AJ Madison Responds…

Sounds fishy….i have done business with Living social in the the past. They send you a completed mock up with all the deal info – fine print, expiration, limits per customer etc BEFORE the deal goes live. Living Social will only make the deal live with the approval of the company….

But why didn’t you allow the $200 coupon for purchases beloww $250?
And who is Living Social to tell you not to communicate with YOUR customers? Sorry, but that doesn’t make sense. You now have no obligation to Living Social, why don’t you honor the deal for customers who legitimately bought the deal? Or at least compensate them.

Guess Yelp reviews must be all made up then since they can’t possibly be describing how AJ Madison runs their business

From the Yelp reviews, it seems this is exactly how AJ Madison runs their business.

Funny. Living Social’s note places the blame on AJ Madison while AJ seems to think its all LS’s fault

AJMadison with gods help will soon be bankrupt as they treat all there valuable customers like crap. This is not my first bad experience with them.

Obviously this is a complete lie on AJ Madison’s end I will be reporting this to the BBB.

Since I did not see anywhere what kind of business AJ M is, I had to look it up.Appliances.

I commented on the first post that dan wrote about aj madison that they are a terrible company. My comment never went through, but i stand by my previous comment that aj madison is a worthless company, dont do business with dishonest crooks

this is why the rabbonim dont allow internet in boro park. you all would’ve saved time & not had to deal with loshon hora issues. SEE! listen to the rabbis. they are there to protect you!

AJ Madison thinks everyone is stupid. You’ll see soon they’ll do an insurance job.

Dan,

Please see the Email below which I received from Living Social, it states very clearly that I can contact AJ Madison regarding this. Someone isn’t being honest here.

Hi Steve,

We have no other information for you. Your refund was processed due to the deal being canceled and that fulfills our end of this canceled deal. You are welcome to contact AJ Madison or you can mail our corporate office at 1445 New York Ave, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005. There is no phone number available to reach our corporate office, any requests, complaints or other issues need to be submitted in writing.

If you still have questions, please reply to this email. We’re happy to help.

Thanks for LivingSocial!

@groisechuchem:
Save their cries about internet and teach ethics and how to behave like a mensch instead. Would save klal yisrael from far more tzoros.

“They were not reachable over the holiday & are very apologetic. ”

Dan, do not believe them for a second. Living Social’s customer’s service was open on Sunday, as well as Monday Memorial Day until 8pm est.(Regular hours)

On contrary it was much easier to reach Living Social on Sunday and Monday, than it was to reach AJ Madison on Sunday. I waited at least 22 minutes on hold once with Aj Madison, and another time after waiting, they disconnected immediately, while with Living Social every time I called I was immediately answered!!

@groisechuchem: besides the fact that you are using the internet to tell us how we shouldn’t be on the internet everything you say makes perfect sense

so all the stores and rabbis can do whatever they want….

@groisechuchem: so all the stores and rabbis can do whatever they want….

AJ Madison! Shame on you! You dont deal with honestly & when pressed to the wall you just lie. What a fantastic role model for others!

Bottom-line is that AJ Madison stood to lose $300K+ of business. Whether or not this is unethical or unshady, this is a business decision that needed to be made. Nothing that anyone will say or do will make the Company lose $300K. No sense in crying over this. I agree that this is not right, but get over it …

I don’t understand something, after reading one page of Yelp reviews, how can anyone feel comfortable shopping with AJ Madison or be surpised by this stunt they pulled???

I am seriously working on a class action lawsuit. Please contact me at stvago@gmail.com if your order was canceled on you and you would like to join. Thank you.

@Yoeli:
Huh? Who forced them to sign the deal contract with Living Social?

@EV:
You mean one of those cases where the lawyers make $$$$$$ and everyone in the class gets some lousy 10% off coupon?

@Dan: I need to look into it some more, but let them at least be out the money and learn a lesson. I would certainly aim at getting each customer at least $250 per canceled order.

@Aaron J Madison (no relation!):

Look up pretty much anything on Yelp, everything has horrible reviews. I agree that it’s really unprofessional to make a coupon then back out, but it’s a little ridiculous how ticked off everyone gets. The guy who sold his old fridge and is now screwed, fine.

But to all the deal hunters looking to buy a 14th grill for half off just cause its on sale, DEAL.

I think the whole practice of jumping on price mistakes like wild animals is a bit ridiculous. If any one of us owned a business and posted some deal or price, either by mistake, or bad business decision, we would NOT want everyone to jump on us and milk us for every penny. The argument that “well El-El makes millions on us” doesn’t help.

@Shalom:
Why are you insisting on calling this a price mistake?

They made a business decision to run a deal and now do not want to honor it.

Sure, I can understand if there was a mistake and they meant to exclude some brands like Weber. I’d accept it if they added several excluded brands but honored the deal, but that’s not what they did at all.

@Dan:

I didn’t call it a price mistake, I meant jumping on these deals in general. Obviously there was SOME kind of mistake. Maybe they didn’t think it through or didn’t think so many people would buy, but what are they supposed to do? Sell $1mil in merchandise for 500k? They could have just doubled the price of everything but then they’d lose all the NON LS customers. Whatever it was, something wasn’t considered. So it was either lose who knows how much, or cancel a deal that was ill conceived. Would you bankrupt your business just to make the customer happy?

I do totally agree that they handled it pretty much as stupidly as possible, there’s SO much more they could do. But I just don’t like how everyone freaks out at these sorts of things like they OWE you something, if it was any one of us in their shoes we would cancel the deal too if it was such a burden, but we’d probably offer more than 5% off which is a slap in the face.

Not following. Whats the final story? I al ready placed an order on sunday. Will it be canceled or not?

@ari: It probably was already canceled. Call them to confirm.

@Shalom:
I believe it was a shot at some free marketing on their part that backfired. As many people have mentioned, there are T’s to cross before posting a deal on LivingSocial and no business would sign a potential business deathwish without reviewing.

Between the lack of proper response and shadiness to the story, I wouldn’t be shocked if AJ Madison were being run by the Obama administration!

@shalom They didnt think it through good enough? You must be high on something.. Share the cool aid brother..

I have been running daily deal sites for the last 4 years. I can tell you in 99% of these cases it’s the merchant (AJ Madison) who is at fault. Most probably it was a lower end employee that put this together with the okay from a superior without thinking through all the negative possibilities. They made it worse by canceling orders and not just making it sold out when they realized.

@YePhBr: They did sell it out 21 days before it was supposed to end. On top of that they are canceling orders!!!

@EV: that’s the first step. Show sold out while they are figuring out what to do. Big mess up by them. However it happened. And it was their mess up. @EV:

@Drei Kup: Obviously AJ Madison didn’t think it through, because they are now in a worse position than if they never ran the promotion in the first place. How did they gain? I don’t think they are in a back room cackling how they fleeced everyone. More likely they are thinking why they ever agreed to get involved with Living Social in the first place.

@EV: In order to sue someone you have to show damages. Other than maybe the one guy who sold his old refrigerator in reliance on the offer, how exactly were you all damaged?

Maybe it is just me, but I don’t think this sense of outrage when a vendor doesn’t honor a deal is a praiseworthy reaction. I think it is all very good for people to determine to run their own lives and businesses very honestly and ethically, but they should probably be a little more forgiving when it comes to other people, especially a frum business. This is not to condone how AJ Madison handled this fiasco or to tell you to shop there if you don’t want to. But suing them? Filing complaints with the BBB? Puh-lease.

Bought a convection oven for 700 bucks there onece and never went back. Service stinks.

5%, are they nuts?

I priced 2 different 20 cubic freezers. Their cheapest Frigidaire is $641+ $99= to ship out of new york, http://www.ajmadison.com/cgi-bin/ajmadison/FFU21F5HW.html ,while their nearest competition in Boro Park “Plug ins” is only charging $535 for the same thing, and delivery would only be $30 to NJ.
And AJ Madison was charging $719 + $99 for this Model
http://www.ajmadison.com/cgi-bin/ajmadison/FKFH21F7HW.html
while plug ins was just $595 +30.
SO WHAT’S A MEASLY 5%??

Guys, any vendor who would offer you 50% off is losing on the deal.

they were promosting short duration, and with brands limits, but you guys certainly abused it. making pools, schticks, and buying multiples etc.

Do you understand you were about to drive a legit honorable biz out of business?

Guys, this is not Darka Shel Torah!

Stop complaining, and think what you want to pass to your children.

I am just reading. didnt buy, not working for AJM. You make us all look bad.

@danthecan:
ditto
but dan, if i didnt get an email from them is my order still in effect?

As a guy who loves deals, I can perfectly understand why everyone is upset. All I would say is that I have bought many things from AJ Madison and have never had a bad experience except with their delivery service which can vary depending on the guys. I recommended them on the DansDeals forum a while back and stand by that recommendation.
Sounds like someone messed up big time here and perhaps others haven’t had positive experiences in the past as evidenced by Yelp, but my experiences were all very good.

@Dreyers, enough!:
Did you see the comment one above your’s? Stop hocking about a 50% loss! I stated the facts.

Isnt it false advertising what they did? What fools.. they deserve every piece of criticism thrown their way.. crooks!

Its breach of contract unless they have a provision in the “terms and agreements” to back themselves up with and void the contract.

While I understand some frustration when a deal like this goes bad, I have a few questions here.

Why is it that us “Yidelach” always love to be negative against our brethren?

None of us know the real story, we weren’t there when the contract was signed between LS and AJM, and it could very well be that AJM had exclusions about multiple purchases and excluding some UMRP brands. And when AJM realized that they are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars the must have pulled the deal. Or as others say AJM didn’t read all the fine print and they entered an agreement and realized a way out because of some loopholes..

But what bothers me is the “rishus” of us bnei Torah who for some reason want to sue….file complaints with the BBB or post negative comments… I am sure that had this deal never been posted none of you would have shopped there because all of us NYers try to weasel our way out of taxes and can’t “fargin” when a yid makes a buck. We thrive on “rechilus” and ” motzee Shem”

Let bygones be bygones I am sure this has taken a massive impact on their company and they will have to crawl out of it. But why take a company who’s owner has helped and supported people like you and pray for his downfall?

@doctor
Noone is saying he should have a downfall.
Just honor the purchases & deal in business ethically

Lashon Hara?

@EV: If you’re Jewish you are forbidden from going to court, you MUST go to Beit Din

@Doctor:
THEY CAN STILL HONOR WHAT THEY OFFERED! THEY CAN STILL COME FORWARD AND LET EVERYONE ON DANSDEALS THAT HAD A LIVING SOCIAL COUPON TAKE 250 OFF 500 WITHOUT GIVING LIVING SOCIAL A CUT OF THEIR SALES.
They were fully conscious of what they were offering. When I spoke to one of their cs reps, they knew what they were offering. When I commented to him if besides the $99 shipping there were other gimmicks, he said No. He said it was basically $150 off $500 after you include the shipping surcharge even on items over $699,which were supposed to be free shipping.

I’m not so sure that if you owned a company that had contractual flaws with a marketing company’s contract that you would be willing to lose 500k just so deal seekers should be kept happy. They obviously weighed their options and decided to not honor the LS deal. I am not saying I agree with how they did it, but I certainly understand it from a business owners perspective. We deal seekers complain anyway…… We look for every way to make sure that companies don’t make a dime. And in this thread of comments we are looking to destroy a company that employs 100 frum families and the owners are extremely involved in local tzedokahs. I am sure that this company being around this long is a legit appliance company that unfortunately had some oversight on an ad campaign.

I know you all are upset, but this is a frum store so please SHOW CAUTION before being negative. Its not Fairmont or any other large company that can afford to loose big $ to make people happy.
Lets keep this in perspective, no one lost thousands of dollars here….

I am sure they wished this never happened,this whole thing just hurt them.

i dont give a cap if its afrum company

If i bought s/t with the deal and got it what do u think will happen if i try to exchange it?

@Dreyers, enough!:
u sure u don’t work for Ajm??
What makes them a “legit HONORABLE biz”?? Did u read the reviews about their unhonorable biz practice even before this deal?
Doesn’t look like they treat even the non LS customers bdarka shel torah!

In the torah it says “im ikesh tispatol”

i am about to cry the way suposedly frum jews are acting thretening lawsuits going to the bbb and all the other slander how low did klal yisroel sink?

This is turning to a yeshiva world blog 🙂

If you published an add and had a typo with an extra zero by a discount do you have to honor it?

If anyone on here is a business owner they would clearly understand this was a mistake and that they couldn’t possibly honor it

It’s all the mooches that are upset

It’s because all you cheapies that companies online will do anything to be the cheapest to get your attention even sell used goods as new

By the way out of the 10 friends I know who got the elal deal only 6 of then used their ticket so I guess elal did well after all

Yelp is now widely known not to be trusted. they hide positive reviews from the public unless you pay for their advertising. Please never derive any opinion about a business from the sham Yelp site. Just Google about it…

Its a fact that 80% of problems come from less than 20% of the population – in any business. The loudest complainers of the lack of customer service are only non customers. im pretty sure if someone was a true customer there would be a lot more than 5% offered.

I agree with the decision to pull the deal and as far as compensating anyone that had a coupon, I wonder how many people that bought the coupon were part of the target audience – washinton. or how many are repeat or actual “customers” obviously anyone looking to get this deal just wanted to get in line for a handout of $250.

Customer service is reserved for customers and not for those looking to take advantage. Taking 250 doesn’t make you a customer, it makes you a liability.

This is the same as Hashovas Aveidah, someone is losing money and its has their name all over the wallet but you don’t see anyone returning the money just the empty wallet.

I was extremely unhappy when dan promoted taking advantage of el-al for their price mistake and actually “forced” them to honor the deal.Now again we see another company being “shaken down” for a mistake.
Somebody should tell the powers that be in the smicha programs to learn “hilchos ono’oh”a bit more carefully

Dreyers, enough! Says:
“Guys, any vendor who would offer you 50% off is losing on the deal.

they were promosting short duration, and with brands limits, but you guys certainly abused it. making pools, schticks, and buying multiples etc.

Do you understand you were about to drive a legit honorable biz out of business?

Guys, this is not Darka Shel Torah!

Stop complaining, and think what you want to pass to your children.

I am just reading. didnt buy, not working for AJM. You make us all look bad.”

Nailed it. One of Dan’s deals didn’t work out. Get over it.

You don’t realize how this works. LS will send AJM the deal page multiple times for changes and approval. If the restricted products were left out they could have demanded that be changed. They clearly forgot to put that in and then backed out of the contract they signed.

I dealt with a “frum” business before and it turned out to be a scam. It’s the 21st century and if you think being “frum” means you are dealing with an honest businessman (very unfortunate but even Rabbis have been linked to money laundering and extortion schemes), then I have got some things I’d like to sell you.

It is on the YID who runs the business to use the Torah as a guideline for conducting business…we aren’t other religions who manipulate the customers by playing the religious card to get away with marketing schemes.

@yossi770@770.net:

1. I never forced El Al to do anything. There is a federal law that airlines must honor all airfares.

2. Try this on for size: http://www.scribd.com/doc/105519402/Dan-Yated?secret_password=2ivtczr2lm7ohduqu5ce

@jimmy:
It seems like people really don’t get what this deal was.

THIS WAS NOT A PRICE MISTAKE WE WERE TAKING ADVANTAGE OF!

AJM decided to make a deal to offer $500 for $250. I don’t know why, but someone at the highest level of the store decided to make the offer. The offer was agreed to by contract and checked over by both sides, nobody is claiming there was a price mistake here so please stop calling it that!

They forgot to include restrictions and decided to back out, but there is no price mistake here. If they wanted they could have just added the restrictions and limited the deal to one per person to fix the problems and still honor their intended deal.

This post wasn’t to slam them but TO GIVE THEM THE OPPORTUNITY TO JUSTIFY BACKING OUT. I don’t see how I could have been more respectful in my exchange with them.

I agree with Dan.

I’ve taken advantage of many price mistakes over time.
I’ve also taken advantage of a good deal.

In this case it easa good deal. It had nothing to do with a price mistake.

Agreed Dan. I can’t understand how people are conflating this with a price mistake. The company voluntarily offered up a deal – to get new customers, unload inventory whatever.

It’s not acceptable in a consumer business to back out and say ‘oops, I screwed up’. The expectation from consumers is that businesses should honor a sale and a deal. That is the most basic expectation from a transaction.

Did anyone get a refund yet from Living Social or AJ Madison, I’m still waiting for both!

Hmmmm…I wonder how many of the above posters work for AJ Madison…

@mr.mgoo i thought one of the main reasons of deals was to attract new potential buyers? anyways this deal was very straight forward where there is smoke there is fire. ajm should man up to this and stop lying and blaming others. in business people make mistakes and some times that causes them to get hit real hard and can cost them their company. i dont think this would have costed them to shut the doors, it might have just hit their fully padded wallet. customers are always looking for a deal and we have a right to jump on any deal that comes our way.

i had an order with the coupon and i was tracking it to see when its coming & i saw they cancelled it, so i called & the friendly salesman took care of me and I only paid about a drop more without the coupon. its only because of the nice salesman did i not refuse the order

@Steve: i got one today

Why is it that when somebody writes sonething positive about AJM he must be working there, and when someone posts a comparison price to another store or writes bad stuff about them nobody sais its his competition writing

Another thing that you all must consider, most large appliance manufacturers control their prices, even dough you will see big price differences between stores the lowest price allowed is still controled by the manufacturer, the same is by cameras etc. so i dont understand in the first place how they where able to offer such a deal, maybe they tried to trick the system over a holiday weekend but they caught up on him so he was forced to cancel

I couldn’t agree more with DAN. This was no price mistake. This was backing out on a deal that you agreed to.

And while we are at it, Mr Aj Madison, what’s the explanation that this deal was posted for WASHINGTON DC residents? Are Ohio, NY, NJ, residents not entitled to the deal?

@isaacbp obviously you didnt bother reading what weber wrote to Dan. Read…… & then comment

All you guys want to screw a company into selling a product for .25 cents on the dollar and you think that you would honor the deal most certainly not
WHEN YOU RUN A BUSINESS THAT HAS A 50 percent off coupon and then have to pay the vendor 50 percent of the proceeds how can you expect them to honor it

before you all go screw with companies that try to do something nice be in their shoes you would hate it if you were that company

ALL IM SAYING IS LOOK AT IT FROM THE OTHER SIDE WHEN U WANT TO BE A GREEDY BASTARD

so in the end dan, was your order canceled?

@Matt:
They knew all that when they signed the deal! All they did was they did some free advertising, by agreeing to a deal and then backing out on their deal.

@Deal Guy:

Free advertising? What kind of advertising did they get? They basically just generated a 1,000 negative reviews for themselves. Sounds like they really came out on top.

Dan is 100% correct. This was not a price mistake; but a bad deal on AJM’s part. AJM also made the corrections to the deal posting on living social and stated one per customer per order, I noticed it when I placed my order on living social on the 26th of May (See quote below, and still have the email to prove it).
AJM and LS both dropped the ball here since I received no notification from either party of the problem till I contacted them directly. The deal was good at best; I did a price comparison with Amazon before I ordered the voucher, and I saved some money after shipping and taxes. The right thing to do was to offer customers alternatives if they were going to cancel an order and properly communicate the reason for cancellation to the customer. If the customer did not volatile any terms they may have neglected to include then they should have honored the order. They may have broke even using this process and saved face at the same time.

I Don’t cry over spilled milk for appliance retailers The markups on most appliances are high so they make their fare share. I think the biggest reason was AJM didn’t want to split a profit with LS.

For all those who are not informed on the process here is a breakdown of the order process from my perspective.

Buy living social voucher for $250 that gives me $500 to spend at Ajmadison
Buy a fridge at AJM for $616 was charged $87.82 for shipping (I live in Queens NY)
AJM applies the discount and collects sales tax for $18.09
My total spent for AJM $221.91
My grand total after including the cost for the living social voucher is $471.91
Lowest price I saw on the the same fridge was $515 with free shipping from another online retailer.

I would have gladly payed the same price after the deal because my decision was not solely based on finding a good deal; but order through a local retailer and getting a fair price. The permanent sting is getting burned by a local retailer that should have known better. My only concern is if I get a refund for what I spent, and if I can find a good price on the fridge again.

LS Fine Print:
“Entire Value must be used in a single transaction * Limit 1 per customer * Limit 1 per Transaction * Shipping not included * Orders cannot be shipped to P.O APO and FPO boxes, Canada, Puerto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii, and the U.S. Virgin islands.”