Dumbest Internet Moment of 2007

Fortune Magazine recently announced their selection for the "101 Dumbest Moments in Business" for 2007.  Fortunately, for Macy's they've missed the cutoff for this year's competition.  Maybe they're counting on 101 dumber things to happen in the next year to keep them off that list too.  Nonetheless they've pulled what I think has to be one of the dumbest move in using the Internet as a sales tool.

A few days ago I went online to look for a particular Christmas gift.  I knew it was too late to buy it online and expect it to be delivered (at least without paying premium freight) in time for Christmas.  I simply wanted to see what various stores had and to check the availability.  One of those was Macy's and I was shocked to see this:

Even though it is politely worded and tries to make it sound like they are doing this to benefit the customer it is just dumb in so many ways:

1. "Later" has no meaning on the Internet, there is only "now".  Do they really think people will wait for them when it so easy to move on to another store's site.
2. Macy's concept of "momentarily" is rather strange.  A day after this first occurred I went back out of curiosity.  The first time I tried it I got right in.  A couple of hours later I got the "We'll be right with you." message so I thought I'd wait and see what they meant by momentarily.  So I waited, and waited, opened up a new window to do some other things and checked back after 15 minutes where I was still momentarily waiting and finally gave up.  I was doing this out of curiosity I can't imagine anyone that really wants to buy something waiting this long.
3. Christmas is the season for departments stores.   I mean Christmas is big for department stores.  How big?  Well in 2006 Macy's Inc. (which includes other stores such as Bloomingdales) a whopping 73% of their net income came in their fourth quarter (November, 2006 through January, 2007).  If you can make a sale, you make it, you don't give people an excuse to shop somewhere else.  If it means adding more capacity, you do it.  December is not the time for department stores to scrimp on ways of making a sale.

All I can figure is that someone said rather than adding capacity let's put up this nice note - after all, this Internet shopping stuff is just a fad.  Right?  As TV psychologist Dr. Phil likes to say:

What Were You Thinking?

Although I don't like to underestimate businesses capacity for doing dumb things I have to believe this has got to be one of the biggest marketing blunders in the use of the Internet.

What do you think about Macy's approach?

As you go about your holiday shopping I wish you Happy Holidays - but you might want to think twice about shopping at Macys.  After all, we wouldn't want to impose on them by asking them to sell us something now would we?

If this topic was of interest, you might also like these:

• Should We Stick To What We Know?
• Are Your Execution and Delivery Processes Ready for the Internet?
• Some More Thought Provoking Ideas from Matt Moran
• Or the posts in the "Web / Tech" category