Black Friday, Cyber Monday – How Are You Treating Your Best Clients?

It’s the Christmas Season! Over the past few years I’ve avoided the lines by doing my shopping online. Last year my wife and I went to the mountains for the weekend, stayed in a cozy hotel in a small town, and did our shopping in our PJs – Online. It was great.

This year, due to travel schedules and a super busy quarter, we opted to do our shopping at Starbucks while sipping Lattes. The kids convinced me to go on Cyber Monday, thinking that might make the dollars stretch – more gifts for the same price! Not so…it turns out.

Amazon – Very Disappointing

I’m a prime member on Amazon. It’s great. Movies, 2 day shipping, music – it’s all included. And with 9 people in our family, and most of us running some sort of business, we buy a lot of stuff online. So, of course I headed to the Amazon website. Everything is on sale. After all, it’s Cyber Monday.

However, the truth is, everything was about 20% more expensive!

My kids, knowing I would be shopping on Amazon, handed us Christmas lists with links from Amazon (high-tech Christmas shopping!) They even noted the price of the item they were considering…Boy were we surprised to find that just about every price cited on the list was 20% less than the new “Cyber Monday Price”.

It would be fine if Amazon advertised a price increase – but they didn’t. I’m sure something on Amazon was on sale. Maybe the paper towels, or toilet cleaning brushes. None of that showed up on my kid’s lists.

I’m sure we’ll continue to buy from Amazon – it’s easy, quick, and you can’t beat 2 day shipping. But it’s a shame when you have to micro manage your suppliers, watching for dishonest business practices. Let’s agree that our clients are worth a lot more to us than that, and no matter how big we get, we’ll always treat our customers like we appreciate them.

PS. If you’re looking for a great gift for your spouse or kids, you know they’ll want to read my latest book, The House & The Cloud, 2nd Edition! You can save money right now and get it for $1.00! No shipping, and it’s not even Cyber Monday.