This is a guest post from Kris, who likes to write about Personal Finance, Home, Health, and just about anything else at Everyday Tips and Thoughts.

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I love shopping on the Internet for many different reasons. Besides not having to brave the cold and snow in winter, the internet allows me to comparison shop. I can find the item I want, read reviews on what I want to buy, and then comparison shop to find the lowest price. In the end, I feel like I made an informed decision, and got the best deal possible.
Yes, You Can Buy Wonderful Plants Online
Recently, I was browsing around looking for some good deals on perennial flowers and fruit plants, and one of my favorite websites for ordering plants was having a fantastic sale. It was my lucky day because the items I was looking for specifically were on sale at a very reasonable price. After placing all the plants in my online cart, the grand total for everything was $68.72. I almost hit ‘submit order’ when I realized I should check around for a promotion or discount code before placing my order.
Promotion/Discount Codes Are So Easy To Find!
So, I went and googled “promotion code” along with the name of the company I was looking to make my purchase with. I found many discount codes, but there wasn’t a code I could enter into the promotion code box at the online checkout. Instead, I had to click a link, which took me right to the correct website for the nursery. I was so glad because all the plants I wanted were still in my cart, which I did not expect. The discount displayed at the checkout like I expected, but my bill was suddenly $84.23.
Only One Type Of Discount Allowed?
How could the total be more expensive after using a discount code? I thought the code I was using would reduce my bill by twenty dollars. Instead, my bill was almost twenty dollars more when using the discount code than it was when I didn’t use a code at all. I then looked a little closer at the promo fine print, and the nursery website only accepted one type of discount. Meaning, the plants I ordered were on sale, which was one kind of discount, and the promotion code was another type of discount. Interestingly, the default charge for this website was to use the more expensive of the two discounts. I was so frustrated by the whole experience that I canceled my order entirely. Yes, the sale price of the individual plants I wanted to buy was great, but I felt the company was tricking customers by choosing the more expensive of the two discounts. So, I couldn’t bring myself to make my purchase.
Have you ever had a similar experience when purchasing sale items and using a discount code? Or, is this a standard practice and I am the only person that was unaware of this type of pricing?
This was a guest post from Kris, who likes to write about Personal Finance, Home, Health, and just about anything else at Everyday Tips and Thoughts. You can follow her on Twitter and subscribe to her feed by RSS.

I usually have to go through many different coupon combinations before I am happy at my final sale transaction price.
Isn’t it amazing how many different options there really are now when buying something? I probably spend too much time trying to find the perfect combination of discounts. As I found in this example though, my first option was the cheapest!
Yes that is annoying! But that’s why you have to shop around. I probably would have still bought the flowers but I would have been frustrated. I don’t know why companies make it difficult to give them money!
In hindsight, I probably should have bought the flowers. However, I was mad and ‘lost respect’ for the company.
Same experience at Leslies – the pool supply people. If you try to use a discount code, they reset the prices to pre-sale (regular) price and discount from there. Net result – higher total.
Sneaky and dirty, so I try to shop elsewhere whenever I can.
I wonder how many companies employ this practice. The experience I wrote about was the first time I came across such deceptive pricing.
I’ve seen this happen once before if I recall, where there wasn’t anything in the fine print that I saw, yet couldn’t apply a coupon to a product on sale. It’s annoying, and you often end up canceling the order. Who knows if it’s strategic on the retailer’s part?
Oh I totally think it is strategic. This company offers so many discounts that I often wondered how they made money. Now I know. And that fine print is quite fine too!
I have seen this a few times before. The last time was at GoDaddy. The site was having a $7.49 sale, but I went looking for coupons. I found a 25% off coupon and it didn’t stack so the price was actually higher. I guess you have to be careful when you buy with online coupons.
I will definitely be on the lookout for this type of pricing in the future. I really wasn’t aware of it until it happened last week. I wonder if I wasn’t paying close enough attention before, or if most companies allow multiple coupons/default to the lower price?
I wanted to start making some money off of my blog, how would I go about doing so? What about google adsense or other programs like it?.
Wow…good catch. I haven’t noticed this before, but I usually do the same as you…not remember to look for the coupon code until I’m in the checkout phase.
This is a good tip. I’ll look out for it the next time I go online shopping.
Well, I hope the company I was shopping with is an outlier and most companies use more ‘respectable’ pricing. However, I will not trust a retailer to give me the lowest price in the future!
Wow, this sounds downright sneaky! Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I’m going to be much more careful now when it comes to coupon code searches. To my knowledge, I’ve never had this happen before. Thanks!
I ordered some stuff from Vistaprint once and kept playing around with coupon codes until I had what I wanted at the best prices. Good thing you checked the total on your order before and after that coupon code! -Sydney
This type of promotion is terribly deceptive. I wouldn’t have bought from them either. Clearly it’s a marketing strategy to make the consumer feel like they will get a phenomenal deal. Maybe enough people put up their hands and surrender to make it worthwhile for them. I think it would upset too many people to justify itself.