Playbook, online store
Never quote a figure the catalogue can change while you type
Trades that quote have the opposite problem to a shop. They cannot give a number without a survey. A shop has already published a number against every item it sells, which means nothing here is being withheld, and the only real risk is answering from a copy of a page that was crawled the week before a sale started. What is genuinely unpublished is everything wrapped around the number.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for pricing questions holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- Nothing needs refusing on grounds of secrecy, because the figure is printed next to the item, and that makes the failure mode unusual: it is not overreach, it is staleness, a confident quote of a price that changed on the first morning of a promotion.
- Whether the displayed figure includes sales tax depends on where the visitor is browsing from, so one product page shows two numbers to two people and any single number the assistant learned is right for only one of them.
- Discount codes carry rules that never appear anywhere near the price: which categories they exclude, whether two can be used together, and whether the code is applied before or after the free delivery threshold is measured.
- A price that dropped after somebody bought produces a request that cannot be judged from any document, because a match against the shop's own past pricing is a goodwill decision somebody makes case by case rather than a published rule.
How it arrives
- is that price with tax
- do you do a discount code
- can i use two codes together
- it was cheaper yesterday can i have the difference
- do you price match
- is there a discount if i buy three
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The rules attached to your codes, rather than the codes | Exclusions by category and by brand, whether codes stack, whether they work on already reduced lines, when they can be applied relative to the delivery threshold, and what happens to a code on a partial return. Publish the rules and let the code itself live at the checkout where it belongs. |
|---|---|
| How tax is displayed, and to whom | Whether prices are shown with or without sales tax, and whether that changes for a visitor outside your home market. Write it as a statement about the display rather than about the product, because the customer is asking what the number on the screen means, not what the item is worth. |
| Your position on price drops and price matching | Whether you refund a difference after a drop, for how long, and whether you match anybody else. If the honest answer is that you decide case by case, write that down, because a written no is answerable and a silence sends every one of these to a person. |
| Multibuy arithmetic and what happens when it breaks | How a bundle or a three for two is priced, and how the refund is calculated when one item out of the set comes back. This is the least published and most argued material in the whole category, and it turns up as a refund complaint rather than as a pricing question. |
The reply
I would not want to quote you a figure, because prices change in the catalogue and anything I hold could be out of date by the time you read it, so the product page is the only reliable number. What I can tell you is how it is displayed and what applies around it. Prices on the site are shown including sales tax for visitors in our home market and excluding it elsewhere, so the figure changes depending on where you are browsing from [1]. Discount codes cannot be combined, and they are applied before the free delivery threshold is measured, so a code can take an order back under it [2]. If you have a specific code that is not working, leave your details and somebody will look at it.
It gives the reason for not quoting rather than just declining, and the reason is a real property of a catalogue rather than a policy, which reads as competence instead of evasion. It then answers what was actually being asked underneath, since almost nobody types this question wanting a figure they can already see. The threshold interaction is included because it is the rule that produces an unexpected delivery charge at the last screen.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor asks for a discount, a price match, a difference refunded after a drop, a trade or bulk rate, or says a code has been rejected at checkout.
I cannot apply codes, agree a discount or match a price, and I would rather not guess at something that costs you money. Leave your name, an email and what you are trying to buy, and somebody who can make that call will come back to you.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never quote a figure for a product out of indexed content, because a catalogue can change it between the crawl and the conversation and the customer will hold the shop to whichever number was lower.
- Never say a price includes tax without saying which market that is true for, since the same page is showing somebody else a different number.
- Never agree to honour an expired code or to apply one the published rules exclude.
- Never offer a discount, a price match or a refund of a difference, all of which are decisions made by a person with a margin to protect.
Questions
- Should we index our product pages so it knows the prices?
- No, and this is the clearest case against it on a shop. Prices move, promotions start overnight, and an assistant confidently quoting last week's figure is a complaint with a screenshot attached. Index the rules, which change rarely, and let the catalogue own the numbers.
- Can it work out what an order comes to with a code applied?
- It should not. That is arithmetic across a price it cannot verify, a rule set and a delivery threshold, and the moment it produces a total the customer treats it as the price they agreed. The basket does that calculation properly and lives one click away.
- What is worth writing that we probably have not?
- The multibuy unwind. Every shop can explain a three for two and almost none has written down what the refund is when somebody returns one of the three. It arrives as an angry message about a short refund rather than as a pricing question, which is why it never gets documented.
Keep reading
- Everything for a online storeDelivery cut-offs, the returns window and restock questions get asked before purchase. The one thing an assistant cannot do is find an order.
- Handling pricing questions in generalPublished price versus the price for this buyer. Bands, ranges and from pricing, and why a firm number for unscoped work is the damaging failure.
- The receipt they were sent is not the document their accountant needsA confirmation email is not a tax invoice. The company details an accountant needs had to be captured at checkout and usually were not.
- Three lines on the statement and one order that never existedA failed attempt can still leave a pending line on a statement. It clears on the issuer's schedule and nobody at the shop can release it.
- The marketing list and the sales ledger are not the same dataClosing an account does not remove the sales records a seller has to keep. Separating the two is what makes this answerable at all.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.