AJ Madison Nixes Half Price Living Social Deal

Is so disappointing. I spent time buying a new fridge with this deal and made an agreement to sell my old one! Sooooo disappointed!

Shame on a frum company to act in such a dishonest way.

and this is part of the reason why i hate living socail and wont buy from them. They have the worst cs. Really $5 when your initial layout was either $100 or $250??

Remember that NY limo deal? Same story…
They canceled it, made me wait two weeks to tell me that it’ll take them a month to issue a refund, and then offered me 5 “deal bucks”. Fail.

AJ Madison is so shady! I purchased the Living Social deal and paid for a refrigerator…..that’s a kitchen appliance, hello!

I checked to see when my delivery would be scheduled and noticed my order was cancelled. No email, no phone call…they just cancelled it. After talking to several rude employees in customer service I was finally told “The Truth.” AJ Madison/Living Social did not think to make a list of excluded items, so they punked out and are trying to back out of the deal. Not cool, nor smart. I see this as a major problem since over 1100 paid for this deal and AJ Madison was posting about the deal on Facebook! I can’t believe they are foolish enough to backout now for fear of going broke. The bad publicity alone will destroy AJ Madison. Offering those of us that were ripped off free shipping and 5% off as a compromise is a slap in the face!

It wasnt AJ who backed out it was the manufacturers of the stuff they sell that dont allow price drops on their items and since AJ tried to outsmart them and it didnt work he had to cancle the deal

They are a Jewish Company so if it was indeed a mistake we should be supportive of the decision to cancel the deal. Its not like price mistake are that uncommon in all companies…

@AJ Customer:
That’s a lie that AJMadison told people about why they started excluding Weber from the deal (the first sign of trouble).

Weber said that is completely false, retailers are free to charge any price they want.

@DH:
How is this a price mistake?
They signed a contract to make a deal and are backing out. This isn’t about an item being mispriced, this is a deceitful way to run a business.

first of all let me just say I have purchased from AJ many times and still purchase from them. Their customer service is outstanding, and their prices are very competitive.
why people need to be so negative about these things. its a professionally run business and bec living social probably messed up as I am well aware with running deals on living social myself, livingsocial is not the most professional company out there making promises they do not deliver on and not being able to solidify certain things. I suggest before you make any accusations about a yiddishe company you do your corect research, and know the intricacies of the deal.

@AJ Customer: That’s still doesnt answer why 1) they cancelled “all” orders, and 2) why they didnt allow to redeem the $200 voucher for purchases less than $250

@c!: It has nothing to do with Living Social, Its AJ Madison who backed out of the deal.

@loveisrael: What exactly did Living Social mess up??

its true retailers are allowed to sell at whatever price they want the only thing is that they arent allowed to advertize

@loveisrael:
If you know the intricacies and what happened then please post.
I tried finding them out and was stonewalled.

Dale posted his version above and that sounds about right…

@meshugener:
They should be able to offer better compensation than $5 in funny money. That’s not a good way to treat customers on an expensive deal.

@shnitzel:
They didn’t advertise Webers for half off, they advertised $500 for $250.
They definitely could sell them at any price.

I bought the $100 for $200 and hade my A/C delivered today! But it wasn’t easy. I sent complaints to living social and AJ Maddison and eventually I ordered item over the phone with customer service paying less then $150 for a 8000 BTU delivered at 7:00 this morning (Though I don’t think living social is refunding those that already purchased things cuz I didn’t get any email from them)

inz zemir Ah shvere folk..

This is disgusting. I dont think I will ever buy anything from them. If they would have let the deal through then they would have gotten a loyal appreciative customer who would probably spend a lot more money on them in the future. Who knows how many people got turned off because of this “deal”

@Dan
Weber and Miele are price controlled by the companies. You won’t find them price lower anywhere on the Web.

AJMADISON is mistaken to think they won’t have a backlash from the way they handled this…

@aron:
Not true.
A. I saved 20% on my Weber via coupons at Lowe’s.
B. Here is an email from Weber:

From: legal@weberstephen.com

Weber does not regulate prices on our products. Weber does have a “Minimum Advertised Price” program which we encourage our Dealers to participate in. However, all Weber Retailers are free to set the retail prices of our products as they choose. We have no authority over the prices they choose to sell our products. Doing so, would be a violation of Federal law.

In addition, we have no authority or standing to tell any Weber Dealer what coupons they can or cannot honor.

We hope this answers your inquiry.

Sincerely,

Weber-Stephen Products LLC

I spoke to both AJ Madison and living social. Livingsocial stated that AJ Madison backed out of the deal and since they broke a contract there would be reprecussions.

AJ Madison blamed it on Weber and other suppliers. Which of course is not true. Shame on AJ Madison

AJM is an interesting company (I’ve bought over $8k of appliances from them in the past). They offer some of the best prices but they are smart and ruthless. They’d rather take a hit to their reputation than actually lose money. A lot of big box sellers seem to go on autopilot on stuff like this. They don’t seem to. This is why their reputation takes such a hit on social sites.
This was a ‘too good to be true’ deal. For those who got in in-time – “lucky you”, those who didn’t “Don’t be sore about it, you were just unlucky not to be quick enough”.

@Dan: @Dan:

Cool… I did not know that… where do I get 20 of Lowes coupons?

DID I MENTION I SOLD MY FRIDGE?

@SJCRussell:
If they were they smart they wouldn’t have signed the contract to offer this deal in the first place!

@aron:
Look for competitor coupons, etc.

@ Dan – First of all – if they were planning to make this deal available for only specific products and forgot to write it in the contract, then it’s just as much of a price mistake as setting the wrong price. Do you honestly believe they would go ahead and make a deal only to cancel later and suffer the negative publicity?
As far as setting prices is concerned, I can tell you for a fact that many major electronics companies do have a minimum price – even if they will deny it to you. Anyone in the electronics business can tell you that canon, brother and many other manufacturers will stop selling their products to retailers if they sell for below a certain price.
I’m not saying AJ Madison is right for what they did, but if we understand when Dell, HP, Office Depot, Amazon other retailers when they cancel a Price Mistake how is this any different?

How many of you bought the El-Al tickets @ $300 r/t?

@DH:
No, the reason a price mistake online isn’t that big of a deal is because it was probably some low level employee who left off some zeros or something. I can forgive that.

When you’re signing off on a contract for a million dollar deal there had better be upper management and lawyers involved. This is no ordinary price mistake.

And even so they did exclude Weber and Miele after a short while and people could have lived with that. But why pull the entire deal completely??

And I’ve seen (and posted!) plenty of awesome sales for Canon, Brother, etc, so I have no idea what you’re taking about.

If a store would be cut off due to low prices they would have an open and shut mega bucks victory in federal court.

I live a few blocks away from AJ madison’s showroom in Brooklyn. My wife and I got a washer and dryer from them and we saved 300 bucks compared to everyone else. The customer service is terrible. They didnt come to deliver when they said they would and when we called to find out what happened,they said it would come next week. They did not call us first. BUT at the end we got it and saved some money. They keep busy because with the thousands turned off by their ratings there are others who will put up with it to save a couple bucks (like me. Sad to see from a frum, Boro Park store, but that is how they run their business.

If you know M gross, you wouldnt be surprized

@ Dan: So what your saying is they purposely put up a deal and then cancelled for no reason? It was obviously a mistake otherwise they wouldn’t pull it down. Its pretty simple really – they either wanted this deal the way it is or didn’t. If the deal was intentional they would not have canceled it, if they canceled it – obviously something in that deal wasn’t accurate.
Regarding other price mistakes: Yes of course we’ve posted and ordered many price mistakes – but we don’t blame the company when they cancel it, we just hope that our order was put thru before it was canceled. I understand it’s upsetting to everyone that didn’t make money on this or lost out – but if they actually made a mistake why don’t they get the right to cancel like everyone else.

I’m saying I have no idea what happened behind the scenes but they’ve managed to do far more damage to their brand than a simple online price mistake.

Well this had happened to me before with them when I purchased the deal for 3 oil changes for $30 when I got there the guy have me the biggest attitude saying it was a mistake and when I returned for the second one he refused to give it to me. Don’t know whose fault it was maybe LS has a way of “convincing” the vendors and afterwards they realize what we’re they thinking.

i work at a wholesale company of major appliances, ppl make the mistake thinking aj is like a store, aj works mainly on out of state and rlly dosnt care about ny, in truth almost all major brands have a set price they sell their items but as mentioned in the above forum UNLESS aj advertised the brand name and model with a price the company wont mix it its just that some brands like meile dosnt sell below a certain cost so since aj didnt write excluding weber and meili lg ge etc its 100 percent their fault and living social didnt screw up so i guess since they know aj will get the publicity (good or bad) and not them so they offer a min so noone can complain that they didnt offer cs

Looks like Aj Madison is commenting here under different screen names…

Ya
@DH – What company do you work for?

Just to jump in… I my self work for a large ecommerce business which is not Jewish and does not generally cater towards the Jewish community. A little while back a code for free items leaked out and we got 7500 orders… The decision was made not to send these out and instead we offered a 10% off coupon.
Our company felt that the type of customers that we would acquire are deal hunters and not the type of customer we go after in the first place. We didn’t suffer any hit or bad press as result and the company is still doing unbelievably well.

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

AJMadison looked like a bad idea in the first place, which is why I didn’t bite. High restocking fees and lots of customer service complaints.

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 …

Leave AJ madison alone..

they were getting screwed. they nixed the deal, you would do the same.

@S.d. Freidman:

The smartes commen so far, if you knew Mr.Gross (Michael) the owenr you wouldnt be surprise!!!

Worst person to deal with! worst company!!!

@Mike: Whats the relation?
This was not a “leak” or a mistake.
They intentionally posted a deal on LS just to cancel a few days later.

As someone who is intimately involved in these type of contracts with manufacturers, I this AJ Madison really did have a problem here.

The company I work with has such MAP contract. What the contract basically says, is that you are entitled under federal lay to sell at any price you choose, BUT, it you sell below the Minimum Advertized Price, they reserve the right to discontinue their relationship with you.

Sony, Canon and Nikon are fairly strict on these rules AFAK.

So Dan, Weber isn’t lying when they say that they don’t force the price, but the consequent of underpricing is quite obvious, and legal.

The FTC has a page on this IIRC.

@A @Bob I do not work for AJ Madison, I’m pretty well known on DDF and I’m the guy that provides you with about 75% of the computer and Laptop deals you’ve seen on DansDeals so chill.
As someone accustomed to dealing with price mistakes online, this is not as surprising to me and doesn’t bother me as much as it does other ppl.
Every time theres a price mistake or deal online that was put up without the company perhaps realizing all the angles, the have 2 ways of approaching it. Some companies cancel the orders and other companies let the orders go thru. I would imagine this depends on how much money they stand to lose vs reputation. Smaller companies usually can’t take a big loss like this especially if they already have negative reviews and don’t seem to care about it. At the end of the day they made a choice not to lose all this money, and as I happen to be Jewish and don’t wan’t them to lose money I’m ok with it.

@DH:
Which is why if their problems were what they told me they should’ve added the brand exclusions and household limits and not just scrubbed the whole deal. That would have generated goodwill-they could even have blamed it on LS if they wanted to.

If the problem is on the entire deal…then who the heck signed off on it??

Prob some dumb marketing guy that is packing his stuff and getting fired as we speak:):)

@Dan – I guess I was one of the lucky ones! I received my $600 air condition yesterday! Total paid out of pocket = $315 (after taxes and shipping).

I feel Lucky 🙂

everybody relax just a stupid mistake before we destroy a yiddishe company just take a step back we all make mistakes and were all trying always to get the best deal possible

A few weeks ago Dan posted a deal on a apple iPod from amazon for a real cheap price, my order got canceled and I was offered a $10.00 credit from amazon toward a future purchase however I kept emailing them stating how unhappy I was about what happen. Around 2 weeks ago I got a email from amazon saying they will honor the price that Dan posted it for. Maybe something like that will happen with this company. Good luck.

@S.d. Freidman: @John: All the other comment can be argued that they are for a to’eles, whether one can trust AJM to do businesses with or not. Your comments, however, are completely below the belt. What is the to’eles of that Loshon hora. Why does everyone have to know who the owner is and about his character. I don’t think Dan condones Loshon Hora, I don’t think the purpose of his website is to publicize to thousands Loshon Hora. Please publicly apologies to the owner of AJM and to all of dansdeals readers for the Loshon Hora you sent down our throats. Thank you in advance

@S.d. Freidman:

I know M Gross. Nicest, most generous, ehrliche guy.

@Dan:

first of all only they know what truly happened and if they were trying to pull a fast one so just to speculate and blame them seems a little immature. Second sorry to burst your bubble but it seems that companies are allowed to force retailers to set a certain price. If you read the words carefully all Webber told you was that cant control how much “MORE” the retailer can sell it for but they didnt say that they control how low the price can be.
From the ftc which i believe is a reliable source” If a manufacturer, on its own, adopts a policy regarding a desired level of prices, the law allows the manufacturer to deal only with retailers who agree to that policy. A manufacturer also may stop dealing with a retailer that does not follow its resale price policy. That is, a manufacturer can implement a dealer policy on a “take it or leave it” basis.”
That you find cannon cameras for very low prices for the obvious reason that either the retailer hasnt signed such a disclosure with the manufacturer or doesnt care.
I have know idea whether AJM is an honest company or not but to try to put a company down or maybe out of business with out facts seems silly.

Ugh. I’m not trying to put anyone out of business.

Fact is that:
A: Other stores do take coupons on webers.
B: I didn’t mind that they excluded Weber. I do have a problem with them agreeing to make this deal and then not honoring it.

Add all the terms you meant to add but don’t just toss aside over 1000 customers.

I bought the deal, but haven’t received a cancellation email yet.

The whole thing is shady — and it’s not that complex: spend $250, get $500 of merchandise. No brainer.

FWIW, I’m building a new home and need all new appliances. Guess who just dropped OUT of the running for my $15-20K of business….

Just let it go and use the time you are wasting to look for the next deal.

Time is not wasted when info is gathered and used in academic research on service operations 🙂

I ordered my dream kitchen range and got $500 off the Memorial Day pricing. I paid $590 total for a $1,300 range! Ordered it the minute I got my LivingSocial voucher # it was delivered to my home in Burleson TX that next Friday….all the way from New York! Home Depot and Lowes I would of had to wait 2 or 3 weeks for delivery!

So glad I was one of the lucky ones!

I will shop again,
Cindi