i was completely flabbergasted by this email, seeing as i hadnt shopped on the site "over the last few weeks"... so they didn't need to apologize to me for letting me down. Now, though, they are going to have to convince me to shop online there, as now I'm worried that they will continue to experience problems!

They could've solved this by limited their list to those who had shopped the site/tried to shop the site in the "over the last few weeks"... it's very easy...

Wow, Nicole, that is such a good point!!!

I wonder if their website is SO messed up that their tracking and analytics don't work...

It's funny, the email actually inspired me to go to the site to check out how bad it was :). First, I was SO HAPPY to see that they added search to the site. The lack of search before deeply annoyed me. Second, it was a relatively fine experience with one exception: there was a shirt I probably would have bought if only the PICTURE showed up! I got an image-missing "X".

I still managed to check out with a dress, a skirt and a shirt though ;)...

Nicole -- I like that point, too. But it may be hard to execute. Certainly they can identify anyone who has purchased during their trouble time. But, unless I'm logged in, they can't be certain if I've been on the site or not.

I think taking the safe (blanket) approach is a good customer-first approach. The strong closing to that, as Lisa pointed out, is a discount code once they know they're safely past issues (no use enticing someone to come to a fix-in-progress site).