Bloomingdale’s glitch leads to $10K diamond buy

New York--When a recent computer glitch caused Bloomingdale’s to accidentally issue thousands of dollars in store credit to customers in its loyalty program, one shopper decided to use the mistake to his advantage.

According to Buzzfeed, the glitch caused customers’ emails to mistakenly identify their reward points balances as dollar amounts. For example, customers who had collected 5,000 “Loyalist” points, which normally would be enough for a $25 gift card, were told that they had gotten $5,000 in store credit. 

There also were a number of emails giving customers $10,000 and even one that received a $25,000 gift card.

The 29-year-old who received the $25,000 gift card told Buzzfeed that he went shopping at the Bloomingdale’s in Midtown Manhattan and bought $17,000 worth of merchandise, including a $10,000 pair of diamond earrings, a $5,000 watch and a Louis Vuitton bag.

The next day, the customer got a call from Bloomingdale’s telling him that he needed to return the merchandise, which he had yet to do at the time the story went up on Buzzfeed Monday evening. The shopper also talked with the retailer at a later time and was told that if he did return everything, he would be given a $100 gift card, and that if he didn’t, he would be banned from its loyalty program. 

A company spokesperson gave this statement to National Jeweler: “A small subset of Bloomingdale’s Loyallist participants were accidentally issued rewards gift cards with amounts that were clearly incorrect. The company caught the mistake last week and is re-issuing replacement gift cards with correct amounts. The company is in contact with its customers and has apologized to those affected.”

Buzzfeed noted, however, that the terms and conditions of the retailer’s loyalty programs say nothing about refunds for purchases bought due to a glitch.

This isn’t the first time that a digital glitch has led to lower prices for customers. In April, Balenciaga had a website glitch that allowed shoppers to buy bags worth $2,000 for as little as $200, though the company did not end up honoring those sales.

United Airlines, too, refused to honor extremely low fares that were accidentally posted after a computer glitch resulted in a few thousand customers getting first-class roundtrip tickets between England and Newark for as little as $70.