Brigantine Media

LinkedIn Has An Offer You Should Refuse

By Neil Raphel

In general, I’ve enjoyed my experience with the social networking site, LinkedIn. So, when LinkedIn offered me a $50 gift certificate to try their advertising services, I thought I’d give them a try. I signed up for a maximum expenditure of $15 per day for an ad I created. I decided to try the service for a few days. After the first day, I noticed I had racked up $89 in charges although I had a $15 per day limit. Those charges were in addition to a non-refundable $5 activation fee.

I immediately stopped my marketing program, cancelled my accounts and wrote the company a couple of complaining emails. There’s bound to be more to this story, but as is the case with most Internet transactions these days, there is no number to call on the LinkedIn site. So far, I’ve received an automated reply that they have my inquiry. Now $89 is not quite as scary as the $2,000 bill erroneously charged to my Google AdWords account a couple of years ago, but in both cases it was impossible to find a human to talk to about the situation. Internet business may seem convenient, but it isn’t when something goes wrong and you can’t rectify the problem.

Our friend Don Gallegos has written extensively about poor customer service in stores. Internet non-responsiveness makes brick and mortar customer service seem like a luxury!

PS After a couple of days, I received the following explanation from LinkedIn Customer Support:

Dear Neil,

Thank you for contacting LinkedIn Customer Support.

I apologize for any confusion when viewing the Total Spent area of your DirectAds dashboard. This location will show all of the times that your ad has been placed and shown within LinkedIn. You will not be charged this full amount. You will only be charged the amount of your budget plus the allowed 20% overage. Any other overage charges will be covered by LinkedIn. This is to get your ad more exposure to your target audience at no cost to you.

Thank you for your continued use of our DirectAds product.

Regards,

Stephanie
LinkedIn Customer Support

So even though LinkedIn showed a balance due of $89, they will only bill for $15 plus 20%. I’m still puzzling over that one.

Coming next: Williams-Sonoma Is Watching You!

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Neil Raphel is the co-author of “Business Success In Tough Times.” The book “Business Success in Tough Times” examines business leaders and entrepreneurs who have shown the courage, will, and brainpower to succeed when other companies fail. Their stories illustrate nine characteristics of business success. For more information, visit www.brigantinemedia.com.

“The god delights in the odd number” — Virgil

ODD PRICES MEAN “BARGAIN” to the customer.

If a product sells for $29.99 it “sounds” less expensive than $30. In fact, it even “feels” closer to $20 than $30.

Example: A test was given to women members of church groups and PTAs in middle income Chicago suburbs by Robert Schindler, assistant professor of marketing and behavioral science at the University of Chicago’s graduate school of business.

His team put together two booklets of clothing, furniture and shoe ads from out of town newspapers (so the women would not be prejudiced by names they knew).

The put even prices in one booklet and odd prices in another booklet for the same merchandise. Each group saw only ONE booklet. Here are the results:

• Odd prices had a positive effect.

• Reducing the item in price by as little as one cent increased the number of people who thought the advertised item was on sale, even though NONE of the ads said “sale.”

A study did an analysis of final digit prices used by retailers. The number “9” was used 36 percent of the time.

When Life magazine experimented with a subscription price ending in “7,” sales jumped.

Odd.

But true.

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Murray Raphel travels the world speaking about marketing for retailing, direct marketing, financial/insurance groups and the food industry. He is the author of several books including “Selling Rules!”, “Speaking Rules!”, and “Tough Selling for Tough Times.”

For more information about Murray and his books, visit www.brigantinemedia.com.