Chicago–Little things mean a lot. Just ask women’s apparel cataloger Barrie Pace, whose customers got a real bargain on Aug. 20 because of something as little as an errant decimal point.
A file was downloaded that moved the decimal point one digit over to the left. As a result, suits that normally cost $249.00 were now selling for $24.90. The Website’s dresses, pants, skirts, and knits were similarly discounted. “Our customers knew there was problem, and they alerted us,” explains Barrie Pace president Beth McCall, who says that the cataloger will honor that day’s faux prices on all orders.
McCall would not elaborate on much money was lost or how many wrongly priced Web orders were processed, but the company and its supplier, Chicago-based Fry Multimedia, resolved the problem “in a matter of hours,” she says. “Our Website is a liquidation site, so all our prices are discounted anyway.”