We were able to study his browsing history on our site and determine that for months he was trying everything he could to find a loophole. Once he finally found one, we had quite a bit of evidence to lay the hammer down and ban his account. He violated several points of our ToS. We refunded him the little money he spent with us and did not ship him any goods….and then of course fixed the loophole.

Obviously these people are out there and they’ll stop at nothing to get cheap or free stuff. It’s sad to me, but it’s reality. If you run an e-commerce store, the best advice I can give is to have several people looking at every single order with a critical eye. Especially during the busy times. And especially for international customers (this one was international, as was our large chargeback case). All four of us are busy, but we all try to at least scan every order that comes through. You’d be amazed at what we catch sometimes.

It’s just too damn easy and anonymous. That’s why.

The same reason people download music illegally instead of paying for it on iTunes, Amazon, etc. It’s just as easy, but it costs less/nothing. It’s blatantly unethical, but it is proof that the online universe just makes these things too easy and too anonymous. After all, most people wouldn’t steal CDs from a bricks-and-mortar store.

So, if a large percentage of people are willing to blatantly break not only ethics, but laws, to steal music online, it should be absolutely no surprise that they’re willing to legally exploit a loophole at a random ecommerce site.

Someone mentioned Black Friday. That’s a great example. People will use normal coupons in conjunction with an already heavily discounted doorbuster. Even though it’s questionable and probably explicitly not allowed on the coupon, many retailers will just bite the bullet and allow purchases like that to go through. You can thank big retailers for allowing things like this to happen, and conditioning consumers that it’s OK.

I think the big problem here is that when a business is online, it’s hard to tell if they’re a multinational, billion-dollar business, or a mom-and-pop shop with a few employees. When a new-ish customer goes to detailedimage.com, at least around the holiday/discount season, all they probably have in mind is getting what they want, cheap. They don’t feel like they’re ripping you off. For all they know, you’re a huge organization, you’re a low-price leader, and they’re doing what they do everywhere else, which is taking advantage of a pretty standard loophole (must of us do it on our taxes, why not elsewhere, right?)

Lastly, although this practice was debatably unethical, it’s not necessarily viewed by everyone as such. I find that the stores/sites I get (unethical) good deals from are also the same places I end up frequenting even when I can’t manage to get any kind of deal at all. And mind you, 95% of the time, it’s a pretty standard, non-discounted purchase. So who’s the real winner?

Another example are premium online shops (such as http://www.kikidm.com – possibly NSFW) which sells the same products (sex toys) as many other retailers but does so in a such a way as to appeal to the high-end market and possibly those who wouldn’t be comfortable with a “normal” sex toy e-commerce store.

Which makes me think of an interesting question – is there an e-commerce industry online that isn’t driven primarily on price? Meaning, is there a market leader that charges considerably higher but makes up for it in some other way?

Surely the guy would have noticed that the gift certificate didn’t have discount applied when he went to check out? If he didn’t, that’s odd because it’s so obviously planned…

Another thing to take away from this is that you’re clearly attracting at least one price-concious customer which leads me to belive you’re the low-cost leader for that product. Shout about it!