Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Sells IPAQs for $10
TomHoward writes "In a pretty huge blunder, amazon.co.uk have put the HP IPAQ H1910 (RRP about £300) for sale for just over £7.32 (plus postage and packing). It's very hard to get through to their site right now, but if you're quick you can have a look at their blunder here." Don't bother clicking through, Amazon has taken the items down.
Don't both /.'ing Amazon.
I would have preferred the CLIE anyway. Did anyone actually make it to one of these bargain bloopers before it went down?
--------
Free your mind.
So I was one of the first few to order one of the H1910s as the thing went out on our list first. I got the confirmation email. I ordered the H5450 too, got that confirmation email. Combined the orders, got that email.
I'd imagine they won't honour the orders as there's all kinds of boilerplate about Amazon not considering it a contract until they debit your account and dispatch the goods.
I'm expecting:
a) Nothing
b) An apology
c) A gift voucher and an apology
d) 1(one) Ipaq per person, if you ordered both then the cheaper one
e) 1(one) of each Ipaq if you ordered both
As it is a mate from Reuters has asked me for my order confirmation emails so expect to see something on Ananova soon and in the papers tomorrow.
Hopefully they'll anonymise my details (-:
1. Put up a product at a ridiculous price on Amazon, say about 10% normal price.
2. Get noticed.
3. (optional) Process about 10 orders at absurd price, to gain goodwill from market.
4. After a threshold number of 'absurd' orders, take down product.
5. Send link to Slashdot.
6. Enjoy.
Wonder what Amazon's charging HPaq for all the 'free' attention.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I don't expect to get one, but I (and one of my workmates) put in an order nonetheless.
:-)
Not mentioned anywhere else I've found was that the HP iPAQ H5450 was priced at about GB£23 also!
Needless to say that I ordered me one of those, too.
Remains to be seen whether Amazon will honour the price, but I doubt it.
There was also a £560 wifi model going for about £27. The £7 one was #1 on the sales list, while the £27 one got to about #20 before they shut the site down.
If you read the small print it says they won't charge your credit card until the order is ready for shipping (i.e not right away, so they haven't actually taken your money & hence accepted the contract to supply the goods).
They also reserve the right to refuse your order in the event of mispricing.
We ordered a couple & got the acceptance, but we're not expecting to actually get them. Still, you've got to be in to win...
Not the programmer... the data entry staff (or maybe the person who wrote up the article originally)!
I hate when the programmer gets blamed because the client doesn't know how to use the system, or they make an entry mistake.
"Why didn't the system tell me the price was wrong?"
The Register.
ZdNet.
People who I know must have orders 250+ between them. There is no way they would honour this - and every person who ordered realised it was a mistake, so they have nothing to whine about.
Vacancy for signature. Apply within.
Look at the Amazon URL. It includes the text "ref=sr_aps_electronics_1_1". That means that everyone following the link will get a cookie setting up a certain Amazon Associate to get a kickback of some percentage of everything you *do* happen to buy in the next couple of weeks.
Going by a mailing list I'm on it seems that some of the early buyers actually had their credit cards charged for this. Now under UK law these make a legally binding contract as payment has been made. Its going to be interesting to see how Amazon reacts to this one.
There was a similar case a few years back with Kodak where the mispriced a camera and finally ended up honouring the deal. Details on the inquirer.
Cheap UK and US VPS
But that's before the sale is agreed. My commitment to make payment via credit card should be looked as a contract. If Amazon did not provide a cancellation service, then I would not be able to back out of the purchase legally. Why should Amazon be able to back out?
I reckon every successful purchaser (like me) should get together and start a website. We all sue Amazon then it would be more cost effective to just give us the PDAs (or a pay off) than to fight umpteen different cases in court.
Powered by onion juice.
That wasn't a legal thing. Kodak just realised the bad PR that was being generated was probably costing them more than the value of the cameras.
There's also the consideration that the price was not quite obviously wrong. Very very cheap, perhaps, but this was at a time when digital camera prices were dropping like crazy. Nobody would consider a PDA to cost £7. They'd be sceptical if it was a used gameboy at that price.
What if you were going to sell your $12000 car and the ad in the newspaper printed $1200 by mistake?
Would you sell it for $1200? Doubtful. I love hypocrites who say a business should do what they wouldn't do themselves.
An ad in a newspaper is just an invitation to treat, you could still change your mind and never agree to sell the car to anyone.
A web site is intially the same, but once someone clicks to buy though there must be at least an offer, a message on screen saying that the order has been placed seems like acceptance to me, making a binding contract. If not then almost certainly receipt of an email confirming the order would make for a binding contract. I'm notfamiliar with any case law directly concerning web sites in this context though, just working from basic principles.
What if it were a company you owned stock in and you were going to lose part of your dividend? Bet you'd change your mind then too.
I think that's a stupid comment. I wouldn't change my mind about what I thought was the correct resolution in that situation. Are you saying that your opinion would change day to day if you were one day a seller and the next a buyer? That's pathetic.
A company has no reason to "honor" mistakes, that's why they print those little disclaimers about erronious listings.
It depends on whether a contract has actually been entered into. Once it has of course they're bound to honor it.
I think the key issue here is the fundamental differences between a brick and morter establishment and a web based one. Now, I understand the legal differences between an order placed on line and buying something at the checkout at wallmart, but look at it from the customers point of view.
When I walk up to the counter at wallmart to buy an item I pay for it, they hand it to me, and I take it home. It's mine now. The price can not be contested. I take it out of the store and take it home.
Any questions about the price have to be resolved at the checkout register or thereabouts. Once I've left the store, with our without the product, the negotion phase is over. I either have or do not have the product.
With a web based retailer things are different. I give them my credit card information and they say the order is placed. I then exit the website and (may) receive an email telling me that my order is being processed.
Subjectively, from the customer's point of view the transaction is now closed. Customers will now record the transaction, etc. Most web-vendors will send you a recipt as part of the order.
The point is that at this point both the customer at Wallmart and the one at Wallmart.com see the transaction as over.
Only in the case of the web store does wallmart have the right to decide, after the fact, that the pricing was inaccurate and renegotiate the contract. Granted, technicly there was no contract in the first place, but the customer has certainly left the site with the impression that there was.
This may not be illegal. It may not even be immortal. But it is deceptive. It does not make me, as a customer, feel comfortable dealing with these parties.
When does the "price mistake" stop being a price mistake? Amazon uses either a LIFO (stack) or FIFO (queue) invantory model. Are "price mistakes" at Amazon subject to changes in supplier prices?
When this happens at Christmas or around a birthday this can drasticly affect someone's plans. Little Timmy's present was all taken care of until Amazon hikes the price on me claiming a "mistake." Now I have to re-order from somewhere else, find something at a brick and morter establishment, or accecpt their new price? Either way it's pay Amazon's new hike or take a cut in convenience/timelyness.
Come on people. Many of us design user interfaces for a living. You don't let people do something suicidialy stupid without at least asking "Are you SURE you want to do this?" How hard would it be for Amazon to flag questionable data, requiring approval before posting?
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
if it's just a honest mistake they got no legal obligation to sell it at that advertised price, at least not in most places in the world(well, we were teached this at school: if car dealer accidentally puts the price at 33 instead of 33thousand he doesn't have to sell at that price.. however it's illeagal to just use things like this to con people coming to your shop with false adverts).
like, if they were advertising that in papers, web, tv and at all places for 99$, then it would be questinable if it was just an honest accident that the price was printed at 99$.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
That's my understanding of UK law - if they advertise a given price they either must sell at that price, or not at all. If they refuse to sell to you at that price, they must also refuse to sell to anyone else at that price (otherwise it's discrimination) so basically, if they sell once at the wrong price they must honour all subsequent orders at that price UNTIL they correct the advertised price.
I used this today in Dixons - they had a sign up saying "All Gamecube accessories 20% off marked price" - so I tried to buy a controller (marked @ £16). The assistant said that according to the computer the 20% had already been taken off, hence to discount. I pointed out the notice & the law, she asked her manager, and I got the controller for £12.80 (while she was ringing up the sale he was busy taking down all the signs!).
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Nine times out of ten any retail outfit will honor that price.
A 90%-discount blunder will be honored 90% of the time? Those are conveniently easy to spew numbers. Cite sources, please.
Expensive? Not when you consider the value of a LIFELONG customer!
1. Will the customer cease to be lifelong if the price is not honored. Maybe, maybe not. 100% of the time? 50% of the time?
2. Because I successfully con them once on a typo, will that ensure that I am a lifelong customer? Maybe, maybe not. 100% of the time? 50% of the time?
I don't have the answers either. But then I'm not making quantitative claims.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/887491.asp?0bl=-0
missing sig