How I overcame my Staples Customer Service fail

Earlier this week, I talked about two different shopping portal bonuses that are active for the next few weeks: 3500 bonus miles with either Southwest or American Airlines, and 4000 bonus miles with United.

(SEE ALSO: Earning miles through shopping portals)

(SEE ALSO: Why you might lose money from shopping portals)

I found a deal over on BigHabitat for a Dell laptop at Staples.  Staples was offering 3x at the American portal, in combination with 500 bonus miles and 5x for spending on my Chase Ink card, would net me about 3000 miles (~10x).  I needed a new laptop for my son, and this seemed like a good deal

(SEE ALSO: Business credit cards even if you don’t (really) have a business)

Time to jump on the deal

The deal started on Sunday but it took me till Tuesday morning to get around to ordering the deal (I know… I know… I’m not always the most timely person).  Still, the deal was still prominently advertised on the Staples.com front page.

But when I went to check out, the $50 would not apply (saying it was an “Invalid Coupon”).  I chatted it up with Staples Customer Service, but they refused to honor the deal, even though it was still on the front page.

To me, its analogous to gas stations – they can’t (or don’t?) raise the price on the sign until there are no customers who pulled in under the old (lower) price.  To do otherwise would be fraudulent IMO.

Let’s try Staples Customer Service via Twitter

I often find that companies are often responsive to customer service problems via Twitter, so I thought I’d see how Staples Customer Service was there.

(SEE ALSO: List of Airline and Hotel Twitter contacts)

@PointsWithACrew I am sorry, but we have met the promotional limit for this offer. ^AL

— Staples US (@Staples) July 21, 2015

@PointsWithACrew Unfortunately, we have reached our redemption limit and cannot honor it. ^RM

— Staples US (@Staples) July 21, 2015

Then I decided to vent my spleen a bit and share this Staples Customer Service #fail to my 3,500+ Twitter followers – maybe some bad press would encourage them to do the right thing. By the way, if you’re not following me on Twitter, then you’re definitely missing out!

Great customer service by @Stapes -they have a promotion on the FRONT PAGE OF THEIR WEBSITE and won’t honor it #fail https://t.co/VlITkH46QG — Points with a Crew (@PointsWithACrew) July 21, 2015

Of course, then I did my own #fail, by mis-spelling @Staples and castigating poor Joe Stapleton, who has the poor misfortune of having the @Stapes twitter handle 😀

That led to some other hilarious tweets

@MordyNY @PointsWithACrew @Stapes Give the guy a break. Running a multinational company and telling mildly amusing jokes must be hard work.

— BigRedEgg (@BigRedEgg) July 21, 2015

@MordyNY @PointsWithACrew @Stapes Give the guy a break. Running a multinational company and telling mildly amusing jokes must be hard work. — BigRedEgg (@BigRedEgg) July 21, 2015

3rd try – Staples customer service on the phone

So next I try calling into the main Staples customer service phone number.  The Staples customer service agent put me on hold to look at my detail, then came back to tell me that a) I didn’t use Visa Checkout and b) even if I had, they couldn’t do anything about it and c) it was a vendor promotion

I said a) yes I did, b) yes you can and c) I don’t care

Eventually she said that because it was a vendor promotion that they couldn’t adjust the order, but she could give me a $50 coupon good off my next Staples order, which I accepted.

Of course, I’m sure I will promptly forget to use it like I do with most of my Staples rewards…. 😀

Persistence pays off!

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