATED JUNE 2010 TO ADD: Bluefly finally took my advice. I noticed they’re tagging some products with counts a la Overstock.com or QVC…”only three left” and so on.
I hate when they do that!
Hi Wendy-I totally agree-it really sucks when this happens! In todays Daily Mail, they’re showing a one shoulder floral dress by Topshop-it came out about six weeks ago, but it’s also not available now-what’s the point of showing us then!
I have to say, I am so over Bluefly. It’s an obnoxious site to use, and this just reinforces my grudge against them! (Though it does make me feel a little better about my lack of a Fairy bag [jealous! jealous!]. since obviously no one else is getting one from them anytime soon…)
Teh whole way through I was thinking to myself ‘WTF does WendyB want ANOTHER fairy bag?’
I came to the conclusion that your fairy bag was feeling lonely…
So is this bag very slightly different?
They’re certainly not playing fair!
Give ’em hell, WendyB.
Pretty Face, I don’t know if the bag they had was different. Honestly, I was only looking because I was annoyed that an “exclusive” bag was winding up on Bluefly! I was like, my God, it just came out this season and it’s being dumped on this site already? I was pondering venting to the Prada sales associate I dealt with. Don’t give me a spiel about an exclusive bag and then stick it on a discount site. But then I couldn’t find it on Bluefly, THEN they would send me another email so I’d look again, etc etc. Then it just became the principle of the thing. I don’t think Bluefly should promote the hell out of something they only had for a hot second. And I’m still irritated with Prada too.
No, you’re right.
But then when Pantene advertise hair care using Anna Friel, they also fail to mention that we’re not getting her skin, body and face when we buy Pantene Pro-V.
Good for you!! I hate false advertisements. Grrrrr….
Very nice blog! 🙂
PF, and here I thought I’d turn into Halle Berry if only I used “Fabulash” (“Fabulash” is almost as delightful as “Fly-shionista.”)
BGG, Thanks!
It annoys me when they can’t be honest AND there is no “I’m really sorry. We made a mistake.” No one says “I’m sorry” anymore. It is pretty funny how bad customer service is getting at the same time that the economy is tanking. Note to Bluefly: You are not selling anything THAT special. There are thousands of retailers who want our money. We can take our business to them if they treat us with more respect.
BTW – Thank you for the sniping info Wendy! I would never do ebay any other way now!!
Leah
“Fly-shonista” is excellent, as is this post. It’s not that hard to keep a website up-to-date, and the limited-edition nature of that bag makes it clear that they were trying to attract the attention of people familiar with it, who are then disappointed that they can’t have it. This could be an excellent new feature on your blog…keeping online fashion and beauty retailers honest.
CDP, I am always on the lookout for bad business practices — especially those that involve spamming the customers! I cited Bluefly once before for questionably priced jeans.
how odd and annoying!
Hmmm, I have a sneaking suspicion that Bluefly is in ‘good’ company when it comes to sneaky tactics of this nature..
..but, its awesome how you’ve called them out, Wendy.
‘If it weren’t for that DARN Wendy, we would’ve gotten away with it!!”
I think it’s wrong to use the Prada imagery too, I really hate false advertising! That bag is so gorgeous!
I really want to make a faux fairy bag with a Sharpie…deffo false advertising.
Leah, I’m excited that you are having sniping success. Don’t forget to show us some of the things you’ve sniped!
Wendy – I bought a couple of 60’s wiggle dresses which I have to have tailored because I guess I had a small chest in the 60’s too. I also bought a couple of “mall brand” dresses which is where the sniping comes in handy. I had a J Crew dress sniped out from under me so I needed to follow your advice. It’s so nice that you can change the amount or delete the bid if you change your mind – much more civilized! Thanks again.
Leah
Good for you, I hate this kind of false advertising.
that is definitely pretty annoying. At least you have your bag, though!
I like the part where the woman goes all psych on you and tells you what you feel.
Can you call her back and tell her that you want to talk about your childhood? This is the kind escalation that I live for!!!
Go, Leah!
Natasha, yes, at least I wasn’t really trying to buy something!
SW, Shizz, that made me laugh out loud.
Way bad and I never liked Bluefly anyways. I don’t find their deals to be that great and usually scour Smartbargains or Overstock first. If you are a HUGE online retailer you should NEVER advertise a lot of only FOUR bags to your customers if you know THOUSANDS are going to want it.
Ooh, yeah, Lady Language. That’s a good way of putting it!
I’ve had two not-good experiences with BlueFly, both with expensive bags. Each bag I ordered had something wrong with it, almost like it was a second. Both went back.
I won’t be ordering again.
Amen sista!
I love that you root out nefarious Fly-shionista behaviour! Your like an internet shopping super heroine! Rooting out evil-doers with your fly paper weapons.
That’s really not very pithy. My Mother was supposed to fly in today (HaHaHa, “fly”, get it?)…which didn’t happen. Long story. I’m a little sad.