A typo in a Macy's mailed advertisement cost the department store giant a pretty penny, when a $1,500 necklace was accidentally marked down to $47.
Texas residents in the Dallas area received a circular with a "super buy" sterling silver and 14-karat gold necklace for a tenth of its sale price. The piece, which was supposed to be marked down to $479, was missing a 9. Underneath the mistaken sale price was the original price, $1,500, which sent buyers in the area into a frenzy.
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Collin Creek Mall in Dallas ran out of inventory soon after the ad went out to residents in March.
Thinking he found an incredible deal,
Dallas resident Robert Bernard went to the mall to buy two of the necklaces, one of which was for his wife for their anniversary. But he had suspicions – how could a necklace be marked down so drastically?
When he arrived to the store, he saw that several people paid $47 for the necklace without any problems. Before he could get his hands on the piece, though, a customer in front of him brought every one of them the store had in stock, according to local station WFAA.
As a result, the department store arranged for the piece to be mailed to him free of shipping costs.
Bernard thought he made out like a bandit; the receipt said he saved $1,400.
Much to his disappointment, though, Macy's caught the mistake and left him a voicemail a few days later.
"This item has the wrong price for $47," a Macy's call center employee said in Bernard's voicemail. "The correct price is $479 dollars and because of that pricing error, your order has been canceled and I apologize."
The store gave him a refund for the necklaces.
"I'm very, very bothered by it because I don't want anybody else to feel the way I feel," Bernard said.
Macy's apologized for the error Friday but didn't explain how it happened.
"When the mistake was caught, signage did go up in the fine jewelry department and on store doors alerting customers that a mistake had been made," wrote Beth Charlton, Macy's spokeswoman in an e-mail to News 8. "For those customers who bought the necklace at the $47 price, they were fortunate. For [Bernard], he was not so fortunate."
Macy's could not immediately say how many necklaces it mistakenly sold at the wrong price.
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