Ulta Ulta False Advertising. Fabulous prices...but not if you actually want to buy! Internet
Ulta placed ads all over the internet on popular websites: "Buy Two Get One Free Dermalogica." It was very tempting. A visit to their website, www.ulta.com showed that absolutely every item entered was, amazingly enough, "temporarily out of stock." The items remained out of stock for the duration of the sale. Despite this, Ulta continued to advertise the sale heavily across many widely-viewed websites for several more days until the sale ended on Jan 23rd, 2010.
No guidance was available to consumers about the sale pricing. There was no disclaimer ANYWHERE (I have the screen shots) that the sale was only good while supplies lasted. Because nothing was available, I emailed the customer service contact provided on the website and asked if the sale prices would be honored when the items were available.
A week went by. Honestly, when it comes to email how realistic is it to wait an entire WEEK before getting a response from a customer service rep? Of course, the sale was over by then. The rep very kindly informed me that I could have gotten a raincheck if I had just gone to retail store. Gee, that would have been a very good piece of information to put on the website!! When I asked if this practice seemed deceptive to the rep, there was no reply. None. Zero. Zilch.
It seems that retailers have so much opportunity to have honest and informative websites that can boost their long term sales. In this case it appears that Ulta is engaging in deceptive practices that not only cost them sales in the short term, but drives away people long term as well. I suppose they figure we'll all just go away and forget about it. I'll go away and I'll forget about it... while I happily shop at one of their competitors' stores.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
B.A.
Perkinston,Mississippi,
U.S.A.
Ulta has a lot of Customer Service issues.
#2Consumer Comment
Fri, February 12, 2010
Ulta.com is by far one of the most frustrating sites to try to make a purchase from. I continuously have problems, especially when a good sale is going on. They run out of stock, they run out of gifts with purchase and they absolutely do not update their site. I've gotten to the point that if a gift with purchase does not show up in my basket like it's suppose to, I dump the whole order. I wonder if they have a clue as to how much in sales they lose because they can't seem to get their act together?