Posted by Lending Club :: February 10, 2009 @ 4:04 pm

In recent years, LL Bean has always offered free shipping on orders placed in time for Christmas delivery. This year the offer was still available, but not to all customers and hardly advertised at all.

I actually waited a while before placing my Christmas order, hoping that free shipping would become available. By Thanksgiving, I had received at least three of their catalogs and still hadn't seen a free shipping promotion, so I placed my order. When it arrived, it also contained a $10 gift card for a future purchase. If further orders resulted in the same gift card, then I essentially only paid shipping the first time. The gift card would cover subsequent shipping. This wasn't quite as good as the normal free shipping promotion, but it was better than nothing.

The story of LL Bean promotions doesn't end there. In early December, my dog received a coupon for free shipping. This may sound strange, but I had previously purchased one of LL Bean's great dog beds and shipped it in my dog's name. I suspect that after December 1st, LL Bean decided to entice previous customers and recipients (including my dog) who had not yet made any Christmas purchases. Customers who had placed orders may feel slighted by this strategy, but I suspect few even realize that free shipping was offered to anyone this year. Also the $10 gift card, mentioned previously, largely should have appeased those customers as well.

I suppose the lesson learned from this experience is that it may be worthwhile to be listed multiple times on certain mailing lists, under different names. That way you'll receive the offers for customers who do make purchases and those who do not. Depending on who gets the best offer, you can decide how to place your order. In my case, my second LL Bean offer was placed in my dog's name using the $10 coupon I had received. So I ended up getting the best of both deals.

Have you seen similar discrepancies from other companies?