We posted about a deal for Walmart shipping pass for $1, this pass gives you free 3 day shipping on all Walmart orders with no minimum spend requirements. The deal didn’t last long before being pulled, but if you were quick enough to sign up you should have received the following e-mail:
Dear <your name>,
Whoa! Was that unlimited shipping for a year for $1? Well, the truth is that you found a link to an employee-only test of our unlimited shipping program. Unfortunately, this one isn’t yet ready for its public debut, because we want to test and make sure it’s up to snuff. You might have seen in the press that we are in the midst of planning a pilot of free, unlimited shipping for just $50 a year. So here’s the deal…we’re going to add you to the waitlist for an invitation to the pilot AND we’re giving you a $50 eGift card that you can use to buy that special something you’ve been thinking about. Oh, and we’ll refund your $1 subscription. Anything you already ordered will be on the way with no shipping charge. We’re sorry for the confusion on this one.
Please look for a separate email within the next 24 hours that will include your eGift card.
For additional assistance, please go to http://help.walmart.com. Please do not reply to this email as the mailbox is not monitored.
Warm regards,
Michele Watson
VP Customer Care
Walmart.com
Given that you’ll be able to buy the pass for $50 soon enough, this seems like a pretty great outcome for those who did sign up. Now you have the option of keeping the giftcard or signing up for the service using the giftcard at a later stage.
Hat tip to reader J. Grant
Yeah. Compare that to the arrogant SOBs from Expedia!
Bummer, almost got this free $50 gift card.
So nice to see an “evil megacorp” like WalMart do the right thing to fix their mistake!
Agreed, this is how this sort of stuff should be handled. I guess they shut it down quick enough that the loss wasn’t too big, wonder if they would have done the same if 100,000 people had signed up.
Well, was it truly a mistake if it was meant to be an internal function and not meant for the public? Somehow it seems the info was leaked and circulated when it shouldn’t have in the first place. I’m no lawyer, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was legal jargon in some fine print communicated to those that were given the opportunity to test this out internally.
Always nice to see a goodwill gesture from a large corporation.
@J. Grant-
The mistake was in leaving the sign-up page out in the open for it to be found or leaked. It isn’t too hard to put such things behind a registration wall requiring an employee account to access.
Sure, but does making a mistake like this call for the masses to exploit? Rhetorical question – I got in on it as I had no clue it was In “beta”.