Amazon Erases Orders To Cover Up Pricing Mistake

The Knife writes "Amazon secretly canceled orders for a large jazz CD set after realizing that it had mis-priced the item at $31 instead of its MSRP of $499. At first, inventory shortages caused the online merchant to string customers along for over a month after they placed their orders. But when Amazon realized that the box set was under-priced by $470, it simply erased all records of customers' order in their account history. No emails were sent to customers informing them of the price change or of the order cancellation. Probably because it violates Amazon's highly publicized price guarantee policy. A customer who called to complain and request the CD set at the $31 price was given a $20 discount off of his next Amazon order." A caveat: there is no external confirmation that Amazon did what is claimed here.

Comments

Bad Summary.

[adam]

Probably because it violates Amazon's highly publicized price guarantee policy

Gee, let's check amazon's price guarantee policy and see what it says at the bottom...

Despite our best efforts, a small number of the items in our catalog may be mispriced. If an item's correct price is higher than our stated price, we will, at our discretion, either contact you for instructions before shipping or cancel your order and notify you of such cancellation.

So, um, basically, their policy allows for them to cancel orders at their discretion. Which is approximately what it said in 2001, when I placed an order for 4 plasma TVs they had priced at $27/each. A few days later, they cancelled my order (along with the others of several others I know who were hoping for cheap TVs!). This has happened many times before with Amazon-- although by many I mean "several, that I am aware of," which is probably really good, considering the sheer volume of sales Amazon does. So, basically, nothing to see here.. move along. The product was priced incorrectly, they didn't charge anyone, they cancelled the orders. This is common practice for Amazon and other merchants.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Nefarious Wheel]

Wasn't there a record company during the dot-boom who went broke in about a week because they omitted the "required" flag on "enter credit card details"?

Re:Bad Summary.

[phillips321]

You missed the point! Order's were canceled and the customer was not informed about it. Amazon's policy clearly states:
"and notify you of such cancellation"

Re:Bad Summary.

[eyrieowl]

that may be the point, but it's a weak one. is it really news to all of us that sometimes companies don't follow all the steps they say they are? if amazon had charged them, failed to deliver, and "forgotten" about the orders, that would be one thing, but the harm done here is...somewhat minimal. did anyone die b/c they didn't get their fire-sale priced box set? thought not. while i'd certainly be sad if i found out i couldn't get the deal of a lifetime, eh, you don't win the lottery every day.

Re:Bad Summary.

[sholden]

So they'll notify next year sometime. Or maybe they already yelled the cancellations out, not there fault the customer wasn't listening.

Re:Bad Summary.

[silverkniveshotmail.]

when I placed an order for 4 plasma TVs they had priced at $27/each

I did the same thing with an XGA projector for about $50 around the same time, I knew it was too good to be true thought, I just couldn't help trying.

Re:Bad Summary.

[sentientbeing]

Shopper: '...You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to the cancellation notices had you? I mean like actually telling anyone or anything.'

Amazon: 'But the cancelled sales were on display...'

Shopper: 'On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.'

Amazon: 'That's the display department.'

Shopper: 'With a torch.'

Amazon: 'Ah, well the lights had probably gone.'

Shopper: 'So had the stairs.'

Amazon: 'But look you found the notice didn't you?'

Shopper: 'Yes,' said the buyer, 'yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of The Leopard'

Re:Bad Summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, except depending on where you are they may, by law, be required to honor that price. As in California, it's illegal to sell something at a price higher than advertised...

Re:Bad Summary.

[Broken scope]

For those who didn't know. Thats a Hitchhikers Guide Reference.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Valdrax]

Your points are all really irrelevant to whether or not they performed the contract. Harm, for purposes of recovery, is the difference between the price listed and the next best price. Also, an industry standard practice of not living up to one's contracts is generally not held to be a legal excuse for not doing so if someone calls you on it.

Also, a contract of this sort is generally considered to be binding when the site gives you order confirmation, and you submit it. At that point, offer and acceptance has been had (even under the older UCC Article 2). The time at which they charge you or not is irrelevant in this situation.

The question essentially is, "Was there a breach of contract?" Since we've established that there was one, the question of whether deleting an order without sending you a message is a breach needs to be answered. Most likely (not knowing any further information about their ordering policies), it seems like there would be one under the notification rule the earlier poster made.

However, It's really a tempest in a teacup because no one is likely to sue them for it, and without a print-out of the order confirmation, there's no evidence the contract was ever made. Courts are unlikely to allow people to claim phantom orders on websites without any proof, and most states would make you go to small claims court for damages this small (which wouldn't allow you the discovery necessary to make Amazon.com cough up the proof that they did it). For a mere $350 bucks, most sane people wouldn't bother.

Re:Bad Summary.

[JustOK]

What is it for those of us that did know?

Re:Bad Summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

is it a "guarantee" if it promises nothing and can change at a whim?

Re:Bad Summary.

[mdenham]

What is it for those of us that did know? Funny?

Or maybe a cabinet marked "Beware of the Leopard"?

Re:Bad Summary.

[Broken scope]

Something between redundant and off topic i guess.

Re:Bad Summary.

[MadnessASAP]

If you didn't know you must now hand in your geek card at the receptacle to your left.

Re:Bad Summary.

[aznel]

Ok, who let the 1L out of their cage?

Re:Bad Summary.

[Kalriath]

Not really, they still have the option of not selling it to you at all, and terminating the sale - which they did.

Re:Bad Summary.

[jasonwc]

Well, you're jumping to conclusions. The fact that there was a breach of contract doesn't mean that the buyer can recover for the contract price - the next best available price. You point out that once there has been an offer and acceptance, a binding contract is created and Amazon is unable to repudiate. While that is true, the contract clearly allowed Amazon to cancel a buyer's order if the price was set incorrectly which certainly was the case here. Thus, Amazon was justified in its cancellation of the buyers' orders. If there was a breach, it was only the failure to notify the buyer of the order cancellation. I'm not sure from the contract terms whether a court would find there was a breach. The terms may be read as suggesting Amazon's current policy of notification rather than binding themselves to do so. In any event, a buyer would not be able to recover for the contract price - the best available price because that does not reflect the damages actually suffered. The buyer's expectation damages ought to put him in the position he would have been in had the contract been performed. Since Amazon's only failure was to notify him of the order cancellation, damages should be assessed based on the harm which resulted from lack of notification. In addition, it seems pretty clear in context that when UCC 2-711 speaks of the sellers failure to make delivery, it's referring to an unjustified refusal, rather than a justified refusal combined with a relatively minor breach. In the instant case, a court would likely award nominal damages due to the lack of any clear harm to the buyer.

Furthermore, the measure of damages had there been an unjustified refusal to make delivery would be based on the difference between the market price of the good at the time when the buyer learned of the breach and the contract price (2-713) or in the alternative, the buyer could "cover" by buying the item at another retailer and sue for the difference between the contract price and the purchase price of the replacement (2-712). Cover doesn't even require that the price be the "next best price" - only that it is made in good faith and without unreasonable delay. This may very well exceed the market price if the buyer wants the item immediately and is willing to pay a higher price for the convenience of a local retailer.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be a first year law student Valdrax. Mistake can be grounds to void a contract. Also, the UCC requires good faith, so buyers who knew or should have known the item was incorrectly priced never created a valid contract when they submitted their order.

Re:Bad Summary.

[baboo_jackal]

Actually, this reminds me more of the people who stand at the register and argue with the manager, "But it was on the 99-cent rack, so you *have* to sell it to me for 99 cents!"

Fortunately, those people don't know about Slashdot yet...

Re:Bad Summary.

[1u3hr]

the question essentially is, "Was there a breach of contract?" Since we've established that there was one

Nothiing has been established. There is a pseudonymous post to Slashdot. No supporting documents. No screenshots. No names. Not a single detail that can be verified. This is not news, it's not even gossip.

Re:Bad Summary.

[zazzel]

I don't know US contract law, but in other parts of the world (Germany), courts have regularly ruled that an on-line order is not in itself a contract, but simply a demand for a contract that must be acknowledged by the other party (the dealer) in words or deeds to become a valid contract. So, delivery of the item, immediate billing, or an e-mail (not a simple "we received your order" e-mail) would make this a contract.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Damocles the Elder]

Scan back half a sentence to the at our discretion bit again. Since you missed it the first time, apparently.

Re:Bad Summary.

[mikiN]

Ok, to soup this up a bit with respect to the plasma TV sale mentioned earlier.

Say that I bought 4 plasma TV's at the listed price of $27/each, printed the confirmation and used that to negotiate with my partners to hold a big presentation of my product at the Ritz, wining and dining included. Now say Amazon didn't confirm their cancellation of my order. Would I be able to claim damages because their failure to confirm cancellation caused me to fail to cancel the presentation in time?

Re:Bad Summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the law allows them to do this? In Brazil they couldn't do this, because the Consumer's Defense Code (as it's called) explicitly deals with this type of situation - if there are two prices, the lower one counts. If the vendor makes a mistake such as amazon, they are obliged to honor the sale.

It has happened to dell.com.br, as I recall, some years ago. Don't know what their lawyers managed (or not) to do then.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Sancho]

It's still a bad summary. The awful, awful summary posits that Amazon did not notify their customers because it violated their policy to cancel the order. Clearly it does not violate their policy to cancel the order--the only policy violation was, in fact, failing to notify the customer's about it. The submitter is putting the cart before the horse, so to speak.

In other words, the submitter thinks that Amazon violated its own policy, and tried to cover it up by silently deleting the orders. Based on that policy snippet, that does not seem to be the case.

Re:Bad Summary.

[fredklein]

without a print-out of the order confirmation, there's no evidence the contract was ever made

Um, who DOESN'T make a printout of their online orders??? Especially ones like this with 'extra special savings'?

Re:Bad Summary.

[rtb61]

False advertising is false advertising and as such is fraudulent. I wonder if Amazon had overpriced items would they voluntarily give the money back.

I have found Amazon to be definitely less than scrupulous. You know those special deals if you buy all the items in the package you get an extra special discount, well, being a some what suspicious fellow, I decide to check the individual prices of each item, I was not really surprised to find that that bought individually that were in fact cheaper than bought with the super special package discount (basically a marketing lie).

So does Amazon bullshit to sell crap for the maximum possible mark up, you bet.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Raven42rac]

Clicking "buy" is only an offer for you to buy a product at that price, the order is still subject to verification and acceptance. Ergo, they did nothing wrong and you have a bunch of guys trying to get 470$ worth of free stuff.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony is that unlike the plasma tv's, which represent real physical value, even at $31 someone (although probably not Amazon) might still be making a profit. If the 75 CDs cost say $.10 each to manufacture, add maybe $5 for packaging, there still could have been a net profit over all parties combined (although Amazon would be on the losing end of the net profit equation - unless the $31 mistake was the wholesaler who propagated it to the Amazon db). The $470 "loss" is the intellectual property markup.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Posting=!Working]

How about people without printers? The last printer I owned was an Okidata wax transfer printer hooked to my Atari 800XL. On the rare occasions I need to print something out (maybe 2-3 times per year), I use the printer at work. But I've never found much need to own a printer.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Dogtanian]

You must be a first year law student Valdrax. If he was, he'd still be better-qualified to talk about how the law works than 99.9% of the people contributing to this and similar Slashdot discussions.

The problem is that although some people here probably know what they're talking about, it's hard to judge which ones they are without spending more time than it's worth sorting them out from the undeclared IANALs. (Skip to the final paragraph for the main point minus the waffle).

You have to ask yourself- what level of knowledge is this person arguing from? Do they even understand the basics of what they're discussing? If so, do they understand the finer points and exceptions that apply to "corner cases" such as this one? Unless you already know the law pretty well (I don't), it's often impossible to judge- and whilst I'm no expert and don't pretend to be one, I don't intend to be a blind man being led by another overconfident but equally blind man.

In all honesty, *any* Slashdot discussion about the finer points of law will quickly become an intellectual wankfest that mixes up basic misunderstanding, myths, attempts to reason out what the law actually is (*1) and assumptions that the way the law *should* be is the way that it actually is. (*2)

The law does have intellectual consistency, but not in the way that Slashdot-style pseudo-logic can be applied to it. Otherwise, engineers would make great lawyers and vice versa.

(*1) No, you can't always logically deduce what the law actually is through logic- particularly not corner cases. The law is what the law is, even when it doesn't always make sense. It's an example of the conceit that you can apply geek/engineer-style logic to any field. In a way, this is the same point as *2 below.

(*2) Yes, the law sometimes sucks and is stupid- and it's perfectly valid to discuss its flaws and how it should behave. But the fact remains- you *can't* assume that the way it *should* be, or even the way that "common sense" (or some convoluted pseudo-intellectual Slashdot argument) says it should be is the way that it actually is.

To cut the above short, threads like this are basically useless for shedding light rather than heat, because the majority of contributors are IANALs who'll try to (incorrectly) apply pseudo-logical reason to cover their lack of legal expertise.

Re:Bad Summary.

[PopeRatzo]

that may be the point, but it's a weak one.

Whoa. First you say, "See, they really did follow their policy - right down to the letter." A minute later, it's "Well, they didn't follow their policy, but that's OK, because who really expects companies to follow their policies?"

eyrieowl, in this day and age, if we don't hold companies' feet to the fire, we're gonna get run over. I understand that some of us have jobs which require us to protect corporate image no matter how bad the behavior. I understand that livings have to be made. But last time I looked, Amazon wasn't giving anything away for free.

At least once a month I have to call my bank (Chase) and point out that they charged me for something in error. It's always small amounts ($4.95 seems to be the most common) and I always get a nice apology and the charge removed. I stay with Chase because they're actually better than the bank I used previously. It takes a lot of my time for not a lot of money, but although it's rare in the US, I do believe that doing things based on principle is a good thing. Plus, if we stop fighting back, as in the story of the camel who sticks his nose under the tent, we're all soon going to wake up getting fucked by camels.

Re:Bad Summary.

[mblase]

It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of The Leopard'

Worth mentioning, too; Amazon has the best prices on OS X upgrades I've seen anywhere.

Re:Bad Summary.

[joto]

False advertising is false advertising and as such is fraudulent. I wonder if Amazon had overpriced items would they voluntarily give the money back.

They don't have to. All you need to do is to send your item back, and you will get your money back. As all reputable online vendors, they have a full money-back guarantee.

Besides, there's a big difference between false advertizing, and human error. This was most likely human error. Apart from the fact that there's no way amazon can make money from deleting customer orders, or prizing items so low they are guaranteed to lose a significant amount of money (and getting nothing in return), there is no indication that this is a systematic thing that amazon does often or deliberately.

Hanlon's razor states: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity". I think that should tell you enough. Someone amazon employee screwed up. Naturally, when the screwup is discovered, they fix it up, to avoid taking a big loss. That's all there is to it.

Re:Bad Summary.

[pdq332]

Even if a lawsuit were filed, I doubt it would hold up in court. Contract law generally does not hold that contracts are enforceable when honest mistakes were made as to the terms. There has to be a "meeting of the minds". Did anyone think that Amazon was giving them a great deal here, or did they just think that they won the lottery at Amazon's expense?

Re:Bad Summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that the contract does not stipulate any sort of timeframe for notification, all Amazon has to do now is send out "your order has been cancelled, suck it" emails and the whole "case" is moot.

Seriously. Without mention of the time this is supposed to happen, Amazon has a loophole bigger than a planet. Good luck trying to collect either a refund or cheap CDs.

Re:Bad Summary.

[ThePlague]

I don't own a printer either, but I always print order information to PDF using CutePDF. It's the best of both worlds: no need to own a printer, no mass of papers to file, and a permanent record that is saved exactly where it needs to be at the time of "printing".

Re:Bad Summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Amazon will refund your money if you get something overpriced. It's happened to me. I purchased a book and a week later (after I'd received it) found a mysterious $5 and change in my bank account -- and when I read the e-mail I saw the notification from Amazon of refund of the difference. *shrugs* Not a big deal, for $5, but I appreciated it. This was several years ago, however.

Re:Bad Summary.

[eyrieowl]

i don't recall mentioning contract. were i in contract law, i might give a rip about the legal definition of harm. however, in my news stories, i prefer people to save their hyperbole for stories where real harm is occurring, not where they got stymied in their attempt to screw a corporation. so, i stand by my statement that no real harm occurred, and that this is not really news. there are enough real examples of corporations causing financial damage and ruin that we need not resort to such trivialities we see highlighted here.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Jeff DeMaagd]

It's an honest mistake and I think people would be clearly unreasonable if they didn't like Amazon coming clean and declared this a misprice. But if it's true that Amazon just erased all traces of their order without explanation or notice, then I would have a problem with that.

Re:Bad Summary.

[STrinity]

The question essentially is, "Was there a breach of contract?" Since we've established that there was one,

No, the article claims there was one, but we have no way of knowing if that's true, or if the complainant's spam filter got a little overzealous.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can SAVE the web page, copy it to a CD, and take it to work to print out.

Re:Bad Summary.

[STrinity]

False advertising is false advertising and as such is fraudulent.

That greatly depends on the state. Some say a store must honor a price ticket (assuming a customer hasn't tampered with it) even if it's a mistake, but others allow stores to refuse sales in such cases. I don't know what the rules are in the states where Amazon operates from, but they do make their policy clear in their terms of service.

I wonder if Amazon had overpriced items would they voluntarily give the money back.

If they caught it before shipment, yes -- they guarantee that if the price drops between the time you order and shipment, they will give you the lower price. After shipment, it's up to you to call, but they will do it.

Re:Bad Summary.

[orgelspieler]

I would argue and have argued w/the manager. At Micro Center I once got a sweet deal on a printer because the manager honored a misprint on the price tag on the shelf. I don't know if she had to do it legally, but it sure made me feel good about doing business there. These are the same people that honored a manufacturer's rebate after the manufacturer went out of business. It's pretty obvious sometimes if the item is on the wrong rack or something. But in those 4.99 DVD bins at Wal-Mart you never know what your going to find, since there's no list on the side w/what should and shouldn't be in there. so... yeah, I'd argue if it wasn't obviously the wrong thing or the wrong price.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Ecuador]

No, YOU missed the point. The article is simple libel. I ordered the Jazz set at $30 (I saw it on the FatWallet forum), knowing that it would probably cancel, and sure enough I did get the cancellation email Saturday morning. Ok, it is unusual that the order does not appear in my order history, but it wasn't a "real" order anyway.
I hate it when idiots complain about such things when Amazon has the best retail policies - their price guarrantee and their free returns have saved me a lot of money and woe.
I remember a little over a year ago I had bought a home theater amplifier on sale. But since I was to move shortly I never opened it until I was settled at the new appartment, bought speakers etc... It turned out to be about 5 months later when I opened it and found out it had a small problem. Amazon takes care of returns during the first month, so I had to go through the manufacturer. The manufacturer asked me to ship the (heavy) item - on my own cost of course, it would then be evaluated and a replacement, if needed, would ship out in 2-3 weeks. I wrote to amazon and politely explained my predicament and whether they would be able to help me, and two days later I had a replacement amp on my doorstep (I have prime so shipping is always 2-days), and a prepaid UPS voucher to send back the original amp on my cost. I have many other examples of good customer service from Amazon, but I believe this was quite indicative.
The linked article was simply written by someone who is upset he didn't manage to get a freebie from a large retailer. This even happens to be the retailer with the best policies (which do state that price mistakes cannot be honored - duh!). Shame to the ./ editor for picking up this trash.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Valdrax]

Well, your situation doesn't really apply since there's no shipping guarantee from Amazon. They could ship your delivery tomorrow, or they could ship it six months from now. Their shipping policies are pretty clear on that -- you have no basis to rely on their shipping for a scheduled event.

All it might do is fix the market price at the point at which you had to go buy TVs from somewhere else. That said, I'm not sure that your case could move forward on grounds of reasonability. After all, DVD boxes sets are regularly priced in the $40 range. Plasma TVs are almost never priced in the $30 range. There's a question of good faith here.

Re:Bad Summary.

[merreborn]

To support your point, it's trivial to find instances of this happening in 2000 as well

Frankly, I'm pretty sure this has happened periodically since amazon's launch in the mid-nineties; however, google's indexes don't go back that far. Sorry folks, a typo doesn't mean you get free stuff. And typos on amazon haven't been newsworthy in the better part of a decade.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to play devil's advocate, and I've not been able to find what you're claiming resolved in the courts. You're way ahead of yourself. No contract has been made. At the very least, a pricing error on Amazon's part would show that there wasn't a meeting of minds. Until they charge you, no acceptance has been made. I will cede that charging a credit card would create a contract. You've made them an offer to buy their goods, and they've made it brutally clear that they will review your offer prior to accepting it.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Valdrax]

Well, the complete and total lack of evidence would quickly get any case dismissed, but assuming that they did complete such a transaction, it would be a fact that the contract at some point existed, even if its existence cannot be proven (without some discovery motions which probably wouldn't be granted).

That's why I called it a "phantom" contract. A court is probably going to be quite skeptical with the idea that such a contract ever existed unless a lot of plaintiffs got together to make the same allegations.

Re:Bad Summary.

[pongo000]

It appears that Amazon may, in fact, be within their legal rights to do this, according to this legal interpretation of Amazon policy:

On the final webpage before completing a purchase, Amazon.com states that "[w]hen you click the 'Place your order' button, we'll send you an e-mail message acknowledging receipt of your order. Your contract to purchase an item will not be complete until we send you an e-mail notifying you that the item has been shipped."16 This communicates that the buyer, by proceeding through the shopping cart system and placing an order, is making an offer that will form a contract only after vendor acceptance.

(Source: http://www.lctjournal.washington.edu/vol1/a002groebner.html#_Toc72127814)

No contract, no legal obligation to deliver. Shitty customer service? Sure. But that's an argument for another day.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Caffeine_Coder]

Actually, I was one of the people who tried to get it, and I got a cancellation notice. Perhaps submitted should check their spam folder?


We regret to inform you that an error caused the following item(s) to
be displayed at an incorrect price:

Jazz in Paris

In accordance with our posted policies on pricing, we are unable to
offer this item for the incorrectly posted price. Therefore, we have
cancelled your order for this item.

At any given time, despite our best efforts, a small number of the
millions of items on our site may be mispriced. We do, however, verify
prices as part of our shipping procedures. If we discover that an
item's correct price is higher than our stated price, we will, at our
discretion, either contact you for instructions before shipping or
cancel your order and notify you of such cancellation. This policy is
posted in the Help section and is accessible through numerous other
areas of our web site.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

We value your business and hope that you will give us a chance to
serve you again in the future.

Sincerely,

Customer Service Department
Amazon.com

Please note: this e-mail was sent from a notification-only address
that cannot accept incoming e-mail. Please do not reply to this
message.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Hemogoblin]

[quote]"But it was on the 99-cent rack, so you *have* to sell it to me for 99 cents!"[/quote]

Actually, that situation and this situation would appear to be very different. I am not a lawyer, but I took a single university course in corporate law where we covered the elements of contracts. In general, advertisements and price labels are usually considered "an offer to treat" and are not binding contracts on a retailer (with exceptions). A store manager doesn't "have" to sell something for 99-cents if it's advertised that way, because he hasn't agreed to a contract (with exceptions).

Now, from what the GP says, this Amazon thing does appear to be a valid contract. In that case, the customer could sue for breach of the contract. Also like the GP says, that is highly unlikely since the value to be recovered is so low. Personally, I'm not convinced that the Amazon thing is a valid contract, but again I'm not a lawyer so what do I know?

Re:Bad Summary.

[tomhudson]

Too bad it didn't happen here - he would have gotten it (along with an additional $10 off). For the last few years, if an item is mis-priced, and the real price is higher, the consumer gets it al the lower advertised price, minus $10 more; items mispriced at under $10 == freebie.

I've gotten a few things for free, and others at $10 off the advertised sale price. It provides a financial incentive for the merchant to keep their systems accurate.

Re:Bad Summary.

[jimmypw]

Up until some time in the 90's in the UK traders werent allowed to refuse the right of sale. Now they can at their own discression. Fair is Fair although an informational email would be nice stating that the order was cancelled.

Re:Bad Summary.

[baboo_jackal]

No argument there. I think you hit on the key point of this issue, though:

But in those 4.99 DVD bins at Wal-Mart you never know what your going to find, since there's no list on the side w/what should and shouldn't be in there. so... yeah, I'd argue if it wasn't obviously the wrong thing or the wrong price.
The example in this article would be like finding, for example, all three seasons of Battlestar Galactica in the $4.99 DVD bin at Walmart. You *know* it doesn't belong there, and you'd have to be a fool or a thief to insist that it did.

Re:Bad Summary.

[bluefoxlucid]

You know those special deals if you buy all the items in the package you get an extra special discount, well, being a some what suspicious fellow, I decide to check the individual prices of each item, I was not really surprised to find that that bought individually that were in fact cheaper than bought with the super special package discount (basically a marketing lie).

I only ever see "Buy together with XXX for $YY" stuff, which just lets you package companion stuff together like an Epiphone guitar with an Epiphone guitar case, or rechargable batteries with a charger (you did intend to recharge these at some point, right?). It's the accessory sell and modern marketing actually does benefit the consumer there because you totally don't want to buy a Wii and a copy of Mario Party 8 and get home and ohshit we only got one controller! And they need batteries!

Re:Bad Summary.

[jasonwc]

Almost certainly not. The theory you're asserting is Reliance (See Restatement Second of Contracts Sec. 90). Reliance only applies if the purchaser acts in good faith and reasonably relies upon the promise. Here, there would almost certainly be no reasonable basis for reliance. Almost anyone would recognize that a $27 price for a Plasma TV is a misprint being that the market price generally is in the thousands of dollars. Note also that "reasonableness" is an objective standard. Even if you acted in good faith and really did believe that the price was $27, you didn't reasonably rely.

Furthermore, Amazon says they will notify you of their cancellation but they don't say when they'll do so. Normally this means that the cancellation must be communicated within a "reasonable" period of time. The fact that Amazon doesn't charge your credit card until the item is ready to ship also would make your case weaker. IF you were relying on the Plasma screens, and you hadn't gotten a confirmation that your credit card had been billed or that the order had been shipped, the reasonable response would probably be to contact Amazon and confirm the order.

In addition, the damages you're asserting are based on unique special circumstance which was never communicated to Amazon. Such damages are termed "consequential damages" and a) either can't be obtained unless Amazon had reason to know of your special situation, or b) such damages are barred by a limitation of liability or limitation of damages clause in the contract. Almost every company uses limitations of liability/damages clauses so you would not be able to collect consequential damages.

Re:Bad Summary.

[jasonwc]

I state that at the end of my post. It was the parent poster that said damages would be based upon contract price - next best price. I stated that the damages are based on the buyer's expectation interest - the goal being to put him in the position he would have been in had the contract been performed.

Re:Bad Summary.

[baboo_jackal]

Just because it's possible to sue someone for something doesn't necessarily mean you're right. In the spirit of the law, a contract is an agreement between two parties entered into by his or her free choice. A mistake in pricing on the part of the seller isn't a free choice - it's just a mistake.

The problem is that the simplicity of this situation is muddied by the fact that this transaction occurred via internet, where the seller isn't there at the cash register to tell you, "No, that price is wrong. If you choose not to buy it at the price I actually intended to sell it, sorry!"

Legal wrangling aside, look at the core issue here - pretend Amazon isn't a huge internet seller, but just a mom & pop store selling CDs and DVDs and Kindle books (he he). Would you still think it's right to sue Ma & Pa Amazon for a mistake like this?

Re:Bad Summary.

[eviljim]

If you believe the article, that is. I do not, because I placed an order for this set. It was canceled. I received an email from Amazon about it. It is true that you no longer see the order online, but that's how canceled orders work. I just canceled an order for a few books I bought locally, and the order no longer shows up in my account either.

This guy's email is probably wrong, or it got spam filtered. It's almost certainly an automated process, so I fairly certain we were both sent emails

Re:Bad Summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly what I was thinking.

Re:Bad Summary.

[RobertM1968]

Sadly, I dont think that policy has been tested in other states (where the policy is not legal)... I wonder if this will prompt such a (legal) test.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Valdrax]

To cut the above short, threads like this are basically useless for shedding light rather than heat, because the majority of contributors are IANALs who'll try to (incorrectly) apply pseudo-logical reason to cover their lack of legal expertise. I think, that with this post, I am at this point thoroughly pwned.
I'm going to go crawl back into my pit and study more.

Re:Bad Summary.

[that this is not und]

I've never understood this, as a computer without a printer is just a super-fancy light bulb.

Re:Bad Summary.

[that this is not und]

Check the prices at 'The Pirate Bay'

Re:Bad Summary.

[mjwx]

As was said by another poster, price tags are not legal contracts, a store is well within their legal rights to change an advertised price between the time that you pick up an object and you get to the checkout, during this time you are in no way obligated to buy the product and if you don't like the price then simply don't buy it. When the item is paid for and the seller retroactively changes the price then you have a problem. In the case of this transaction the seller cancelled the transaction post payment due to an error on the sellers part (this is where the legality gets a bit muddied) as the purchaser doesn't actually posses the stock, only a receipt and the seller is refusing to ship. So long as Amazon returned the purchasers money there's more or less nothing the purchaser can do.

Anyway this rant is really just to say I really hate those "this was 99c on the shelf you must sell it to me for 99c" people, this makes a person look stupid and arrogant. There is not much a store owner must do, if it were my store I'd ask the person to put the merchandise down and leave so other shoppers don't have to suffer their temper tantrum (and watch as they march out with their "never to shop here again" whats the point of this? When I blacklist a store I never tell the manager that I'm not shopping there again, it's a pointless waste of my time as I'm not coming back anyway, back to my original rant). A store owner has the right to price their goods how they wish and a shopper has the right to choose where they shop if the price is not to their liking (of course there are laws that govern monopolies and collusion but they are outside the the scope of this post).

Re:Bad Summary.

[Elbow Macaroni]

Mad cow disease strikes again.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is some of the worst writing/"reasoning" I have ever seen. I hope you guys aren't planning on becoming lawyers.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Eivind]

You're wrong.

You see, a contract requires a "meeting of minds", it is not sufficient for me to offer you something, and for you to accept the offer for the two of us to have a valid contract. I must *INTEND* to make that offer and you must *INTEND* to accept it.

Which is plainly NOT the case when the offer where made trough a simple mistake. It is obvious that they did not INTEND to offer plasma-TVs for $27 or $500-CD-sets for $30. That would perhaps be different if the offers where accompanied by giant banners proclaiming deal of the century, 90% discount ! (or 99% in the first case...)

People make mistakes. Contract-law is this way for a reason; we don't want people to be royally fucked for the reason of making a simple mistake. For example, someone selling their house and accidentally writing the price as $450,000 in a jurisdiction where the comma delimits fraction (so the price is literaly $450 rather than the $450thousand intended) would not be held to that unless you could show likely that he really INTENDED to sell his house for $450.

Seems inane to me to complain about NOT being able to cash-in on other peoples honest mistakes.

People are human, they make mistakes. Deal with it.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Hanlon's razor states: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity".

It sounds very nice, but you could use that as a defence against almost anything. People and companies need to take responsibility for their actions, even when mistaken - if it was a genuine mistake (not some kind of bait and switch) one can assume they'll learn from it and it won't happen again.

Re:Bad Summary.

[jotok]

How many times do you suppose Amazon has "accidentally" overcharged people and contacted them to issue a refund?

Re:Bad Summary.

[dyslexicbunny]

Similar experience.

I got my mother Seasons 1 and 2 of 24 for Christmas years ago. We only managed to get through Season 1 before I had to go back to school and she'd already seen Season 2. Fast forward three months. I was back at home for Spring Break and decided to watch Season 2 but while going through it, one of the DVDs had the equivalent of a burn mark on it and skipped like 10 minutes of one episode. Contacted Amazon and within a week we had a brand new Season 2 with no return slip. Tough to beat that service.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Badmovies]

You must be a first year law student Valdrax.
If he was, he'd still be better-qualified to talk about how the law works than 99.9% of the people contributing to this and similar Slashdot discussions. BS.

Law should make sense. In other words, if you took a competent person off the street and explained a law to them (and I don't mean something that takes hours of classes - more like 5 minutes) they should then tell you, "That makes sense." I detest the idea, and the fact, that laws, even simple ones, require specially trained people to interpret them.

Society makes the law, so why shouldn't a member of that society be able to understand it and explain it?

Re:Bad Summary.

[RandomUsername99]

Ok, as far as I'm concerned the name of this story may as well be "Guy doesn't see email when one of his bunk amazon.com orders was canceled."

Firstly, this is one person's account of the matter. We've got no idea if this got caught in his spam filter, if he had just changed the MX records on his domain and made a typo, if he accidentally deleted the email as he drunkenly checked his mail at 2am on a saturday and hit that delete button one too many times when deleting the offers of "G3nuine R3plicas"... oh who knows. Anyone in IT here knows how many reasons there may be for an email not being seen by an end user, and many of them involve the end user saying "uhh, whoops" and then suddenly getting amnesia as the indignant help desk call (or in this case Slashdot post) gets made pleading their case. Maybe if we had independent confirmation from a slew of people that didn't receive email from them about this then it might be an issue for their technical or customer service staff to take a look at.

The poster paints the picture of a sinister and knowing amazon.com staff purposefully leading thousands of innocent Parisian jazz fans down the path of pain and frustration as they reel them in with an obviously mistakenly cheap product (Ha!), delay their orders (ha-HAH!) and then covering up their tracks(Mwahahah!)... It just doesn't pan out. Sorry dude, you thought you could pull one over on them and they didn't let you. You might be used to dealing with "customer is always right" corporations that probably would have just given it to you, (and if you weren't attempting to screw them out of 95.8% of a $500 item, they may have anyway) but frankly I think that they're as big of a problem in our society as people like you are. (Mainly because they tend to cultivate the greed and overblown sense of entitlement that people like you have)

Re:Bad Summary.

[bcattwoo]

How many times do you suppose Amazon has "accidentally" overcharged people and contacted them to issue a refund? They wouldn't have to because if they accidentally priced an item at 100% over the usual retail price they wouldn't sell any.

Also, there is a difference between overcharging someone and overpricing an item.

Re:Bad Summary.

[mgoldberg]

The caveat that there is no verifiable evidence to back up this story makes me surprised that Slashdot picked it up.

Re:Bad Summary.

[jotok]

One, that depends on how much research people do. Honestly most people I know don't shop around so it's perfectly plausible that someone might just go straight to Amazon and buy it without looking for a better price.

Two, I'm not clear on the difference between "overcharging" and "overpricing." If they sometimes accidentally charge too little, maybe sometimes they accidentally charge too much. That's all I mean.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Anxarcule]

They wouldn't have to because if they accidentally priced an item at 100% over the usual retail price they wouldn't sell any.

Not necessarily true.

I think you'd be surprised at how many people go online and buy something without comparing prices. They don't know whether that cute sweater they've spotted online is really $25 or really $50, but they'll buy it at either price if they want it.

Re:Bad Summary.

[bcattwoo]

One, that depends on how much research people do. Honestly most people I know don't shop around so it's perfectly plausible that someone might just go straight to Amazon and buy it without looking for a better price.

Two, I'm not clear on the difference between "overcharging" and "overpricing." If they sometimes accidentally charge too little, maybe sometimes they accidentally charge too much. That's all I mean. To me "overcharging" would be advertising an item for $20 and then charging their credit card for $30 and hoping the customer doesn't notice. Offering an item for more than it can be bought elsewhere is usually just bad business. If a customer is happy with paying that inflated price though, that is their problem.

Re:Bad Summary.

[joto]

Yeah, because you never make mistakes, right? And once you, or someone in your company makes a mistake, nobody inside the company you work for, will ever make that mistake again? Dude, get real! People are not computers! Everybody does mistakes! And taking responsibility for your mistakes doesn't involve standing on the sideline seeing the company you work for take huge losses. It involves *fixing* the mistake, which they obviously did. If in the process they did another mistake (forgetting to inform the customers), this mistake is easily corrected too, they can send the fucking emails now.

You need to relax boy, if you assume people behave like computers, you either need to meet more people to get some perspective in life, or just stick to the computers and avoid commenting on things were humans are involved.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Waiter, kindly bring me another portion of strawman with a double side of ill-informed ranting!

Re:Bad Summary.

[Scaba]

That's probably the single most asinine statement I've ever heard. Are you claiming a computer with no printer has no utility other than lighting a room? Do you print every single thing that appears on your screen? Should blind persons have printers? Your cell phone is a computer, yet has no printer - is it just a super-fancy alarm clock?

Re:Bad Summary.

[orgelspieler]

you'd have to be a fool or a thief

Therein lies the problem. Several consumers are fools. We rarely do all our research before shopping. A few years ago, I got my wife the box set of a certain TV show she likes for $199.99. Had the price tag said $49.99, I probably wouldn't have thought it in error. It was a spur of the moment decision (Valentine's Day panic), and I'm sure I could have gotten a better deal on eBay.

Getting back on topic, one thing I'm curious about is how Amazon handles doing business in states that don't allow businesses not to honor advertised pricing. I assume there are such laws somewhere. Most states have some form of consumer protection on the books. Getting it enforced, however...

Re:Bad Summary.

[Buran]

In other words, you think it's OK for companies to break their own policies. Were you also OK with it the last time a company broke its privacy policy and sold your email address to spammers?

Re:Bad Summary.

[Buran]

Scan forward a sentence to the and notify you of such cancellation bit again. Since you missed it the first time, apparently.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Dogtanian]

If he was, he'd still be better-qualified to talk about how the law works than 99.9% of the people contributing to this and similar Slashdot discussions. BS. Law should make sense. In other words, [snip snip] Society makes the law, so why shouldn't a member of that society be able to understand it and explain it? Nice one- you totally missed the point! I stated quite explicitly that I was discussing how the law actually was, and NOT how it *should* be.

I also made clear that discussing how the law *should* operate is a valid and desirable point of discussion... but that this should *not* be confused with or presented as how the law *actually* operates, regardless of how much we'd like it to be so (footnote *2 above).

And then (irony of ironies) I criticised people who presented their opinion of how the law should operate as being how the law actually operates.... or genuinely didn't know the difference. And you still missed the point! And don't try to weasel out of this by saying you didn't mean that. You accused me of talking "BS", so it's clear that you disagreed with what I was saying.... or what you thought I was saying, which isn't the same at all.

It was there in plain English, for ****'s sake! I'm trying to figure out if (a) You actually read what you were replying to, (b) You "read" it, but made some kneejerk assumptions about what I was saying and didn't actually pay attention, or (c) You're just stupid. I don't know which.

Sad thing is, I agree with your point that laws *should* make sense to the man in the steet. But unlike you, I know that the way things should be isn't always the way that they are.

Re:Bad Summary.

[eyrieowl]

your words. i said that i feel "news" is when companies are causing harm. if we wanted to highlight every time a company broke some obscure or insignificant codicil of their policies, we could create another slashdot dedicated to the topic. i haven't heard anyone argue that real harm (from a layperson's perspective) was caused by amazon in this case. privacy policies are completely irrelevant. simply put, don't use a straw-man and think you've said something witty or clever because you haven't made a relevant point at all.

Re:Bad Summary.

[joto]

Ah, I see. Since you view this as a strawman attack, you really never make mistakes. Even so, it is still a mistake to assume that the rest of us are as perfect as you. I think I'll just stand by what I just said, untill you prove otherwise.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Damocles the Elder]

...we will, at our discretion, either contact you for instructions before shipping or cancel your order and notify you of such cancellation.

We will, at our discretion, either do X or do Y. Reading comprehension is your friend.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Badmovies]

It was there in plain English, for ****'s sake! I'm trying to figure out if (a) You actually read what you were replying to, (b) You "read" it, but made some kneejerk assumptions about what I was saying and didn't actually pay attention, or (c) You're just stupid. I don't know which. Well, just to make you happy (which is odd, because I find you rude and dislike you just from your two posts), I read your post again. What I still take away from it is that you discourage people who are not lawyers from commenting on points of law. I do not see any clear declaration that law should be easily understood by any reasonable person off the street.

If your intent was as you stated in your reply, I have some advice for you: learn to write and speak so that people can easily understand your position. "I am for this." "I am against this."

Re:Bad Summary.

[Dogtanian]

Well, just to make you happy (which is odd, because I find you rude and dislike you just from your two posts) You bluntly accused me of talking "BS" based on a lazy and/or stupid misinterpretation of my position (if you actually bothered to read it). Quite honestly, I'd have been justified in being a lot ruder.

What I still take away from it is that you discourage people who are not lawyers from commenting on points of law No, I discourage people who don't know what they're talking about from talking as if they do. A lot of people around here assume that because they know a lot about science, computers or IT that their cleverness makes them experts in other areas. Whereas it's quite clear from the evidence that this is not the case. I could go into more detail, but I'd just be repeating what I already said.

Anyway, going by your woeful response to my original post what you "take away from something" bears **** all reflection to what was actually said.

I do not see any clear declaration that law should be easily understood by any reasonable person off the street. Well, duh. That's not the point I was making in my original post.

I agreed with *your* subsequent comment that this was a desirable thing (despite my criticism of everything else you said). Is there a problem with doing this?

If your intent was as you stated in your reply, I have some advice for you: learn to write and speak so that people can easily understand your position. Without wanting to blow my own trumpet, my comment was modded +5, and you were the only one (apparently) who misunderstood it.

Quit trying to turn the tables and attack me to cover your own stupidity and/or laziness.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Badmovies]

Without wanting to blow my own trumpet, my comment was modded +5, and you were the only one (apparently) who misunderstood it.

Quit trying to turn the tables and attack me to cover your own stupidity and/or laziness. Wrong. I disagree with you that people who are not experts should stay silent on issues. That is BS. The whole reason for Slashdot and forums is that if you take enough people focusing on one subject, you usually get what amounts to a thesis (when you find all the important information/thoughts) on that subject.

The people who modded you most likely agree with your first sentence, but Slashdot karma is so fickle that trumpeting one post as being "the truth" because it was modded up is ludicrous.

Keep calling me stupid because I disagree with you. I have noted that people are 100X more likely to call someone stupid online.

Re:Bad Summary.

[Dogtanian]

Wrong. I disagree with you that people who are not experts should stay silent on issues. There you go, putting words in my mouth again- that's not what I said. (This almost smacks of intentional misrepresentation, to be honest, but see below).

I actually said:-

I discourage people who don't know what they're talking about from talking as if they do. In other words, people who don't know about the law shouldn't say "the position is X, Y and Z" when they're just guessing or downright incorrect.

I'm quite happy for other people to discuss aspects of the law, just as I do. However, if I am in any doubt as to my understanding when I'm not an expert on a subject, I try to make this clear. Something along the lines of "AFAIK, this is what the law says, but I'm not an expert", so that I don't mislead people.

The whole reason for Slashdot and forums is that if you take enough people focusing on one subject, you usually get what amounts to a thesis (when you find all the important information/thoughts) on that subject. No, the whole reason for Slashdot is to report news that is of interest to nerds, and to give them a place to discuss it.

The fact that on technical matters, an acceptably high proportion of the Slashdot userbase is knowledgable enough to discuss things insightfully (and in most cases to make clear which comments are misleading) is a happy side effect.

I don't think it had any such lofty Web-2.0-style ambitions when it started, and I still don't think it would describe itself in such a pompous manner.

On the other hand, when the proportion of people who have any real knowledge of the subject drops below a certain threshold, this doesn't work. That's what happens with discussions on how the law *actually* works. Geeks think they can work round their ignorance of how the law *actually* works by making unstated assumptions and assuming they can logically deduce these things.

The only way to actually know how the law actually works is to find out about it. (How it *should* work is a different kettle of fish... but I repeat myself).

The people who modded you most likely agree with your first sentence, but Slashdot karma is so fickle that trumpeting one post as being "the truth" because it was modded up is ludicrous. You're putting words in my mouth again (most likely out of ignorance). I didn't claim that it was " "the truth" " (double quotes- me quoting you *pretending* to quote me). I said that you were the only person who *still* seemed to have trouble understanding what I said.

Keep calling me stupid because I disagree with you. I think you genuinely believe that.

In truth, I'm calling you stupid because I genuinely think it's the only plausible explanation as to why you don't seem to understand things even after they've been explicitly and repeatedly stated in plain English.

I could assume that you were intentionally trying to misrepresent what I was saying in order to score points. However, if you were really that smart, you would have done a better job of making yourself look good... besides which, "Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity".

Anyway, arguing with you is like banging one's head against a brick wall.

Re:Bad Summary.

[baboo_jackal]

Several consumers are fools. We rarely do all our research before shopping.
I'm guilty of this myself. When I want something badly, I tend to shorten the shopping-around part of my economic decision. In doing so, I choose not to research that particular product further, and if I don't get the absolute lowest optimal price, then so be it! The time I spend looking for the cheapest price is time I've spent that I can't use for anything else.

Just because a given consumer doesn't get the Absolute Best Deal on a given transaction does not mean that they are a fool. Just human.

Getting back on topic, one thing I'm curious about is how Amazon handles doing business in states that don't allow businesses not to honor advertised pricing. I assume there are such laws somewhere. Most states have some form of consumer protection on the books. Getting it enforced, however...
This brings us back to my original point: Once a vendor explains to you that the given item's price is not what you thought it was, a thief would try to invoke a law that would force the vendor to exchange that item for a lower price than at which he or she would voluntarily exchange it. A fool wouldn't realize that what they were trying to do was wrong and fruitless, and keep at it.

Re:Bad Summary.

[that this is not und]

Before I could afford a computer, I used to log onto BBSes with a printing DecWriter terminal and an acoustic coupler. It used fanfold paper. The backscroll was kinda nice, though it could get expensive.

It used to piss me off when a sysop had a fancy non-exitable logon sequence, because it would waste a few feet of paper.

That said, a glass teletype was a big improvement.

You lead a sheltered life if that's the most asinine thing you've ever heard. Does your mom know you've wandered onto Slashdot?

Well

[i_liek_turtles]

I would welcome our new mispricing overlords, but I just ordered them off Amazon for about $20.

There are reverse errors, as well.

[jd]

Several of the Doctor Who audio tapes are selling at over 300 dollars a throw. Given that they're just Crystal Clear audios the BBC dubbed over with commentary, someone is making a fortune if anyone is paying the full ammount. For that matter, someone is making a fortune at the more normal $20 a throw.

Re:There are reverse errors, as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

I did a search for "dr who audio cassette" and couldn't see any products with (best) prices ~$300. Can you clue us in on the product ASIN?

It is worth noting that the offer could have been from a third-party merchant. Merchants are free to offer products at whatever they feel the market will bear. (As is Amazon for that matter ... though Amazon >>generally try to offer a "good deal" ... on the theory that a satisfied customer is likely to return.)

Re:There are reverse errors, as well.

[STrinity]

Several of the Doctor Who audio tapes are selling at over 300 dollars a throw. Given that they're just Crystal Clear audios the BBC dubbed over with commentary, someone is making a fortune if anyone is paying the full ammount.

Are these sold by Amazon, or through their third-party reseller service?

The new "My Bad" policy

[edwardpickman]

It covers the "accidental" erasure of orders by the President of the company.

Wasnt That The Point?

[Vectronic]

"A caveat: there is no external confirmation that Amazon did what is claimed here."

Didnt they erase the evidence so that it couldnt be proven?

Re:Wasnt That The Point?

[somersault]

If you live in Conspiracy World, yes they did. But there's no way of proving it.

External Confirmation?

[KingSkippus]

A caveat: there is no external confirmation that Amazon did what is claimed here.

External confirmation? I don't even see any internal confirmation. The one link in the submission goes to the item on Amazon.com's site, at which there is one glowing five-star rated customer review. As far as I can tell, this submitter simply wrote up something that may or may not be a complete fabrication with absolutely zero backing evidence, without even so much as a "here's my blog article about the experience," and somehow it make the front page.

Where's the screenshot of the item being offered for $31? Where's the printout of the placed order? Who were those customers that Amazon strung along for over a month, and where are they complaining? Was there even more than one? Was there even one? What "highly publicized price guarantee policy?" Are you talking about? This one, which Slate describes as "not something Amazon publicizes?" You are aware that companies don't have to honor prices that are obvious misprints, right? (And that a 75-CD limited edition import CD set being sold for $31 is an obivous misprint, right?)

Man, next time I have a beef with some company, remind me to completely make some shit up about them and post it as an article here on Slashdot. I'm usually not one to gripe about the job the editorial staff does here, but you guys really drop the ball in a major way on this one. Whether you like Amazon.com or not, with nothing to back it up, this borders on outright libel.

Re:External Confirmation?

[phillips321]

Well here's the proof from google cache: http://forumpix.co.uk/i.php?I=1202631583
And here's the corrected mistake afterwards: http://forumpix.co.uk/i.php?I=1202631639

Re:External Confirmation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do a cached Google search:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Aamazon.com+%22Jazz+in+Paris+%5BBOX+SET%5D+%5BIMPORT%5D+%5BLIMITED+EDITION%5D%22&btnG=Google+Search

The very first link reveals the original $30 pricing:

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:MFzDQFSwSUkJ:www.amazon.com/Jazz-Paris-Various-Artists/dp/B00005RSB2+site:amazon.com+%22Jazz+in+Paris+%5BBOX+SET%5D+%5BIMPORT%5D+%5BLIMITED+EDITION%5D%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

Re:External Confirmation?

[Cranky_92109]

External confirmation would be in the credit card records, a charge and then a chargeback. However, if Amazon never even charged anybody before discovering the pricing error, I don't see what anybody has to complain about.

Re:External Confirmation?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the "Cory Doctorow" school of reporting

Re:External Confirmation?

[harlows_monkeys]

If the submitter had written the exact same story on his blog, and then submitted the link to the blog entry, would that be any better? That's the level of external support that these kind of stories often have, so maybe skipping the blog is actually a good idea--at least the story won't get slashdotted! :-)

Re:External Confirmation?

[loraksus]

Fatwallet thread on this
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/messageview.php?catid=74&threadid=807548&start=0

Re:External Confirmation?

[pjotrb123]

Even though I think the submitter is totally whining for nothing, the Google cache claim by grandparent is accurate.

Google query: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Awww.amazon.com+inurl%3AB00005RSB2+Jazz+import+box
Locate the URL that is in the summary and then click "Cached" right below it.

Please check your facts before posting.
And here's hoping that the Google cache doesn't update too soon or I'll get flamed ;-)

Re:External Confirmation?

[adpowers]

Hmm, perhaps the meme I chose to follow was too obscure.

Re:External Confirmation?

[thegrassyknowl]

(And that a 75-CD limited edition import CD set being sold for $31 is an obivous misprint, right?) If it's anything like all the "limited edition box sets" i see advertised on television it'll could be utter crap and the $31 price tag could be accurate... Not that it's the case this time.. but there is grounds to argue!

Re:External Confirmation?

[freaker_TuC]

Check out Google Cache ?

The price has definitely been $31 according that cache; so the poster is not babbling out of his neck ...

Re:External Confirmation?

[Jesus_666]

And here's hoping that the Google cache doesn't update too soon or I'll get flamed ;-)

Dear Sir,
the Google cache has updated. Consider yourself flamed.

Sincerely,
Jesus_666

Re:External Confirmation?

[jackb_guppy]

And here is from http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=740701 talking about Target and Amazon both having the same pricing mistake.

Re:External Confirmation?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's nice, but Amazon handles Target's fulfillment for online orders. So it's basically an Target-branded Amazon site.

Re:External Confirmation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that figures. This story reeks of Fatwallet assholes who complain as loud as they can when they don't get their way.

Re:External Confirmation?

[Jake73]

I think this is pretty much known about Amazon. It has happened to me twice. Once for a "Little Giant" ladder. I don't remember the other situation. It was a couple years ago.

I'm not generally in the habit of taking screenshots of all my online orders.

Re:External Confirmation?

[smurgy]

Sorry to be tedious, but that confirms the price change not the handling of the customers. That's the element for which there is no confirmation.

Re:External Confirmation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read your grandparent post.

Where's the screenshot of the item being offered for $31?

Sorry to be tedious =(

Re:External Confirmation?

[Ambiguous Coward]

I got it and thought it was funny. Sorry you got modded down as a troll; get well soon.

Condolences,
-G

See the Google cache

[Anonymous Coward]

The pricing error seems to be borne out by a cached Google page. http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:MFzDQFSwSUkJ:www.amazon.com/Jazz-Paris-Various-Artists/dp/B00005RSB2+Jazz+in+Paris+%5BBOX+SET%5D+%5BIMPORT%5D+%5BLIMITED+EDITION%5D&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us How they handle this error by honoring what they advertise or by using a clause somewhere in their legal text to disavow pricing errors remains to be seen.

Re:See the Google cache

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod this up before the many people who've whined about lack of confirmation go take a dump and their shit gets on here and whines just as much and with similar levels of amiability.

Re:See the Google cache

[Anonymous Coward]

I meant to add: Amazon does this kind of shit all the time. Besides changing up prices, their Amazon Prime service has had for most of its existence a convenient on-going flaw. If you order in the afternoon while they still say next day delivery is possible - which costs extra - but instead select 2-day delivery - which is included free of charge for Amazon Prime members - you will almost always find out after putting in your order (and haven't it immdiately marked as unable to cancel) that the 2-day delivery's date has been pushed off another day, despite being listed as the day after next day delivery before you put in your order. I can't actually tell you if it's been fixed or not being after being screwed almost every time I ordered, I eventually learned my lesson. They actually gave me some recompense a couple of times but eventually I lost my will to be indignant (well, not totally - I do like ripping on /. asshats from time to time, but that's recreational).

My own problems with Amazon

[David_Shultz]

I haven't ordered anything from Amazon since I made the mistake of ordering textbooks. Several weeks into the course I sent an e-mail asking why I haven't received my books. The response was along the lines of "wait X weeks to make sure they aren't already sent" (I think X was 6 weeks). After waiting and not receiving anything, I wrote back. They replied something along the lines of "we can't do anything if an order was placed more than X weeks ago" (yes, the same X). My order never did arrive and I had to issue a charge back. No explanation or apology was ever given.

Re:My own problems with Amazon

[xubu_caapn]

Your complaint is pretty vague. why did you wait several weeks into the course before emailing? A company the size of Amazon is bound to have a few incidents.. Ive had nothing but good experiences with them, and that probably applies to 95% of their customers.

Re:My own problems with Amazon

[Anonymous Coward]

What piece of shit asshole marked THAT redundant?

Re:My own problems with Amazon

[cbart387]

Just a quick question. Did you buy it *from amazon* or *from a merchant*? If from a merchant, it's between the merchant and you at that point.

Please note: any situations that may arise after an order is submitted must be resolved directly with the seller. here

Re:My own problems with Amazon

[ericlondaits]

Not my experience, nor the one of many people I know... I live in Argentina, and it sometimes happens that stuff gets lost in the mail, or in customs. Over the years I placed probably more than 20 orders to Amazon, and quite a bit of them (4 or 5 at least) had missing shipments... whenever this was the case, Amazon replaced the order at no cost. The same thing happened to friends of mine, who had the same response from Amazon. It's actually automated behaviour... they don't question your complaint, or beat around the bush, just apologize and re-ship.

Re:My own problems with Amazon

[joe 155]

I too have had similar experiences (this time in the UK). Just this week I had a printer cartridge not turn up so I got in touch with them. They replied within 4 hours (and it was actually after 8o'clock to suggest I waited until it had been 4 days after the expected date, at which point I got back in touch with them and they sent me a new one immediately using the fastest delivery they can (it was next day special delivery). I really can't complain about their service. YMMV.

Re:My own problems with Amazon

[merreborn]

Having worked for a large amazon 3rd party merchant for years, your story sounds like you actually used the amazon marketplace, and paid for "standard" shipping.

Anything that happens in marketplace transactions is as much amazon's fault as ebay is at fault when you have a bad experience there. Amazon marketplace sellers have no real connection with amazon. Anyone can sell on marketplace.

Secondly, the "6 weeks" line is what leads me to suspect you used marketplace standard shipping. Marketplace shipping fees for standard shipping are $4. The seller gets less than $3 of that, and amazon keeps the rest. Stop and think about that. How fast do you think you can ship a textbook for $3?

The answer is not very fast. There's only one shipping service available that will ship a 2+ pound book for under $3: USPS media mail. If you check amazon, you'll see that even they acknowledge this "standard shipping" takes up to 21 days to arrive However, any merchant can tell you it frequently takes longer. The USPS treats media mail as a last priority; in extreme cases, I've seen packages show up 2 months after shipping.

Lastly, the "wait to see if it shows up" attitude is classic marketplace -- had you ordered directly from amazon, they'd have a tracking number. However, amazon marketplace sellers frequently don't use tracking, due to the aforementioned tiny shipping budget.

So, long story short, your beef isn't really with amazon, it's with some small-time reseller who sells on amazon. Buy direct from amazon and you'll never have this experience.

Re:My own problems with Amazon

[BarneyL]

Indeed, don't these fools know that both Troll and Flamebait would have been more appropriate.
Sadly there is no Wrong rating, my experiece of Amazon (personally and passed on from others) has been if something goes missing in the post, contacting them again seven days later resulted the parcel going out again the next day, no further questions asked.
I have never heard from a reliable source of the GPs experience occuring.

Re:My own problems with Amazon

[Anonymous Coward]

I ordered a GPS unit from them (not a Amazon vendor either) and it was not a good experience.
Item claimed to be in stock and ready to ship on the web site. After two days, I got an email that the item was back ordered and I'd have to wait about three weeks. Just about every day I checked the site and the unit always claimed to be "In Stock" and not listed as back ordered. About two weeks go by and I finally called them. I was told there was a mix up and that they would ship one that day and upgrade the shipping to next day for free. Four days later I got the item and was charged an additional $15-19 for next day shipping. It took quite a few emails of he said she said but I had the email claiming the next day would be free and finally I was credited back for the next day shipping.

I'm sure millions of people are happy with Amazon and never had a bad experience but this was only my second order from them and it was also my last.

A caveat

[Kuroji]

>A caveat: there is no external confirmation that Amazon did what is claimed here. Then why is it on the front page?

Legality?

[7-Vodka]

What's the legality of this? I think in some jurisdictions if you go to a brickNmortar store and they've mispriced something they're legally bound to sell it to you.

Re:Legality?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the legality of this? I think in some jurisdictions if you go to a brickNmortar store and they've mispriced something they're legally bound to sell it to you.

You mean if the stockboy puts the wrong price on an item that's on the shelf, that's the price they the store has to sell it for? I doubt there's a law anywhere in the country that says that. Making mistakes is bad for the store's image but they aren't legally obligated to honor such an error.

If you're talking about sale prices in advertisements that's something else entirely. Though in most cases a misprint is still a misprint (they may have to put up signage to indicate that, laws vary.)

In any event, this was a mistake, no harm done, and any mature, reasonable and ethical person wouldn't expect them to honor the mistaken price. The only way this could be considered a story were if Amazon were to try to extort money after the fact or demand returns from customerswho managed to complete the purchase.

Re:Legality?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be a stupid, inhuman law if prices are clearly an error, like a $27 plasma tv, or imagine a Ferrari car dealer who types accidently one zero less in the price.

Re:Legality?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because showcasing an item with a price tag is no binding offer. It's an invitation to place _your_ offer to buy the item which the store owner can either accept or deny.

Re:Legality?

[jacksonj04]

[Citation Needed]

Re:Legality?

[NotQuiteInsane]

IIRC under UK law, the retailer has a choice -- they can either sell at that price, or take the item off the shelf for 30 days. Again, this is on the basis of my sketchy memory and naturally IANAL.

Of course, if you really want to annoy the sales staff, start spouting off about this immediately after he/she says "Hmm, it's ringing up at £2.99, but the sticker says £1.99, I'll have to talk to the manager..." :)

Re:Legality?

[loraksus]

You mean if the stockboy puts the wrong price on an item that's on the shelf, that's the price they the store has to sell it for? I doubt there's a law anywhere in the country that says that. Making mistakes is bad for the store's image but they aren't legally obligated to honor such an error.

You're wrong.
The store has to sell it for the price on the shelf. Most (all?) states have consumer protection laws in place where if the price differs at the register, you get the price on the shelf plus a bit extra (or if it is a small value item, it's free)
For example...
http://www.michigan.gov/ag/0,1607,7-164-34739_20942-134114--,00.html

For some reason, online retailers feel that they can ignore consumer protection laws, and routinely do so. Most likely because the "we're not responsible for price mistakes" line in the "terms and conditions"
A major retailer deleting orders without notification is pretty scummy.

Re:Legality?

[namgge]

In England, a shop is not obliged by Contract Law to sell goods at the wrongly marked price. However, in some circumstances (essentially doing it often enough that it looks like bait-and-switch) it becomes a criminal offence. This means that large companies will usually sell one item at the marked price (while dragging the rest off the shelves) just to avoid the customer reporting them to the local Trading Standards Officials. TSOs have the job of investigating and prosecuting such offences, and a wise store manager stays off their radar.

Namgge

Re:Legality?

[philipgar]

Actually, from the link you gave us:

15. What if an item is marked the wrong price and the clerk catches it before I pay; am I entitled to buy the item at the price marked?

This is a fact-specific question best answered by a court. A store may not knowingly charge or attempt to charge a price higher than the price marked on the item. MCL 445.354. Therefore, the consumer may have a claim if the store will not sell the item at the price marked. However, the consumer may face obstacles convincing a court that the store knowingly charged the higher price when the pricing mistake is not intentional and will result in an obvious windfall to the consumer.

While this doesn't exactly say that the store can change the price, the law basically allows it, in particular when the pricing mistake was unintentional. In particular, this protects stores from swapping tags on items and try and call it the stores mistake. Consumers are not given a right to buy goods at a low price if the store makes a mistake and corrects it before the transaction has completed.

Phil

Re:Legality?

[jamesbulman]

This point from the website you mention would seem to apply to this case:

15. What if an item is marked the wrong price and the clerk catches it before I pay; am I entitled to buy the item at the price marked?

This is a fact-specific question best answered by a court. A store may not knowingly charge or attempt to charge a price higher than the price marked on the item. MCL 445.354. Therefore, the consumer may have a claim if the store will not sell the item at the price marked. However, the consumer may face obstacles convincing a court that the store knowingly charged the higher price when the pricing mistake is not intentional and will result in an obvious windfall to the consumer.

My personal take is that unless money has changed hands (in this case it hadn't) the store shouldn't be forced to honour an obvious mistake, especially as in this case the guy was acting in bad faith as he knew that the item was worth > 10x the listed price.

Re:Legality?

[rudy_wayne]

You're wrong. The store has to sell it for the price on the shelf. Most (all?) states have consumer protection laws in place where if the price differs at the register, you get the price on the shelf plus a bit extra (or if it is a small value item, it's free) For example... http://www.michigan.gov/ag/0,1607,7-164-34739_20942-134114--,00.html

Well, unfortunately, you didn't read the whole law. Here's the relevant portion from the Q&A section about the Michigan law (and I suspect that all states have a similar clause). Emphasis added is mine

What if an item is marked the wrong price and the clerk catches it before I pay; am I entitled to buy the item at the price marked?

This is a fact-specific question best answered by a court. A store may not knowingly charge or attempt to charge a price higher than the price marked on the item. MCL 445.354. Therefore, the consumer may have a claim if the store will not sell the item at the price marked. However, the consumer may face obstacles convincing a court that the store knowingly charged the higher price when the pricing mistake is not intentional and will result in an obvious windfall to the consumer.

Re:Legality?

[Tony Hoyle]

Not much point in spouting off at a till operator.. they have their procedures and rarely if ever know about consumer law.

Each time that's happened to me I've done the 'it says it's priced at xxx on the shelf', they've checked the shelf, and given me the lower price.

Bait and switch pricing happens all the time though.. ever been past a mobile phone shop? Some of the stuff they put on their store fronts is just plain lies, by comparison to what you'll really pay.

Re:Legality?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean if the stockboy puts the wrong price on an item that's on the shelf, that's the price they the store has to sell it for?

Happened to me when I bought 2 Rubik's Cubes at an insanely large retail store chain I need not mention by name here: a 3^3 and a 4^3 model that both had the price stickers for the same amount slapped on them so I bought them (on sale?).

Checked my receipt just after purchase and saw I was overcharged(?) on the 4^3 one. I went to customer service and asked for a refund of the difference in price and got it.

It was the only way I could see to get the 4^3 cubes repriced correctly and the proper person/persons get 'chewed out' for the mistake. Perhaps the guy who priced them got the wrong price from higher up and that individual should get the blame.

Now before I get accused of being some sort of slime for taking advantage of a store like that consider that the only thing people really pay attention to out in the real capitalistic-driven world anymore is money. You HAVE to hurt them in their wallets to get some sort of positive change made whenever money is involved.

Presumably I was the first(?) and last person to have this happen to and the problem was fixed after my complaint--thus sparing them a repeat of this incedent.

Moral of the story: pricetag the stuff right the first time or only do business in a 'shelf tag only is OK' state.

Re:Legality?

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon has no legal entities in Michigan, and therefor is not bound by there laws.

Kill this article: referral

[Solder Fumes]

Not only is there no confirmation of this beyond what some guy wrote in an email to Slashdot, the Amazon link contains a referral ID which should make someone some money if anyone buys the jazz cd set as a result of clicking on the link. This is pretty dishonest and the complaint could be completely false, and has NO place on Slashdot's front page.

Re:Kill this article: referral

[Solder Fumes]

I googled some more and it might not be a referral ID. But the other reasons still stand...

Re:Kill this article: referral

[$random_var]

Not sure how long until the google cache refreshes, but if you check it out you do see the cache lists the price at $31. So one part of the story is corroborated, at least.

Re:Kill this article: referral

[mark-t]

The story could also be corraborated by emails received by purchasers when they first checked the item out, indicating the total amount of the order.

Re:Kill this article: referral

[Anonymous Coward]

And while we're at it, fire the moderator who let this article get onto the main page to begin with. This is a failure of moderation in every possible way.

Re:Kill this article: referral

[patternmatch]

The link in the summary does not contain an affiliate referral ID. It contains a reftag, which is used by Amazon for clickstream tracking within their site. An affiliate ID would appear in the form "tag=foo".

That's nice..

[Creepy Crawler]

I'll just slap on boilerplates everywhere disclaiming all my liability, even if it is probably fraud... Something about advertising price cant be raised after point of sale.

I'd say hit them with customer lawsuits suing for advertised price. It's too bad they made an error, but they need to offer at the price they quoted.

Re:That's nice..

[timmarhy]

at the very least they have to return the money and notify you of the error. a vouncher and apology would probably go a long way as well.

but that's just good business practice, which probably doesn't make sense to them.

Re:That's nice..

[Antique Geekmeister]

I see you have a great career in hotel reservations and car rental agreements.

Re:That's nice..

[AikonMGB]

My understanding of the (unproven) claim is that the customers' credit cards were never charged, so the transaction never passed the "point of sale".

Aikon-

Re:That's nice..

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon does not exchange any monies until the item has been shipped from the warehouse. Therefore canceling the item before shipment is legal as to raising the price afterward. Additionally, the order was canceled and therefore the price raise does not affect the order.

completely legal

[Anonymous Coward]

i dont feel like burning karma, and someone with a law degree will chime up about the origins of "offer to treat" in the near future and clarify better than I could anyway, but basically until they charge your credit card, they don't have to honor the pricing. until they take your money, there is no contract between the two of you. even if the contract did at some point exist (i.e. they took your money and then failed to deliver on the product) and you sued them, they could probably argue bad faith on your part to nullify the contract (if it's a $500 item, and you bought it for $30, it would be very difficult to explain how you did so in 'good faith belief')

Re:completely legal

[mooingyak]

IIRC, it works like this:

If the advertised price is clearly a typo or misprint or something along those lines, then the retailer is not required to honor the price. They might anyway if it's not that far from what they'd sell it at normally, just to avoid a hassle with customers.

If the advertised price is being used as a means to get people into the store in hopes they'll either buy the item at the full price, or buy something else, then they're in iffy legal turf.

The rule of thumb is basically the larger the discount, the more likely it is a mistake.

Re:completely legal

[larien]

Disclaimer: IANAL (although I've done some law) and this is for UK law.

I did a contract law course at uni years ago and as I recall it, the term is "Invitation to Treat"; at the point at which you take the item to the till, you're making an offer to buy it at the stated price, which the store can refuse to accept. However, if a store is found to be misrepresenting the price either deliberately or for too long after being informed about it, they can be taken under the Trades Descriptions Act in the UK.

How this works on web buying is less obvious, but most stores now have some kind of disclaimer in their terms & conditions stating that they can cancel orders or that they only legally accept the offer at shipping time.

Re:completely legal

[STrinity]

If the advertised price is clearly a typo or misprint or something along those lines, then the retailer is not required to honor the price.

Depends upon the state. In Virginia if Best Buy has a misprint in their circular saying a new DVD is $1.99, they have to place notices by the entrance and next to the item explaining that the advertisement is in error -- if you get in before they have a chance to place the notices, they have to honor the advertised price. Similarly, they have to honor marked prices unless it's obvious the tag's been tampered with or the item's been set in the wrong spot.

Re:completely legal

[Lehk228]

there is a difference between errors in advertising material, which gets people into the store, and errors in tags which only confuse people who are already there.

Amazon sucks, what's new?

[carndearg]

So what's new, Amazon has cr@p customer service. In other news, the Pope is Catholic and bears cr@p in the woods.
I used to buy a lot of stuff from Amazon UK. Then they changed couriers and the new courier had problems delivering to me. No problem I thought, I'll get on to their customer service line and fix it. Trouble is, there was no customer service line for Amazon UK, no customer service email address, just an online form that took you through several steps and then gave an error message. No problem I thought, it must be my minority browser/OS choice. Except it gave the same response on everything I could try it on at every site I tried it, including the obvious win/IE combo.
Amazon: great when everything goes right, cr@p when it doesn't. I've made my last ever Amazon order.

Re:Amazon sucks, what's new?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are we masking the 'a' in crap? When did we start masking letters in replacement curse words? Just say Shit, for fucks sake.

Re:Amazon sucks, what's new?

[carndearg]

Sheer force of habit. If you spend your week doing it because you're at work then you do it at the weekend too without thinking. I have been assimilated.

Re:Amazon sucks, what's new?

[glwtta]

Don't you mean "@ssimilated"?

Re:Amazon sucks, what's new?

[Anonymous Coward]

QQ

Re:Amazon sucks, what's new?

[xubu_caapn]

i just went to amazon.co.uk --> help --> cancelling an order, then found an email address and phone number. didnt look very hard, did you?

Re:Amazon sucks, what's new?

[carndearg]

This was 18 months to a couple of years ago. Trust me, at the time there was nothing but the form. No email, no phone. Yes, I did look.

Re:Amazon sucks, what's new?

[xubu_caapn]

well now they have it, so you should lift your boycott!

So???

[EdIII]

Even if this was true, and verified independently by many sources.... so what??

If you honestly thought it was 30$ to begin with and made the order and were charged for it, then you might have something to complain about it. I still think Amazon would be right to cancel the order and refund your money. So you may have been inconvenienced, but a 20$ discount demonstrates some pretty respectable behavior from Amazon.

It's a little ridiculous to expect Amazon to eat thousands of dollars in losses over an error on their website. Maybe it's just common sense, or being raised right, but when you think somebody is making a mistake and you profit from it, that is just WRONG. If you knew it was worth 10 times that price and it was a simple mistake, how moral is it to purchase it?

I have had plenty of stupid teenagers that can not do math correctly give me my change incorrectly. I have even given a 100$ bill to a girl, who gave me 130$ BACK.

The last time I had a situation like that was at CompUSA. I bought a few Motorola routers and access points and was surprised when all of them rang up for 19.99$ each. I brought it up to the clerk, got the manager, and explained that it looked like a mistake and that the labels actually said a different price. The manager, shockingly, acted like a complete dick and stated that he had no control over the information in the databases and could not do anything for me. They was not any in stock anywhere else, so I ended up getting them for my client anyways.

The point was that I TRIED to deal with them fairly. On another note, maybe that is why CompUSA went out of business.

Re:So???

[zakezuke]

The manager, shockingly, acted like a complete dick and stated that he had no control over the information in the databases and could not do anything for me. While they can change the price for a sale, they may not have the ability to change the prices. Keep in mind that while sometimes accidents happen, other times they under price something to get rid of surplus stock.

I would believe a $20 access point or router even in 2002 as they often were that cheap.

On the flip side of things, I know CompUSA often stocked older stuff but failed to mark it down in price.

The point was that I TRIED to deal with them fairly. On another note, maybe that is why CompUSA went out of business. I would think it would be the extremely competitive market and the popularity of online resellers like NewEgg. I mean lets face it, we are not willing to pay for customer service.

Re:So???

[EdIII]

These were not marked down for quick sale. Their website at the time stated something like 149.99$ and was comparable to other offerings online. I had checked around online before purchasing them for my client.

These routers were very good and the access points had all 5 modes and an automatic multi-point-to-point bridge mode for up to 4 access points and the router. Unique at the time, and Motorola stopped production on them. Still working too.

I knew it was an accident and the Manager seemed to completely miss my point that he was being shorted by hundreds of dollars in the sale. In the end I had no choice but to purchase it, since you could not find access points with all the modes for local sale at that time and I needed to get them for my client quickly.

Re:So???

[loraksus]

It's a little ridiculous to expect Amazon to eat thousands of dollars in losses over an error on their website.

Not according to various consumer protection laws (on the state level)
Laws which were implemented to combat abusive retailers engaging in bait and switch tactics.

Re:So???

[EdIII]

I understand what you are saying, but the article is a transparent PR job on Amazon, and demonstrably so.

Bait and Switch does not apply here, and the laws that were created around it certainly do not apply here either.

There is a little confusion about what constitutes a transaction here. Traditionally, that has always been a face to face, arms length transaction where the 2 parties walk away from each other. I would say that neither party has a right to complain about the price afterwards. Caveat Emptor.

However, does that really apply to the ability to cancel online orders BEFORE they are fulfilled? IMHO, transactions are not completed until the product is actually received and compensation exchanged. The article makes it clear that the orders were canceled and the products were not shipped. Therefore, the transactions were not completed.

Although it is not very nice for Amazon to not notify customers of the problem, the 20$ discount demonstrates a good faith effort to compensate the customers for their wasted time.

Re:So???

[Auckerman]

Even if this was true, and verified independently by many sources.... so what??

There are laws against "bait and switch" pricing in the United States. That's what. Computer error or no computer error, it's their problem they were selling it at a loss, not the consumers. They can be held for this if anyone actually cared enough.

Re:So???

[EdIII]

You want to argue that there are remedies under the law. Since you, along with another poster, specifically site bait and switch laws let us discuss those particular laws. From http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/guides/baitads-gd.htm

Sec. 238.0 Bait advertising defined.1

Bait advertising is an alluring but insincere offer to sell a product or service which the advertiser in truth does not intend or want to sell. Its purpose is to switch consumers from buying the advertised merchandise, in order to sell something else, usually at a higher price or on a basis more advantageous to the advertiser. The primary aim of a bait advertisement is to obtain leads as to persons interested in buying merchandise of the type so advertised.Sec. 238.1 Bait advertisement.

Amazon clearly intended to sell the product. They were not trying to switch to a different product at the higher price. The mistake could be seen as having the side effect of selling the same product at the higher price.

No advertisement containing an offer to sell a product should be published when the offer is not a bona fide effort to sell the advertised product. [Guide 1]

Sec. 238.2 Initial offer.

(a) No statement or illustration should be used in any advertisement which creates a false impression of the grade, quality, make, value, currency of model, size, color, usability, or origin of the product offered, or which may otherwise misrepresent the product in such a manner that later, on disclosure of the true facts, the purchaser may be switched from the advertised product to another.

(b) Even though the true facts are subsequently made known to the buyer, the law is violated if the first contact or interview is secured by deception. [Guide 2]

They advertised the exact same product before and after the price change. No differences in quality, make, value, etc. Just a difference in price. I truly don't think that databases errors can be seen as deceptive acts. Deception is a characterization of a behavior. Was Amazon truly, in a premeditated fashion, deceiving the consumer with an error in their database? I would say that is very hard to prove, and on the basis of a single product error, especially given the volume of transactions that Amazon conducts.

Sec. 238.3 Discouragement of purchase of advertised merchandise.

No act or practice should be engaged in by an advertiser to discourage the purchase of the advertised merchandise as part of a bait scheme to sell other merchandise. Among acts or practices which will be considered in determining if an advertisement is a bona fide offer are:

(a) The refusal to show, demonstrate, or sell the product offered in accordance with the terms of the offer,

(b) The disparagement by acts or words of the advertised product or the disparagement of the guarantee, credit terms, availability of service, repairs or parts, or in any other respect, in connection with it,

(c) The failure to have available at all outlets listed in the advertisement a sufficient quantity of the advertised product to meet reasonably anticipated demands, unless the advertisement clearly and adequately discloses that supply is limited and/or the merchandise is available only at designated outlets,

(d) The refusal to take orders for the advertised merchandise to be delivered within a reasonable period of time,

(e) The showing or demonstrating of a product which is defective, unusable or impractical for the purpose represented or implied in the advertisement,

(f) Use of a sales plan or method of compensation for salesmen or penalizing salesmen, designed to prevent or discourage them from selling the

Re:So???

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, here in Italy there is a law stating that if you offer to sell a good for a certain price you cannot ask more than than, you are obliged to sell at that price or lower.
It seems to me a very sensible law protecting the customer. The point is not to take advantage of Amazon mistakes but to avoid surprises after having bought a good.

Re:So???

[Wowsers]

If you honestly thought it was 30$ to begin with and made the order and were charged for it, then you might have something to complain about it. I still think Amazon would be right to cancel the order and refund your money. So you may have been inconvenienced, but a 20$ discount demonstrates some pretty respectable behavior from Amazon. In _UK_ law if the credit/debit card has been debited with the amount for the goods, the item has been sold at the lower price and the store must honour the sale. If it spots before debiting a card the price is wrong, it is 100% within their rights to refuse the sale. With the internet being what it is, a wrong price at a store would attract many people going to that store to "pick up a bargain", why should the store be expected to honour such a mistake if the order was not processed?

Re:So???

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I knew it was an accident No, you only believed it was an accident. All of the big box stores do funny things with their inventory pricing, it is almost impossible to judge the validity of a price at one of those stores without access to the intention of the person, or the system, which set it.

Unique at the time, and Motorola stopped production on them. That would easily explain why they were marked down.

Re:So???

[EdIII]

I'm sorry, let me be clear on this. The bar code label on the products stated prices that were much, much higher.

The websites were still selling these at full price. CompUSA was selling it at full price via their website, the bar code labels, and the shelf sticker.

The ONLY price that was different, was the price being declared at the register.

So you are correct, that I could not know it accident since I did not have full access to their systems or interviewed every employee involved. I just strongly believe it was an accident.

Re:So???

[Sancho]

I'm in the "Amazon didn't do much wrong here" camp, but I do think that the definition of a transaction is nebulous in the on-line realm. The reason is that Amazon has set up an agent (a computer) to do business with me. The computer and I have completed the transaction--I don't have to do anything once I click "Submit Order." The computer and the credit card company have not completed the transaction.

Imagine being in a brick-and-mortar store. You bring the item to the front and hand them your credit card. They take an imprint of your card and tell you that after they've done an extensive price check on the item, they'll ship it to you. They won't send the imprint off until they've done all the checks, so you don't have to worry about being charged if an error occurred.

From a legal standpoint, it's all very unclear. Analogies help us to understand what's going on, but they don't correspond perfectly. First of all, the primary reason for the delay from placing the order to Amazon shipping it is not (presumably) to check the price. That is, however, something that they often do with the time.

To stop all of these sensationalist stories, there needs to be a clear, legal understanding of what's going on here, and some terms may need to be defined explicitly for the new domain.

Re:So???

[Anonymous Coward]

My caveat is that I agree with you, but for different reasons.

However, does that really apply to the ability to cancel online orders BEFORE they are fulfilled?

Imagine Ebay, but instead of bidding you get to BUY it for just $0.01? Of course, if a better offer comes in, your sale can be cancelled so long as you are not actually charged. I agree with the Amazon haters that something is fishy about that, but I also feel that Amazon probably did obey their own policy and as far as I know that policy has never been found in violation of any laws.

So yeah, nothing important to bitch about here, but Amazon might not hurt from tightening their error controls or even taking an occasional bath in the name of good PR.

Re:So???

[Anonymous Coward]

Fact remains: SOMEONE put in the price at $30 a piece. Its not like the computer spontaneously decided it was only worth $30.

Re:So???

[Anonymous Coward]

The last time I had a situation like that was at CompUSA. I bought a few Motorola routers and access points and was surprised when all of them rang up for 19.99$ each.

Years ago, when FF:TSW came out, I passed up a large box set of FF music CDs that some seller on eBay was auctioning off.

The price was incredibly cheap for the number of CDs in the box set but I knew better: they were most likely bootleg versions from such 'labels' as Son May and/or Ever Anime (except for the FF:TSW OST--I figured that one CD was legit). Years earlier, I had unknowingly bought a bootleg copy of the 3-CD 'sound collection' to Gunbuster. I liked it so much, I bought it again as a legit version to show my support for Koohei Tanaka, the composer, for a anime music score with comporable depth, scope, and musicianship as John Williams' work for 'Episode 4'.

Ironically, both Gunbuster CD sound collections sound identical to me indicating that the bootleggers 'care' about their 'work' when they want to...though illegal in most the world.

Re:So???

[heinousjay]

I've noticed you like to argue. Shame you do it so ineptly.

Re:So???

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I'm sorry, let me be clear on this. ...
The ONLY price that was different, was the price being declared at the register. Yes. Best Buy regularly sells DVDs in store for an order of magnitude less than the stickered price and what their externally visible website says. All the big box stores do the same when they want to clear out merchandise, discontinued or not. Read fatwallet.com for a while and you will find thousands of such cases.

Re:So???

[zakezuke]

I'm sorry, let me be clear on this. The bar code label on the products stated prices that were much, much higher. That's MSRP (Manufacture Suggested retail price). It's rare I've bought anything @ MSRP even in a bigbox store. Usually the price is lower, but in some cases the price is higher.

The websites were still selling these at full price. CompUSA was selling it at full price via their website, the bar code labels, and the shelf sticker. In 2002 the website price differed from their in store price. CompUSA always had advertised specials which often were not reflected on the shelf, more so on the first day of the sale. This is rather why when you shopped it was wise to pickup a flyer first. Sundays were always best.

The ONLY price that was different, was the price being declared at the register. This is NOT unusual.

So you are correct, that I could not know it accident since I did not have full access to their systems or interviewed every employee involved. I just strongly believe it was an accident. Hey you did the honest thing. You thought there was a price mistake, they refused to change the price to a higher one. In such a case, I would strongly suspect a close out. Some stores in the late 90s early 00s offered a kickback for pointing out a price discrepancy for the reason that mistakes happen.

Re:So???

[SuiteSisterMary]

but I do think that the definition of a transaction is nebulous in the on-line realm.

No, the definition of a transaction is perfectly straightforward, same as face-to-face; goods or services exchanged for money. It's quite purposefully kept really simple; until such time as the two things are actually exchanged, both sides can walk.

Re:So???

[Sancho]

So it just takes a really long time for an online transaction to take place? Is the transaction complete when the goods are sent, or when the goods are received?

Note that I'm talking legal terms, here, not lay terms. I assume that you are, too.

Ecommerce pricing errors

[jaiyen]

I really don't understand how these pricing mistakes continue to happen. OK, the occasional typo when entering the price is human nature, but why doesn't their system catch them ? It doesn't seem like it would be very hard to make a warning or require manual confirmation by a manager if a price of something is reduced to (say) less than 20% of its previous price.

Re:Ecommerce pricing errors

[eyrieowl]

and if someone enters it in incorrectly the first time?

Re:Ecommerce pricing errors

[STrinity]

I really don't understand how these pricing mistakes continue to happen.

Here's one example I know of: Last year Sony released a boxset of Pedro Almodovar films. They originally announced it as a four disc set with an MSRP of $40, but then changed it to eight films and a bonus disc for $120 without changing the ISBN. But Sony screwed up in informing retailers about the change, and several etailers ended up listing it as a four disc set at the original MSRP. The people inputting the prices had no way of knowing that the set they were selling was different from the one on the website, so no one caught the mistake until well after the release date. I got my copy for about $32.

Re:Ecommerce pricing errors

[merreborn]

It doesn't seem like it would be very hard to make a warning or require manual confirmation by a manager if a price of something is reduced to (say) less than 20% of its previous price.

That assumes that the price was ever correctly entered in the first place. How can a computer know the "correct" price for an item that being newly entered?

If you look at the cache links above, you'll notice that the list price is wrong, as well as the "amazon price".

Not external confirmation per se

[antifoidulus]

but a few years back a friend sent me a link, amazon was selling $200 laptop memory for $20 or so. They cancelled my order after I ordered a few sticks, but they were nice enough to give me a $25 gift certificate(which I blew on anime), but my friend who also ordered got nothing.

Re:Not external confirmation per se

[snl2587]

they were nice enough to give me a $25 gift certificate(which I blew on anime), but my friend who also ordered got nothing

Interesting...did one of you have a larger ordering history with Amazon than the other?

Re:Not external confirmation per se

[antifoidulus]

Almost certainly, lost contact with this individual so I cannot confirm it, but he didn't seem to order very much of amazon at all. However, now that I think about it, that may have been the reason, or it could have been how he found it. He found it through some sort of deals website, so when he clicked the link and ordered it, it probably contained a referral URL. However, when he emailed me the link, he just sent the direct link to the amazon.com product page, so there was no referral....

riiiight

[Anonymous Coward]

and the customer was not informed about it

according to the oh-so-thorough summary that has ZERO links (except for one to amazon's own site with the $499 price). this summary smells a lot like someone who ordered the "$30" set from amazon in bad faith, hoping they wouldn't notice the mistake and $500 worth of CDs would show up a few weeks later. when the order was cancelled, off to slashdot they ran, hoping to stir up some sentiment against amazon. Now, maybe Amazon really DIDNT notify the customer(s) in this case, but in other publicised examples (as well as anecdotally in the grandparentpost) they *DID* do so.. so without evidence that they violated their own policy (which, by the way, is just a policy.. until they charge your credit card no contract exists), they're entitled to the benefit of the doubt.

Re:riiiight

[yog]

I've spend thousands of dollars at Amazon over the past eleven years. One time I received a faulty Brother printer which Amazon promptly replaced, no questions asked, the new one sent in advance, trusting me to return the old one once I received the prepaid shipping sticker. (Brother's customer support was completely useless, which is why I'll never buy Brother again, but that's another story.)

Not once have I ever experienced a pricing problem or other anomaly that might mar my buying experience. I have also taken advantage of Amo's easy approach to selling my stuff back to others and have unloaded many textbooks and DVDs over the years.

In short, Amazon for me represents the most successful of the new online retailers; they have won my trust and admiration, no easy feat, and so I find this Slashdot story to be questionable at best. I am willing to believe that such a mistake occurred, but without any links or independent confirmation of the accusations it really sounds more like a disgruntled customer out to hurt them as much as possible. Given my own experience and that of many friends and associates over the years I would be surprised if this were anything more than a blip.

Re:riiiight

[glitch23]

so without evidence that they violated their own policy (which, by the way, is just a policy.. until they charge your credit card no contract exists), they're entitled to the benefit of the doubt.

Valdrax says differently:

Also, a contract of this sort is generally considered to be binding when the site gives you order confirmation, and you submit it. At that point, offer and acceptance has been had (even under the older UCC Article 2). The time at which they charge you or not is irrelevant in this situation.

So should we believe an AC or Valdrax?

Re:riiiight

[symbolic]

I haven't bought a single thing at Amazon over the past 11 years. Their sense of innovation when it comes to their patent portfolio is simply too much for me.

Re:riiiight

[Anonymous Coward]

So should we believe an AC or Valdrax?

The truth is somewhere in between. Clearly the contract would be afoot once the they charge your card, but such is charge is your performance, not, per se, their acceptance (though their acceptance is clearly implied by this act). On the other hand a mere automatic, "we have received your order" confirmation is unlikely to constitute acceptance on their part.

Re:riiiight

[Buran]

Good luck finding companies that don't have silly patents somewhere in their portfolios these days.

[Citation Needed]

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting unsubstantiated rumors with no attempt at fact or reason? Slashdot gets more like Digg every day.

Buried as inaccurate.

Amazon's just fine here...

[ChePibe]

I'm a law student... just a student... NOT a lawyer, and certainly not your lawyer, so nothing here is legal advice, period. I am not qualified to give legal advice, so I'm not giving it and cannot, in fact, even do so. Speak to a qualified professional about these matters, NOT ME.

(This is all assuming, of course, that there is an actual problem here.)

If I'm remembering first year contracts properly, then there's no problem here with Amazon refusing to sell at the price it listed.

A contract must have a few things to come into existence, generally: offer, acceptance, consideration.

Advertisements and catalog listings suffer from an "over-subscription problem" and are not considered firm offers themselves and, therefore, cannot simply be "accepted" by a consumer who makes an order. Ads are generally treated as invitations to deal unless they require something special on top of just showing up (i.e. being the first in line). The consumer's order, however, is considered an offer, which can be rejected by the seller by either refusing to provide goods and refunding money in a timely fashion or refusing to accept the money in the first place. This is done to protect merchants from themselves (people shouldn't be able to walk away with huge windfalls because a $5.00/hr clerk forgot a zero) and to protect their advertisers from them (newspapers shouldn't be held accountable for giving people windfalls for much the same reason). It's just good public policy, and prevents the games of "gotcha".

I see why some people are whining, but from a legal standpoint (again, I am not providing legal advice and I'm only a student - I could be 100% wrong on this and would welcome correction), Amazon has done nothing wrong in simply deleting the orders and refunding any money already sent.

Re:Amazon's just fine here...

[loraksus]

No offense, but you're a pretty poor law student if you can't realize that this doesn't really fall under contract law, but under consumer protection laws that have been implemented by State governments.
Shelf price is the selling price in most states.
Just google "attorney general" "scanned price" and you'll get a number of results.

You're also apparantly completely unaware of bait and switch / false advertising laws.
Laws that were put in because of scummy, abusive retailers who felt that it was perfectly ok to screw around with people.
Certain industries are more tightly regulated (car dealerships) because of... well, let's just call them "widespread practices"

Not only did amazon cancel orders (which may of have been fine), but they also "disappeared" them from their system. Orders where the cost of the CD set gave someone free shipping changed - without any notification - to orders where shipping was charged. Amazon could of have handled this a lot better than trying to cover it up.

Re:Amazon's just fine here...

[damona]

I'm a law student here and I actually wrote a paper on this subject :P. But I can't be bothered to RTFA, so I don't have an opinion on this issue.

Interestingly though, something like this happened in sunny Singapore and went all the way to appeal in the highest court -- http://www.singaporelaw.sg/rss/judg/30117.html. But those guys were evil (buying over 4000 printers for $66 when it cost $3K), so the judge had no qualms pissing them away (affirmed on appeal). The buyers sound reasonably innocent here. I think they have a better case.

I know you're referring to the whole invitation to treat thing here, but the fact is that as long as Amazon communicated its acceptance, the contract is formed. This could come from an email sent by Amazon acknowledging and accepting the offer.

The shady way in which Amazon is dealing with this does hint that they do believe that a contract had already been formed. I'm not too sure of American Contract Law, but my impression is that they are a lot nicer to consumers. I hope somebody brings this to court, at least for the selfish sake of jurisprudence. :P

Re:Amazon's just fine here...

[abigsmurf]

In the UK the law has been tested many times and a sale isn't binding until the following 3 stages are complete:

1. Invitation to treat (legal term)
2. Offer
3. Acceptance

Acceptance being the good has shipped. They are under no obligation to actually sell you something for a price advertised.

However conversely trading standards say the price advertised has to be the price at the till for goods. There's an insane fine for stores that get it wrong when inspected, something like £1000... Per miss-priced item (imagine if they're got 100 tins of beans on the shelf and they're found to be wrongly marked) and as a result many will sell misspriced items at the lower rate so that you won't tell trading standards. Tescos (UK's biggest supermarket chain) used to have a policy of any misspriced item being free. They dropped this policy after one store got the price wrong for xbox 360s and people found out about it...

Re:Amazon's just fine here...

[Pherlin]

Yeah, but there's such a thing as Bad Faith on the part of the Consumer...

Re:Amazon's just fine here...

[RobBebop]

Ads are generally treated as invitations to deal unless they require something special on top of just showing up (i.e. being the first in line).

What about truth in advertising? As somebody who takes price into consideration when I am shopping, if I wade through Internet sites in search of a deal for something, I am going to buy it for the lowest advertised from a vendor who meets some level of professionalism and credibility.

The best way to gain credibility is to provide good service. The quickest way to lose credibility is to get caught in a lie.

In this particular instance, I am siding with Amazon, though. It seems like there was an obvious error in the advertised price... and they should get some credit as a vendor for catching it. But I thoroughly disagree with the "advertisement is not an offer" argument. You bet your ass it is, because if it isn't, then it is a lie and customers don't shop at businesses who they know to be liars.

Re:Amazon's just fine here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could look at it this way...

The offer WAS the item on display. The acceptance is when you hit SUBMIT and get your confirmation, because AMAZON is lazy and does not have people checking every order the computer automatically approves it. This is a contract stating that they are going to charge your card and ship something.

After all many of these EULA's treat a click as signing a contract. When you click submit and the server gives you confirmation that should constitute acceptance of a contract on the part of the seller as well.

Re:Amazon's just fine here...

[SuiteSisterMary]

What about truth in buying? It's legally recognized that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch; a $500 product listed for $450 is a deal; listed for $400 is an amazing deal. Listed for $350 is starting to push it; listed for $31 means that there's a screw-up somewhere. There's no meeting of the minds, blah blah blah.

Oops. Bad edit.

[Valdrax]

Since we've established that there was one... By that, I mean a contract -- not a breach. Sorry, that was error from rewording another part of the post.

Probably happens a lot

[tiger32kw]

This probably happens a good amount of time. Otherwise they would most likely take this singular loss to maintain their reputation. No big deal really (How is this news).

Sounds like bullshit

[cioxx]

Amazon sends a confirmation notice when you place an order. No email = no transaction.

Re:Sounds like bullshit

[JohnBailey]

Amazon sends a confirmation notice when you place an order. No email = no transaction. The email is a confirmation the order process has started, unless there is some text in the email that states otherwise. From memory, Amazon do not write "This is a receipt" on their confirmation emails, so no contract at this point. The bricks and mortar equivalent would be taking the item to the check out. The transaction turns into a contract once the payment has been made. So cash, cheque, or credit card acceptance. The sequence of events has a lot of importance.

This happened to Kodak a few years ago via their UK web site. They made the mistake of saying in so many words on the order confirmation email, that this is a receipt. So legally, they had sold the item in advance of payment to the customer.

They ended up being forced to sell a lot of cheap digital cameras for the incorrectly marked price, even though they had not taken a single penny from any customer.
After that, several online retailers started clearly stating that the confirmation email was NOT a receipt in any way. Given the existence of the receipt, they would very likely have lost the many county court(small claims) cases. And even if they had won, they would have had to pay a lawyer to attend each hearing while the customer was only liable for £40 I think.

I don't see anything out of the ordinary here...

[Monsterdog]

I used to be on a board that tracked amazon pricing errors -- picked up quite a few items for next to nothing that way. They used to play along and make good on such orders, but it got to the point where it was costing them so much and causing such disruptiveness that they changed the policy, and mispriced orders now are usually canceled. That's been in effect for at least the last five years. They don't always notify the buyer -- which I think is a customer service issue where people fall through the cracks -- and they only rarely offer a make-nice like a gift certificate.

New Slashdot Effect

[bagsc]

People who viewed "Jazz in Paris" bought:
Jazz in Paris 1%
Linux in a Nutshell 55%
Understanding the Linux Kernel 12%
Running Weblogs with Slash 7%

Re:New Slashdot Effect

[nexuspal]

Consumer Behavior 101, well us nerds at least :-P. But I agree, PV of expected profits from amazon.com have increased marginally because this article made the "front page" ;-P.

Re:New Slashdot Effect

[myspace-cn]

Hah Hah Hah Hah Hah Hah Hah Hah Hah Hah Hah Hah Hah Hah Hah Hah Hah Hah Hah Hah That's funny but so fucking true!

Re:New Slashdot Effect

[ErixTr]

Funniest comment I have read for a long time. Thanks. :)

so obvious

[Scudsucker]

It's a little ridiculous to expect Amazon to eat thousands of dollars in losses over an error on their website.

Then they should take as a lesson and improve their site.

Maybe it's just common sense, or being raised right, but when you think somebody is making a mistake and you profit from it, that is just WRONG.

No, THEY MADE A MISTAKE. Nothing wrong about it, and the converse is equally true: if you buy a cd set from Amazon priced at $400 when another site has it priced at $30, it's your own damn fault for not checking the price.

And while we're on the subject of right and wrong, Ms. Manners, what about the retailer trying to sweep their mistake under the rug instead of manning up and admitting their mistake?

Re:so obvious

[Firas Zirie]

Then they should take as a lesson and improve their site.

Product information -including price- is most likely manually entered into their database. Why do you think Amazon should swallow thousands of dollars worth of losses over a typo?

No, THEY MADE A MISTAKE. Nothing wrong about it, and the converse is equally true: if you buy a cd set from Amazon priced at $400 when another site has it priced at $30, it's your own damn fault for not checking the price.

Wow, is the idea of screwing the corporations so tempting to you that any shred of morals is lost? I don't think you would be saying what you are saying if any of this involved your money now would you?

And while we're on the subject of right and wrong, Ms. Manners, what about the retailer trying to sweep their mistake under the rug instead of manning up and admitting their mistake?

I'm afraid I can't disagree with you there, that is exactly what they should do.

Re:so obvious

[EdIII]

Talk about missing the point.

Nothing wrong about it, and the converse is equally true

Caveat Emptor? Since you want to apply this both ways equally, let me also point out that this only occurs after the transaction has been completed.

Amazon as a seller caught their mistake and they had every right to cancel the transactions before, they shipped the product. Saying they don't is ludicrous and an attempt at immoral behavior. You seem to want them to have to ship the product even after they found their mistake and take it as a "lesson". You may wish that, but don't fool yourself into thinking that is a moral action. It isn't. I am sure there are plenty of people who want to stick it to the man, but two wrongs don't make a right.

Your example of the buyer making a mistake and paying over 10 times the price falls under equal terms. The buyers can also cancel their orders before shipping. Moreover, the buyer has rights to a full refund within 30 days under normal conditions.

For the record, I don't propose or encourage protecting the stupid who buy things at vastly inflated prices. It is their fault for not checking the price. But were not talking about that are we? I thought we were talking about Amazon being able to stop those orders from being fulfilled right?

On to your other question:

what about the retailer trying to sweep their mistake under the rug instead of manning up and admitting their mistake?

If you RTFA, you see that is says:

Amazon secretly canceled orders...
string customers along for over a month after they placed their orders

Hmmmmmmm. As opposed to publicly canceling the order? The whole article is PR job on Amazon, and an amazingly transparent one at that.

Re:so obvious

[Scudsucker]

Why do you think Amazon should swallow thousands of dollars worth of losses over a typo?

Why do you think Amazon should be allowed to pull a bait and switch, even if it's an unintentional one?

Wow, is the idea of screwing the corporations so tempting to you that any shred of morals is lost?

Wow, if you weren't so busy moralizing, you'd have noticed the part where I said if a consumer failed to do a price check before completing a transaction, it's their own damn fault. It's called due diligence.

Re:so obvious

[10101001 10101001]

Product information -including price- is most likely manually entered into their database. Why do you think Amazon should swallow thousands of dollars worth of losses over a typo?

It's funny you say that because such is probably inevitable. Imagine if, instead of pricing the product at $30, they had accidentally priced it at $4990. How many people would have simply thought Amazon was overly priced and either (a) spent their money elsewhere or (b) spent it on another good on the site, requiring Amazon to, once it realizes the mistake, undersell the CD collection (swallowing potentially thousands of dollars) to move inventory? Really, for something so vitally import, there really should be safeguards/procedures to avoid typos because there's more than one way for a typo to result in thousands of dollars worth of losses. Besides, isn't it economics who are so keen to see monetary punishment used as a means to inspire change in the deficits of the market?

Re:so obvious

[Scudsucker]

Talk about missing the point.

No, I didn't, Mr. Pot.

Amazon as a seller caught their mistake and they had every right to cancel the transactions before, they shipped the product. Saying they don't is ludicrous and an attempt at immoral behavior.

Oh, do get off your high horse. It's called due diligence: if you make a mistake in the basic running of your business, it's your own damn fault and no one else's.

Your example of the buyer making a mistake and paying over 10 times the price falls under equal terms. The buyers can also cancel their orders before shipping.

Too bad merchants are held to a higher standard than customers: of course they can cancel before an item is shipped. False advertising laws apply to businesses, not customers.

If you RTFA, you see that is says:

        Amazon secretly canceled orders...
        string customers along for over a month after they placed their orders

Hmmmmmmm. As opposed to publicly canceling the order?

That word doesn't mean what you think it means. Methinks you need to take a break from preaching an read up on the definition of "secretly".

Re:so obvious

[EdIII]

Let me speak a little louder since I am so high up on this horse:

secret (skrt) adj. 1. Kept hidden from knowledge or view; concealed. 2. Dependably discreet. 3. Operating in a hidden or confidential manner: a secret agent. 4. Not expressed; inward: their secret thoughts. 5. Not frequented; secluded: wandered about the secret byways of Paris. 6. Known or shared only by the initiated: secret rites. 7. Beyond ordinary understanding; mysterious. 8. Containing information, the unauthorized disclosure of which poses a grave threat to national security.

Welllll from the definition it would seem that the article applies a connotation to the action that is unfair. Orders between a consumer and a business are not, as a matter of habit, made public. Therefore, they must be secret. The act of making it secret is not nefarious, although the article wants you to believe that it is.

As for "preaching", I cannot deny that characterization as I can be clearly seen as giving moral instruction in a tedious manner.

However, for those that cannot seem to figure out that forcing a corporation to sell you something at an incorrect price based on a malfunction are being immoral, maybe a little instruction is required.

So I will get off my horse when you admit that you just want something for nothing regardless of the pain it inflicts on others. Your behavior is a little petulant and immature. "He SAID IT! He SAID IT! He has to dooo itttt... He has to doooooo ittttttttt nya nya nya nya". "Due Diligence" does not apply to data entry errors, database errors, or other types of malfunctions. Methinks you need to look up the definition for that.

It seems you want a world where verbal contracts and online order submissions are treated with the exact same regard as notarized sales contracts. It isn't, and for good reason. So grow up .

** Thank you for subscribing to the Ms. Manners column. Get a glass of milk and some cookies and STFU :) **

Re:so obvious

[EdIII]

You're hilarious. Slow down and read what you are mashing into the keyboard. Seriously.

Why do you think Amazon should be allowed to pull a bait and switch, even if it's an unintentional one?

Bait and Switch can never be unintentional . It is by it's very nature a premeditated deceptive act to obtain financial gain that could not otherwise be obtained in a open, honest, and arms length transaction. It's not bait and switch. It was just a mistake, and one that you acknowledge was created unintentionally. The fact you want to punish them for it indicates a lack of morality in your thinking patterns. Nobody actually got hurt here. The products were not shipped. The orders were not fulfilled. You want to force the order to occur after they found their mistake and before they shipped the product.

You should create a website that constantly spiders the online retailers to find just these specific situations so you can go Judge Dredd and get medieval on their buttocks. I'll pay for your super hero suit, and I even have some suggestions for its design.

Wow, if you weren't so busy moralizing, you'd have noticed the part where I said if a consumer failed to do a price check before completing a transaction, it's their own damn fault. It's called due diligence.

Aside from your misuse of the Due Diligence concept, you can never be too busy moralizing your own actions. That is called thinking before doing. Sounds good to me. Furthermore, the fact that you state that a consumer can be equally burned does not eliminate the immoral considerations of a consumer purchasing something in a transaction not conducted "on the level".

You cannot apply some math to your actions and add up immoral acts, false logic, ignorance, and some opinions and have it magically come out to a "zero".

Re:so obvious

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

However, for those that cannot seem to figure out that forcing a corporation to sell you something at an incorrect price based on a malfunction are being immoral, maybe a little instruction is required. Do you believe people should take responsibility for the consequences of their actions?
Do you believe the same applies to corporations?

Amazon benefits through cost savings by using an automated system. Turns out the automated system has downsides too, one of which is increased costs when there are errors.

Why should Amazon be allowed to reap the benefits of the system they voluntarily implemented, but not pay the costs?

So grow up . Attacks like that do not make for a particularly persuasive argument.

Re:so obvious

[EdIII]

So grow up .

Attacks like that do not make for a particularly persuasive argument.

Your right, I responded to his vitriolic comments by coming down to his level. I will admit that.

To respond to your other questions, I strongly believe that people should take responsibility for their actions and it absolutely applies to corporations as well. Even when actions are unintentional, you need to take responsibility for that action. You should compensate the other parties for any damages that you caused.

Why should Amazon be allowed to reap the benefits of the system they voluntarily implemented, but not pay the costs?

I think that they are. It creates frustration and resentment in their customers. I just don't think that they should have to sell the product at 1/10th the price. Now if they had billed and shipped the products, then I don't think they should be able to harass the customer into giving the product back.

The real question I propose to you is: Do you think that when systems, even very well designed ones, cause a malfunction like this that can be corrected before any damage is done, that the damage should be allowed to continue to its ultimate end?

Assuming that both parties attempted to conduct this transaction in good faith:

Does Amazon have the ability to correct this mistake? Before shipment? After Shipment? Before billing?

Do you think that an order submission constitutes an enforceable sales contract, meaning that if Amazon accepts an order for a product valued at 1 million dollars but the order listed 1$ as compensation, Amazon must make good on that order at all times?

Re:so obvious

[Sancho]

I've been following this thread for a while, and I think that it's hilarious. I have one (admittedly off-topic, but I don't mind burning a little karma on this one) question for Jah-Wren Ryel: are you pro-life?

I mostly ask because you seem to think that there should be consequences for your actions, and that's one of the hidden tenets of the pro-life movement--it's a bunch of people who think that sex is immoral, and that there should be some consequence to it, so anything which prevents a birth (including birth control and abortion) should be banned.

Re:so obvious

[merreborn]

the converse is equally true: if you buy a cd set from Amazon priced at $400 when another site has it priced at $30, it's your own damn fault for not checking the price.

Actually, amazon's policy is to refund you the difference if the price drops within 30 days of your purchase. So it shouldn't be hard to get a $370 refund in that situation.

Re:so obvious

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Jah-Wren Ryel: are you pro-life? Doesn't matter. A debate is about convincing the other guy, not convincing yourself.

Re:so obvious

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Bait and Switch can never be unintentional.

Since intention is extremeley difficult to prove, that statement is almost worthless.

Re:so obvious

[EdIII]

In the context of how the word unintentional was used, it was being stated as fact by the poster. In other words, for the purpose of discussion, assume that the act was unintentional. I was pointing out that the assumption creates a contradictory statement.

Bait and Switch must have deceit involved in it by its definition in both society, and more pertinently, the law. Deceit is normally a premeditated act (intentional), and is defined as being so by Bait and Switch laws.

Why do you think Amazon should be allowed to pull a bait and switch, even if it's an unintentional one?

The poster was stating in their question, that Bait and Switch can applied to a behavior that was believed to be unintentional by the parties involved. I was pointing out that Bait and Switch and accidental pricing mistakes are mutually exclusive by their respective definitions.

Out of context, that simple statement stands on its own as well. Your opinion about intentions being worthless in a discussion about Bait and Switch, is one that I have a hard time accepting. In a court of law, it must be proven by the claimant that the defendant intended to deceive the consumer. It may be difficult to prove intentions, but it is hardly worthless, even as a statement in a discussion. Moreover, intentions are an integral component to Bait and Switch, and the legal tests for it actually involve them.

If you really feel that way, I must ask you:

If intentions are unprovable, or highly unlikely to be proven, can a corporation be found guilty of Bait and Switch based solely on what is "advertised"?

If so, what do you think the penalties should be for printing mistakes, database errors, data entry errors, or basically any type of accident that has the side effect of presenting misinformation to the consumer?

Re:so obvious

[Bastard of Subhumani]

it must be proven by the claimant that the defendant intended to deceive the consumer.

If intentions are provable, how do you prove them? You'd need a mind reading machine that could travel back in time.

The best you can do is infer them from behaviour, but that's not proof.

Re:so obvious

[EdIII]

Well they use "proof" in a court of law quite often, when "convince" is the term that is probably more appropriate.

Regardless, Bait and Switch must contain intentional deception in a court of law. That might be very hard to prove without a mind reading machine that could travel back in time, but I am reminded of the saying, "Once is happenstance, twice is suspicious, three times is enemy action". I was paraphrasing and maybe did not get it right, but if Amazon does not do this all the time, maybe we should give them the benefit of the doubt that it is not intentional. Or for a court of law, 1 incident out of 1 million sales creates reasonable doubt.

In the end, it is about providing "proof" to the "convince" the judge. You are right, that intentions cannot be proven, but we still seem to do it everyday in court.

However, as it pertains to the discussion, "proof" of intent is not required, since I was asked to assume it as part of hypothetical question.

Let's do the math...

[th3rtythr33]

Even if only $1,064 people ordered this CD Box Set from Amazon, Amazon is still losing out of $500,000 by selling 1,064 copies at a $470 discount. This is a no brainer. Keeping the orders wouldn't be good business no matter how you look at it.

Re:Let's do the math...

[BattleApple]

Even if only $1,064 people ordered this CD Box Set...
And how exactly do you come up with these monetary values you place on humans?

Re:Let's do the math...

[Anonymous Coward]

And how exactly do you come up with these monetary values you place on humans?

One goes by age, musculature, and condition of the teeth and gums as well as paying particular attention to whether or not it appears attentive and if it appears bright or dull. These last two factors are very important as they pertain to docility, receptiveness to training, and what forms of labor you may reasonably expect it to perform.

Due diligence is required, as many previous posters have stated.

Re:Let's do the math...

[Jesus_666]

It's just for sake of comparison. US Americans are 1/3 less worth than Europeans while one Japanese is worth about 0.01 US American. At least if the humanitarian organisation ECB is to be trusted.

Re:Let's do the math...

[Landshark17]

I had a biology text book once that tried to determine the value of one human. The estimate was based on breaking down an average human body into its elemental composition and finding the market price of the elements present.

It was about $108, plus change.

Re:I don't see anything out of the ordinary here..

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

They don't always notify the buyer -- which I think is a customer service issue where people fall through the cracks -- and they only rarely offer a make-nice like a gift certificate. It's worse than that. Nowadays they correct the price on their website, ship the product out, and then they submit fraudulent charges using the credit card info they have on file in order to "make up the difference."

I was not a victim of the deliberate fraud reported in the linked, and subsequent threads, but after seeing many reports by others on that forum, I filled my amazon account with garbage information and have not made a purchase there for over a year.

Here's your external confirmation

[MillionthMonkey]

Please note first of all that I am not the submitter of this article- I just saw it now. But something like this happened to me a few months ago with an order that I placed on Amazon. I did get an email within a few days alerting me of the cancellation although my attempt to get further information was unsuccessful.

Where's the screenshot of the item being offered for $31? Where's the printout of the placed order?

Since I am not in the habit of taking product page screenshots whenever I order things from Amazon, I can't provide a screenshot of the item being offered at the price I saw when I ordered it. However I can give you screenshots of my email exchanges with Amazon:

The original order confirmation dated November 29.
The cancellation email that arrived two days later. I sent them an email in an attempt to follow up on this, which probably went in the bit bucket.
The order history for my account. Notice that no trace of the canceled order remains in my account history. I bought my mother a sweater in October, and myself an LCD monitor in January, and nothing appears in between. I don't really know whether cancellations are actually retained in one's account history, and I'm not inclined to order something and cancel it just to find out, but it struck me as a little weird.

You are aware that companies don't have to honor prices that are obvious misprints, right? (And that a 75-CD limited edition import CD set being sold for $31 is an obivous misprint, right?)

I don't know for sure whether the article submitter is in the United States or not, or if this was a U.S. based transaction at all, and I am not a lawyer. But I did consult one in a nonofficial capacity who told me that regardless of misprints, in the United States what Amazon did in my case was a violation of federal law. I didn't pursue the matter since the price really was a steal and I'd be too embarrassed to make a fuss about it.

Man, next time I have a beef with some company, remind me to completely make some shit up about them and post it as an article here on Slashdot. I'm usually not one to gripe about the job the editorial staff does here, but you guys really drop the ball in a major way on this one. Whether you like Amazon.com or not, with nothing to back it up, this borders on outright libel.

Say what you want about the correctness of Amazon's cancellation policy, but I see no reason to doubt this story.

Re:Here's your external confirmation

[eat here_get gas]

RE:
"...But I did consult one in a nonofficial capacity who told me that regardless of misprints, in the United States what Amazon did in my case was a violation of federal law...."

I call complete bullshit!....no one is forced under law (whether local, State, or Federal) to honor typo's.
slow news day?

So it's redundant for 99.9999999% of slashdot

[Joce640k]

You must be new here.

Re:So it's redundant for 99.9999999% of slashdot

[Broken scope]

Well flame bait and overrated could apply as well.

Same happened with Dell : core2duo for 70 EUR

[Anonymous Coward]

A similar story happened for me with Dell. They have a quad-core system named Vostro 400 which was priced 570 EUR. You could downgrade the CPU to a core2duo 3 Ghz (-300 EUR) and cancel premium support . The end price for a core2duo 3 Ghz system with 2 GB ram and 2x320GB sata became 70 EUR ex-vat.

We were able to order 2, some of my colleagues 10's. Soon after I placed my order those 2 options were removed. Then we found that their vostro system with a 22' display (+200 EUR) had the same reduction options. It took them another day to figure that out too.

Once they confirm my order, that means that any of their misprice checking should have already been done (that took about a workday). So in the end, we got 2 core2duo's for 350 incl shipping and the UPS tracking number is already in my mailbox, no way top go back for them.

Demand perfection only if YOU are perfect

[rudy_wayne]

"A customer who called to complain and request the CD set at the $31 price"

is an asshole.

Are you perfect? Have you ever made a mistake? Don't get me wrong -- I don't particularly like Amazon and I think that secretly cancelling orders is a really shitty way of doing business. Their overall lacking of honesty is why I rarely do business with them.

But demanding that someone sell you an item at a price that is obviously a mistake, is just being a jerk.

Re:Demand perfection only if YOU are perfect

[IHC Navistar]

Truly awesome sig!

Re:Demand perfection only if YOU are perfect

[richardkelleher]

Why single out Senator Clinton. This is a common practice in Washington (and every state capital I might add). To carry this concept a little further, since most of the legislators are male and most lobbyists are also male, that would make the male legislators homosexual hookers (on a percentage basis), thus, in the minds of the people who seem to hate Hillary most, they would be more sinful than Hillary.

Re:Demand perfection only if YOU are perfect

[IHC Navistar]

Yes, almost every politician takes money from lobbyists, but I never thoughr that I would hear a Presidential candidate openly defend their own selfish and corrupt practice of taking money from lobbyists.

Hillary openly said that she would not stop taking money from lobbyists becaue "lobbyists represent the American people". I have never heard a politician openly say such a thing, let alone publicly.

Everyone knows that lobyists DO NOT represent the American public, they only represent people with enough money to buy a politician. The people the lobbyists get their money from represent a fraction of Americans, thus, they do not represent Americans.

The fact they do not represent Americans is why the American public is so fed up with them. That is why lobbyist influence has become such a big issue in the Presidentia lelection- We are sick and tired of greedy special interests buying our politicians and running our lives the way they think we should live them.

here is a link to prove it was $31

[Anonymous Coward]

http://slickdeals.net/?permadeal=11577#direct_deal_11577

Why should they notify you?!

[Anonymous Coward]

You just admitted that you were actively trying to rip them off, so why should they notify you? There is a rule that Amazon is following here, its the "Golden Rule" you try to steal from them and they give you bad service. They are probably better off losing customers who seek out mispricings to exploit, than to provide better service to people like you.

That is more than a caveat!

[sigzero]

"A caveat: there is no external confirmation that Amazon did what is claimed here."

If you can't verify something like this then don't post the crap.

No way were access points $20 in 2002

[dj42]

"I would believe a $20 access point or router even in 2002 as they often were that cheap." Go ahead, bring up a Google cache on this and I'll eat my words. There is NO WAY that legit access points or routers were running $20 in 2002. That is completely ridiculous and outright fabrication.

Re:No way were access points $20 in 2002

[zakezuke]

"There is NO WAY that legit access points or routers were running $20 in 2002. That is completely ridiculous and outright fabrication."

It would be hard to do as bigbox stores mostly used paper adverts at the time. But think about it

Circa 1999/2000 cheap SoHo routers started to hit the market. Cable & DSL were more sluggish to roll out than expected.
2002 time enough for older models to have been replaced by newer ones, and for some companies like Motorola to discontinue their product.
An AP sale would result in sale of at least one wifi card. Big box stores offered cat5 cables with super duper markups.

I would often see routers and APs onsale for $20 to $50, though $20 was usually with the stacked set of rebates. When ever I needed one ASAP the best I could find was $50, but that's just poor luck.

Re:No way were access points $20 in 2002

[Anonymous Coward]

OF course, you're talking about a POS AP that needed stacked rebates? hardly market price.

Re:No way were access points $20 in 2002

[zakezuke]

OF course, you're talking about a POS AP that needed stacked rebates? hardly market price. No one said it was MSRP... or the latest and greatest.

When was the last time you bought hardware at market price? Websurf and sunday papers.

Re:I don't see anything out of the ordinary here..

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to be on a board that tracked amazon pricing errors -- picked up quite a few items for next to nothing that way.

You sound like an asshole. Sitting around waiting for someone to make a mistake so you can profit at their expense. Worse than that, working together with a larger group to further exploit the mistakes.

It's not that simple

[HangingChad]

So you may have been inconvenienced, but a 20$ discount demonstrates some pretty respectable behavior from Amazon.

Okay, let's apply your thinking elsewhere. Like some of those sleazy online camera stores, advertising very attractive camera prices. They start accepting orders for new cameras, wait a week or two, then start calling customers back and saying they made a mistake and offering them a different model for slightly more. The dealer calls it an honest mistake...one they repeat regularly.

The only way companies will exercise reasonable care in advertising is if they're held accountable for what they advertise. Cell phone, cable companies, airlines, rental car companies, the camera stores mentioned above and hotels are getting to the point their advertised prices are fantasy. Where's the accountability?

What we definitely don't need now is a corporate apologists blaming the victim. As companies continually cut staff, we get stuck with the sloppy service, help desk language barriers, gotcaha capitalism and sloppy advertising mistakes made by overworked people. I'm tired of it. And I'm really fed up with the enabling attitude that scoffs at consumers for expecting companies to own up to their mistakes.

Re:It's not that simple

[EdIII]

Let me respond, but before that let me be clear about what I believe Amazon did FTA:

1) Amazon offered a product for sale at a price less then 1/10th of the "real" price. 2) Amazon took orders from customers. These orders constituted an offer to purchase at the stated price, IMO. 3) Amazon did not fulfill, or ship the products. 4) Amazon did not communicate anything to the customers. 5) Amazon canceled the orders.

Okay, let's apply your thinking elsewhere. Like some of those sleazy online camera stores, advertising very attractive camera prices. They start accepting orders for new cameras, wait a week or two, then start calling customers back and saying they made a mistake and offering them a different model for slightly more. The dealer calls it an honest mistake...one they repeat regularly.

You are talking about behaviors that are clearly covered under Bait and Switch laws. My thinking does not apply to them, nor did I claim it to be so. I do not believe that Amazon pulled a Bait and Switch game here.

The only way companies will exercise reasonable care in advertising is if they're held accountable for what they advertise. Cell phone, cable companies, airlines, rental car companies, the camera stores mentioned above and hotels are getting to the point their advertised prices are fantasy. Where's the accountability?

Amazon does not advertise their products. Unless this specific item appears in banner pages on other websites, it is not an advertisement. It is merely an advanced interactive product listing. I wholeheartedly believe that companies need to exercise reasonable care in advertising and be held accountable for those advertisements. I just don't think that a product listing page on a website constitutes advertisement in the traditional sense. What is reasonable care? No system can be perfect, and unless you can demonstrate that this is a pervasive problem within Amazon's systems I would propose they are taking "reasonable care" in the design, implementation, and review of their information systems. I am a database designer, so I can tell you that no system is perfect, but I certainly work very hard to reduce or outright eliminate errors like this.

What we definitely don't need now is a corporate apologists blaming the victim

I actually take offense to that, since it seems to be directed towards me. I am very pro-consumer, and I am as certainly fed up with the amount of bull in this country. Stepping back from the situation and evaluating it logically, rationally, and impartially, is not the actions of an apologist.

I am stating that there is a distinction between this specific act and the general behavior of bait and switch companies. You can read my other post where I cite Bait and Switch guidelines from the FCC and use them on the aforementioned actions of Amazon. I also stated certain moral implications of the behaviors being performed FTA, and the overall tone of the article being a poor PR job on Amazon. If we are going to demonize Amazon for something, let's pick a better example with clearer evidence.

blaming the victim

Victims? Who? Where?

If any of those customers honestly thought a boxed CD set of Jazz with what looks like to be 30-40 cds was really 30$, then they were inconvenienced and had their time wasted. They are certainly not victims for that alone. Amazon did not offer them more products, different terms, or prolong any more pain. They simply canceled the transactions. They way they did left MUCH to be desired. I DO NOT blame these people.

For those customers that knew the product was being offered at the incorrect price and ordered it anyways, I stated that they are being immoral doing so. I do blame them. I will continue to blame them. They tried taking advantage of Amazon, and do not deserve a "pass" sim

Happens Every Week

[I'll Provide The War]

Seriously. Visit SlickDeals or FatWallet and you will see that there is a thread for every single pricing mistake, followed shortly by posters bragging about ordering the maximum amount of product allowed. 99% of the time the orders are canceled.

Bah...

[joto]

So because someone at amazon screwed up and put the wrong prize on some items, amazon should lose lots of money? No, you don't get to buy a car for $100 if the dealer forgot to put three zeros behind the price-tag either. In some cases it might be beneficial for the dealer to let the deals go through, to avoid bad feelings, and so on. But in this case, no reasonable person would insist that amazon needs to take the loss. The only bad thing amazon did, was to not inform their customers of the cancellation of their order, but then again, this is based on heresay, not verifiable fact. I couldn't really give a shit! Besides, nobody is flawless, the only people who are surprised by this are the people who prefer to stick to their compilers instead of interacting with real humans.

Walmart

[Bazards]

Walmart fixes their price mistakes this way too. It took several phone calls and emails to Walmart to get them to tell me the order was canceled due to a pricing mistake. They kept trying to tell me that I had canceled it.

Thank you!

[KingSkippus]

Thanks, and I'm not saying that facetiously. That's exactly the kind of due diligence that I expect someone to do before this thing hits the front page. If the submitter wouldn't, then the editors should have, or if they're too busy to do that level of double-checking, the article should have been rejected for lack of substance.

I don't expect Slashdot to be a fully-outfitted news outfit with multiple sources and all, but I do hold them to a standard a little higher than publishing "guess what happened to me" stories.

I'd still like to know who these people are that are complaining and where they complained, but again, thanks for at leave providing some evidence that the whole thing isn't just fabricated out of thin air.

Nothing to See Here

[Ferretman]

This is a non-story. All of the online retailers have something similar and (frankly) so do the brick-and-mortar stores.

Doctrine of Mistake.

[Anonymous Coward]

In general terms, you're right. See Restatement of Contracts 2d, Section 153.

Section 153. When Mistake of One Party Makes a Contract Voidable.

Where a mistake of one party at the time a contract was made as to a basic assumption on which he made the contract has a material affect on the agreed exchange of performances that is adverse to him, the contract is voidable by him if he does not bear the risk of the mistake under the rule stated in Section 154, and

(a) the effect of the mistake is such that enforcement of the contract would be unconscionable, or

(b) the other party had reason to know of the mistake or his fault caused the mistake.

***[Section 154 assigns the risk to the mistaken party under limited circumstances: if the agreement so says,; if he is aware that his "limited knowledge" may cause such a mistake; or if a court determines that such assignment is reasonable. None likely applies to Amazon, here.]***

See also, Illustration 1 to Section 153:

In response to B's invitation for bids on the construction of a building according to stated specifications, A submits an offer to do the work for $150,000. A believes that this is the total of a column of figures, but he had made an error by inadvertently omitting a $50,000 item, and in fact the total is $200,000. B, having no reason to know of A's mistake [emphasis added] accepts A's bid. If A performs for $150,000, he will sustain a loss of $20,000 instead of making an expected profit of $30,000. If the court determines that enforcement of the contract would be unconscionable, it is voidable by A.

And in this case, the consumer did have reason to know of A's mistake. (A 75-disc import for $30? Puh-lease...) I'm not a lawyer, so interpret for yourself: But I don't think it takes more than a teaspoon of common sense to recognize that no judge is going to find in favor of some slippery shmuck who tried to take advantage of an obvious mislabel to the tune of $470.

Thats the f****** problem with amazon

[tacokill]

You can't tell merchant items from Amazon-only items. I mean, they are spelled out clearly who is who --- but there is NO way you can search and say "show me Amazon.com items only, no merchants".

Since I learned this lesson the hard way*, I have quit shopping at Amazon. I will do so until they give me a way to separate the two.

* the hard way: I bought a whole bunch of items and had them drop shipped to a local charity. Not realizing I had a mixup of Amazon + merchant items, I had no less than 16 credit card charges for one single order. You see, each merchant bills you independently so if you have multiple items from multiple merchants -- you get multiple charges. I would think that part of any affiliate program/merchant program would be streamlining the money handling so there would be 1 charge / 1 order. Do they really think customers want a separate charge for each and every item in their cart? That's the whole point of a cart -- to bundle lots of items into one single, solitary, transaction. Anyone who has had a mix-mash of Amazon items + merchant items on their order knows what I am talking about.

Re:Thats the f****** problem with amazon

[cbart387]

I have not mass ordered from amazon so I never encountered that. Have you ever submitted a request to amazon to differentiate between the two? Those kind of things amazon may not think about, unless they get feedback from customers.

Re:Thats the f****** problem with amazon

[JamesTheBoilermaker]

In the "Availability" part of the product listing, it will say "Ships from and sold by Amazon.com." if it is from Amazon. On a search page, most Amazon items will say that they are eligible for Super Saver Shipping (or Prime if you have that).

Re:Thats the f****** problem with amazon

[corsec67]

You can do that, but then when you are on the product page the big "add to shopping cart" doesn't necessarily mean "ship this from Amamzon", but could be from a merchant.

Re:Thats the f****** problem with amazon

[STrinity]

You can't tell merchant items from Amazon-only items.

In the immortal words of John McLaughlin -- WRONG! In 90% of the cases you can only buy from a third-party by clicking the "Buy new or used" button, which takes you to a page that lists each merchant offering the item. In the other 10% of the cases, there's a clear notice on the page saying, "Sold by Bed Bath & Beyond" or whatever the real retailer is.

Re:Thats the f****** problem with amazon

[merreborn]

merchant items, I had no less than 16 credit card charges for one single order. You see, each merchant bills you independently so if you have multiple items from multiple merchants -- you get multiple charges

I'm not sure about your situation, but I can assure you amazon is the only entity that bills you. I worked for a major amazon marketplace seller for years. Amazon never gave us a single credit card number -- they handle all the billing, and direct-deposited the funds they received into our bank account periodically.

There was a time when amazon did give sellers CC info for some types of transactions, but AFAIK, that hasn't been the case for over 4 years. Now everything takes place via "amazon payments" -- where amazons handles the billing, and passes the funds to the seller.

So, if this was a recent event, it's amazon's fault. If it was more than a few years ago, it may have been a 3rd party merchant's fault, but that sort of scenario doesn't happen any more.

Re:Thats the f****** problem with amazon

[tacokill]

I'm not sure about your situation, but I can assure you amazon is the only entity that bills you.

Correct. In my case, it was 16 charges from Amazon.com. I couldn't even tell which charge went with what merchant and what product.

That's the whole problem.

Some places will honor such errors...

[Bones3D_mac]

But be prepared for sub-par goods in exchange for your ill-gotten gains. (Especially you megadouches out there who routinely order 10 or more such mispriced items hoping to scalp them onto some other jerk as a huge profit... you know who you are.)

That's right... places like amazon plan for exactly this kind of scenario long before you ever see a new price on anything... and the trade for a discount coupon option is probably the preferred option on both ends. However, many places will honor such mistakes by sending out the damaged or dented inventory to those who buy at such obviously ridiculous prices hoping to defraud the "man".

Typically the quality is so bad that only about 50% of the total damaged goods can be reassembled into something resembling a like-new product... at least by enough to resell the working units at a price high enough to break even.

And beware to those who stupidly reject such a gracious offer by trying to RMA it. After you send it back, you might get an option for refund at the sale price or a store credit toward a future purchase, but you'll never see a true replacement for the items you tried to bilk out of them.

But good luck trying though...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Hold up

[Travoltus]

Then they should take as a lesson and improve their site.

Product information -including price- is most likely manually entered into their database. Why do you think Amazon should swallow thousands of dollars worth of losses over a typo?

No, THEY MADE A MISTAKE. Nothing wrong about it, and the converse is equally true: if you buy a cd set from Amazon priced at $400 when another site has it priced at $30, it's your own damn fault for not checking the price.

Wow, is the idea of screwing the corporations so tempting to you that any shred of morals is lost? I don't think you would be saying what you are saying if any of this involved your money now would you?

So basically you're saying people should not be held responsible for their mistakes.

Hey, according to you, I can price anything the way I want, and if I decide the price is too low today, cancel the order! Now that's morality, at least on planet Firias Zirie.

Re:Hold up

[Dhalka226]

Hey, according to you, I can price anything the way I want, and if I decide the price is too low today, cancel the order!

And that would be a mistake... how? Amazon didn't think the item was worth $30 and price it accordingly, then cancel the order when they found out it was actually worth ten times that. It was extremely clear via the MSRP what it was considered to be worth, and it somehow was entered incorrectly.

Your example is exactly what the Amazon customers tried to do: Screw somebody over when they should have known better.

Was a pretty cool jump in logic you had there, though. Complete with misplaced smug smartassness!

So basically you're saying people should not be held responsible for their mistakes.

People should be held responsible for their mistakes when it is appropriate to do so. For the record, even if this somehow WERE one of those appropriate times (and unless whoever entered the information has a history of fucking it up, it isn't,) taking advantage of a mistake is not holding them responsible for it. It's simply being an ass.

If I'm a cashier and give you too much back at the register, and you notice it and say nothing, you're not making me responsible for my mistake; you're stealing, plain and simple. It's not even the customers' place to hold the cashier (or Amazon) responsible. That's what managers and executives and HR departments are for.

If you want to hold Amazon responsible for handling it poorly, go right ahead and stick it to them: Don't shop there anymore. Done deal, and has the added bonus of being the mature, honest and appropriate way to handle things as opposed to trying to rip them off.

Re:Hold up

[Anonymous Coward]

If I'm a cashier and give you too much back at the register, and you notice it and say nothing, you're not making me responsible for my mistake; you're stealing, plain and simple. Hmmm, ya got a point there. That's why cops arrest people for walking away with that extra change. Oh, no wait. They don't. Because it ain't stealing. You're an idiot.

Re:Hold up

[Hognoxious]

Amazon didn't think the item was worth $30 and price it accordingly, then cancel the order when they found out it was actually worth ten times that. It was extremely clear via the MSRP

There's no kind of check that compares the two? It's not exactly uncommon for there to be some kind of margin control, requiring supervisor approval if the profit is less than x%.

Re:It's just kdawson

[Anonymous Coward]

kdawson should be taken out back behind the shed and beaten to death.

As in Germany, so in the UK

[igb]

In the UK, a price displayed on an object is an ``offer to treat'', and the vendor has no obligation to sell at that price. There are some exceptions: for example, you can't refuse to sell on the grounds of race, following some ``I won't sell my house to an [epithet]'' cases in the seventies. And there are rules about false advertising which apply, but for which the outcome is _not_ that you get to buy the goods at the advertised price. But in general, if you realise before the point of sale that the pricing is wrong, you don't have to sell. After the sale and you're out of luck, of course. Now I once bought a £600 CD player for £400 pounds, owing to the small hi-fi shop completely cocking up their inventory, and they phoned me in the evening about it. Once we'd put a small amount of bluster on their side down --- no, sorry, you cannot just ``charge it to my credit card'' and if you try I'll see you in court and win, and how do you fancy running a hi-fi shop with no merchant agreement? --- I had a perfectly amiable conversation with the manager who essentially split the difference with me. I liked the people and didn't want to see the young kid who'd made the mistake pilloried or sacked, and I wanted to be able to shop there again. So I had the £400 player I'd been looking at as well delivered to the house with some CDs, some decent cable and a voucher for a set-up job on my Thorens 160 (this was a long time ago). They realised that I held all the cards, I couldn't be bothered to make enemies, and we parted as best of friends. ian

A pretty average one, actually...

[ChePibe]

The buying and selling of goods in a commercial sense falls under contract law, generally governed by the version of the Uniform Commercial Code or however it has been adapted in the state in question. Law students don't spend a great deal of time learning specific law, but generally applicable concepts.

Further, no contract was even formed here. A contract requires an offer, followed by acceptance. In this case, we have an offer (by the consumer) followed by rejection (by Amazon)

Advertisements, such as those that Amazon has put out, are not offers. They cannot be - they suffer from a problem of over subscription - far more people will or can see the ad than Amazon has products to offer others. If, however, the advertisement requires a certain behavior from the consumer (be first in line, whatever), then there could be an argument that the advertiser has made an actual offer. Until then, an ad is just an invitation to deal.

When a consumer orders the product from Amazon, he essentially makes an offer to purchase that product at that price. Amazon then may reject the offer, make a counteroffer, or accept the offer. In this case, Amazon rejected, having realized that their $5.00/hour clerk made a mistake that could have cost them tens of thousands of dollars. It was a good decision and a perfectly legal decision.

Under your idea of the law, if you put an ad up on Craigslist for your house and forget a zero or two, you could be out of hundreds of thousands of dollars because, by golly, that was the price on the item!

Now, as to these laws, please find the applicable one and, while you're at it, describe your own legal training and what you believe gives you the ability to judge others' understanding of the law.

Re:A pretty average one, actually...

[SuiteSisterMary]

Put in simpler language, an advertisement isn't an offer to sell; it's a statement of an opening negotiating position. With, in Western common usage, an implicit understanding that any actual negotiating will be rejected.

In other words, if I'm advertising selling a car at $10,000, I have in no way, shape, or form actually *agreed* to sell the car. If this was the case, you could never upsell, never offer a discount, an incentive, options, add-ons, or anything of the like.

But...

[ChePibe]

Acceptance must be both clear and unequivocal. An e-mail acknowledging an order received is not an acceptance under any common law concept that I know of. Acceptance generally occurs through performance, i.e. shipping the item at the price paid for.

American law is pretty nice to consumers, don't get me wrong, but it also tries to avoid massive windfalls wherever possible. Here, a windfall of nearly 12x the value paid for is quite rightfully avoided.

Should Amazon have actually notified its customers? From the viewpoint of a businessman, yes - that would have been nice. But it's not required.

Being reasonable

[TheLink]

If it was indeed an honest mistake, I would hope if it goes to court the courts would rule in Amazon's favour - that it was unreasonable for Amazon to be forced to sell the stuff at $31.

_AND_ that the courts would also similarly find other unreasonable stuff unreasonable.

Such as in being fined lots of $$$$ just because you were copying music tracks from your CD to your computer.

Or being forced to comply to unreasonable terms in an EULA that you clicked through - everyone clicks through it.

Or teens being put on a sex offender list, just because they decided to send nude pics of themselves to each other, or erm engage in mutual consenting "child molestation" e.g. kiss each other[1].

For that matter I think even having a sex offender list is unreasonable - if it was why not have a violent criminal list then?

There are laws and all that. But as every programmer knows, there are always bugs and corner cases.

In summary, I hope that the courts and judges would have the integrity and sense to enforce and encourage _reasonable_ behaviour.

e.g. Court says: "by law Amazon should have sold you the stuff for $31, ok so we shall fine them $1", "if you keep coming here with stuff like this the court will find you to be behaving like an unreasonable asshole[2] and try to stop you...".

[1] I am not saying that teens should be doing all that, but the laws and punishments in some places are rather unreasonable.

[2] The court should probably tolerate people behaving like reasonable assholes, though not encourage such behaviour.

Google Cache Proves $31 price

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if anyone else has pointed this out, but if one were to do a google search for 'Jazz in Paris [BOX SET] [IMPORT] [LIMITED EDITION]'(The name of the item on amazon). The first thing that pops up will be the amazons page, follow the cache link and cached on February 7th with be your jazz set at the price of $30.98

Or follow the link here
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Jazz+in+Paris+%5BBOX+SET%5D+%5BIMPORT%5D+%5BLIMITED+EDITION%5D+&btnG=Google+Search

Cancellation email

[Ecuador]

Oh, and in case there is doubt about the cancellation email, this is what I got:

Greetings from Amazon.com.

We regret to inform you that an error caused the following item(s) to
be displayed at an incorrect price:

Jazz in Paris

In accordance with our posted policies on pricing, we are unable to
offer this item for the incorrectly posted price. Therefore, we have
cancelled your order for this item.

At any given time, despite our best efforts, a small number of the
millions of items on our site may be mispriced. We do, however, verify
prices as part of our shipping procedures. If we discover that an
item's correct price is higher than our stated price, we will, at our
discretion, either contact you for instructions before shipping or
cancel your order and notify you of such cancellation. This policy is
posted in the Help section and is accessible through numerous other
areas of our web site.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

We value your business and hope that you will give us a chance to
serve you again in the future.

Sincerely,

Customer Service Department
Amazon.com

Please note: this e-mail was sent from a notification-only address
that cannot accept incoming e-mail. Please do not reply to this
message.

Re:I don't see anything out of the ordinary here..

[STrinity]

It's worse than that. Nowadays they correct the price on their website, ship the product out, and then they submit fraudulent charges using the credit card info they have on file in order to "make up the difference."

In the case you're citing, there was never an error with the prices listed on Amazon. They advertised a buy-one-get-one-free sale, but a glitch in the system caused the cheaper price to be deducted twice -- which meant that if someone bought two items of the same price, they were both free. The advertised price was right -- the price at checkout was wrong. The "fraudulent charges" weren't based on Amazon changing prices -- it was Amazon charging the price they had actually advertised.

Everyone in that thread knew they were taking advantage of a mistake. There's one guy in that thread who ordered every item in the sale -- over a thousand dollars worth of DVDs -- paired in such a way that it was all free. I don't think he even had to pay shipping. Yes, Amazon screwed up by not canceling the orders when they corrected the glitch, but apart from the first person to notice the problem, everyone on that thread knew they were taking advantage of a programming error. As such, I have a hard time feeling sorry for them.

It's still available

[jdc180]

If you want confirmation yourself, order it through target and wait. http://www.target.com/dp/B00005RSB2/sr=1-4/qid=1202528379/ref=sr_1_4/601-6766354-3567303?ie=UTF8&index=target&rh=k%3AJazz%20in%20Paris%20&page=1

As in GRM, as in the USA

[Khyber]

Most online transactions (at least when done with a debit card) show up almost immediately on my online statements here in the USA.

Re:As in GRM, as in the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Most online transactions (at least when done with a debit card) show up almost immediately on my online statements here in the USA.

Which on the OPs analysis would constitute an acceptance by vendor of the contract ... What was your point exactly?

Price Confirmation

[Anonymous Coward]

This website confirms the low price.

What they say, even in print, means nothing.

[mark-t]

Futureshop, a major electronics outlet in Canada, similar in many ways to Best Buy (actually owned by Best Buy now), used to have an utterly awesome price match guarantee, which was that "If you find a lower advertised price ... [Futureshop] will beat it by 110% of the difference". Now imagine my surprise when I saw a laser printer selling at Futureshop one day for about $450 and the exact same model of printer selling at Staples JUST ACROSS THE STREET currently on sale for $350. It was not advertised as a clearance or limited time offer, which would have disqualified it from Futureshop's price match policy, so I immediately noticed that 110% of the difference would be $110, and if they said they'd beat the competitor's price by that much, so that should mean I ought to be able to buy that printer for just $240! Expecting some difficulties with this, I rushed home, visited Staple's website and print out the web page that shows the laser printer on sale for that amount. I then printed up a hard copy of their price guarantee policy, which said quite clearly what I knew about their policy. I also printed up the web page on futureshop's site that showed the item for $450, as it was in the store.

I then rushed over to futureshop, and presented what I had to them. After being passed along twice to a person with more seniority, I was finally dealing with the store manager, who I figured would be the only one able to authorize this sort of thing anyways.

After a brief discussion about their price match policies and proving that not only was this an advertised item, but that Staples even had the item in stock at the time (I made them place the call to Staples to check), they still did not want to sell it to me for $240, instead offering to only match the competitor's price. No amount of pointing out how they should honor their written policies would convince the manager to do otherwise. I said I'd rather buy from a store that honored what they said they would do and walked out. Later that day, I saw the printer marked down to $350 at Futureshop, and a few weeks later their price match policy on their website had been changed to say they would beat the competitor's price by 10% of the difference.

Verification?

[RhetoricalWasteland]

I found the jazz set on Slickdeals and ordered it for $30.98. A day or two later, Amazon sent me an email informing me my order had been cancelled (see below). While I think it's lousy of Amazon to do this, at least they notified me. Interestingly, I've had this happen three times in the last week with things I found on Slickdeals: Once by Dell, once by Best Buy and once by Amazon. All three were claimed to be "pricing errors." It seems like one of those cases where the company is relying on the fact that people are just going to accept the cancellation and walk away rather than fight it.

Greetings from Amazon.com. We regret to inform you that an error caused the following item(s) to be displayed at an incorrect price: Jazz in Paris In accordance with our posted policies on pricing, we are unable to offer this item for the incorrectly posted price. Therefore, we have cancelled your order for this item. At any given time, despite our best efforts, a small number of the millions of items on our site may be mispriced. We do, however, verify prices as part of our shipping procedures. If we discover that an item's correct price is higher than our stated price, we will, at our discretion, either contact you for instructions before shipping or cancel your order and notify you of such cancellation. This policy is posted in the Help section and is accessible through numerous other areas of our web site. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. We value your business and hope that you will give us a chance to serve you again in the future. Sincerely, Customer Service Department Amazon.com Please note: this e-mail was sent from a notification-only address that cannot accept incoming e-mail. Please do not reply to this message.

Wrong! The contract suffered from "clear error"

[sirwired]

Another element of a contract it the "meeting of the minds". Where one party clearly makes an unreasonable pricing mistake, contract law allows the contract to be repudiated. For this same reason, if you bid 10x too much on eBay for a easily priced item, eBay will allow you to withdraw your bid with no repercussions.

In this case, the advertised price was far lower than the item sold for elsewhere... so much so, that it was clearly not just some kind of special promotion.

Amazon clearly did not mean to charge so little, so they quite properly have cancelled the orders. Certainly charging the correct amount without authorization would be improper, but in this case, no harm, no foul.

SirWired

you are right

[tacokill]

you are right -- it's on the product page.

Now tell me, how you return search results where Amazon is the seller and not their merchants? You can go through each and every page, looking, if you want to. But I like searching.

There is no way to separate the two in searching. That is my complaint. Therefore, it makes it more difficult to shop at Amazon if one wants to purchase only from Amazon (and not their merchants).

Re:you are right

[smellotron]

There is no way to separate the two [Amazon vs. third party merchant] in searching. That is my complaint. Therefore, it makes it more difficult to shop at Amazon if one wants to purchase only from Amazon (and not their merchants).

While I agree it may be an inconvenience to not have that option, it is likely an intentional omission. I expect many merchants would be far less likely to use Amazon's functionality if they knew that they could be made effectively invisible to their potential customer base with a single checkbox.

It doesn't sound like a great deal to complain about... it's like complaining "Why doesn't Google let me omit websites designed for IE only when I search?" Technical issues aside, the user's situation is the same. When you're presented with a list of search results, you always need to comb through the results and manually evaluate which results are best, because a search algorithm will never take all of your personal criteria (i.e. "no Amazon marketplace merchants") into account.

yes, its in the listing

[tacokill]

Yes, if you open the product page, you can see who sells what and it's somewhat clear that it's an Amazon item or merchant item (although it is easy to miss, which I did).

But the search results and products displayed do not differentiate. Of course, you can go through each result and find out but who would do that? I'd rather search and say "show me Amazon.com items only". I understand that Amazon has to do business how they want -- but if I don't want to buy from their merchants, they should still let me do business with "just Amazon".

And you can't, currently, do that.

DO THIS EXAMPLE

[tacokill]

To all the doubters, try this example:

Tell me all the oscillating fans Amazon sells. I just want to see what Amazon itself sells. Not it's merchants or affiliates.

If you do it like me, you enter "oscillating fan" into search and go from the results.
But the results include Amazon + merchants. You can't filter down to "Amazon only".

That is the problem.

Re:DO THIS EXAMPLE

[truesaer]

I agree that's annoying (mainly because it makes it hard to find amazon specific items to avoid additional shipping charges). But it doesn't obligate you to then buy them from a merchant and it is quite obvious when you have viewed an item not sold direct from amazon.

Re:DO THIS EXAMPLE

[tacokill]

Annoying? Yes. That is putting it lightly. It's Annoying enough for me to take my business elsewhere.

Again, this is an Amazon problem....not mine. I just do business elsewhere until they give me a way to shop the way *I* the customer, wants to shop. Seems like that would be important to them.

Clearly a pebcak issue here...

[denzacar]

Correct. In my case, it was 16 charges from Amazon.com. I couldn't even tell which charge went with what merchant and what product. And therein lies the problem.

YOU couldn't tell what went where.
And that is because YOU were not paying attention.
And that is why YOU got 16 charges to your card.

See where I am going here?

Once you place the item in the cart, it appears on the right side of the screen in the area conveniently labeled - YOUR SHOPPING CART.
Under each item that is NOT shipped directly from Amazon, there is a line at the bottom saying "Shipped from:".
Also, that same line is still there when you click to check the contents of your cart.

Lets Proceed to Checkout shall we?
Log in, pick delivery address, go to shipping and again... there is that same info.
Only now it says "Sold by: ". And, it also clearly states which items in your order are "Sold by: Amazon.com"
AAAND... items shipped from different sellers are clearly separated into different orders. Separate shipping details MIGHT be a clue here.

And once paying for items is done, we get to the final Place Your Order screen and once again there it is.
Separate shipping details for Amazon and merchant bought items, each item with its own "Sold by:" mark and on top of all that (literally) there is that "Your order contains items from multiple sellers. Please review all options below." in nice bold letters.

AAAAAAAND... Once you place you order, you get that nice e-mail from Amazon with each order clearly marked out and with details who sold and shipped it to you.
And how about those e-mails from Amazon.com payments for each item bought from merchants?

Amazon told you again and again that you are about to make multiple purchases from various merchants and not from amazon directly.
You were clearly not paying attention.

You're funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny in a good way, though. I find it highly amusing that you go to such lengths to rebut this article (and I agree with your position). Absolutely nobody with an IQ over 60 really believes this was a bait and switch or that $30 is anything but an absurd price.

Re:I don't see anything out of the ordinary here..

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Yes, Amazon screwed up by not canceling the orders And that's all that matters. Two wrongs do not make a right.

You're free to consider what you want...

[ChePibe]

I don't think Amazon was caught in a "lie" here - a lie requires some level of demonstrable intent to mislead others.

The idea that advertisements are not offers is very important to contract law for all vendors. Otherwise, consumers could sue if a vendor did not have an item it listed in a print ad because it had simply run out or, as more commonly happens, a clerk, graphic designer, or publisher somewhere along the way screws up and lists the wrong price. Businesses could quickly and easily be taken out of business if every single advertisement was an "offer" in the legal sense of the word, which implies much more than the lay term of an offer. First-year law students spend weeks on precisely what offer and acceptance mean in contract law, and it is a dicey issue at times.

I think Amazon did screw up in that it handled the situation poorly - consumers should have been notified of the mistake and that they should not expect their CDs. But this is not a legal issue - Amazon had the right to simply cancel the orders or, as another way of putting it, ignore the offers.

Once again, I am not a lawyer and none of the above should be considered legal advice. Please seek the assistance of a qualified attorney on these and other matters.

They'll make up the difference

[Phat_Tony]

I looks like they're trying to make up the difference for any losses they had on that before they caught their mistake through their pricing on SD/CF Adapters.

Sounds like Neiman Marcus

[Anonymous Coward]

My daughter & I had just finished a salad at Neiman-Marcus Cafe in Dallas & decided to have a small dessert. Because our family are such cookie lovers, we decided to try the "Neiman-Marcus Cookie". It was so excellent that I asked if they would give me the recipe and they said with a small frown, "I'm afraid not." Well, I said, would you let me buy the recipe? With a cute smile, she said, "Yes." I asked how much, and she responded, "Two fifty." I said with approval, just add it to my tab.

Thirty days later, I received my VISA statement from Neiman-Marcus and it was $285.00. I looked again and I remembered I had only spent $9.95 for two salads and about $20.00 for a scarf. As I glanced at the bottom of the statement, it said, "Cookie Recipe - $250.00." Boy, was I upset!! I called Neiman's Accounting Dept. and told them the waitress said it was "two fifty," and I did not realize she meant $250.00 for a cookie recipe. I asked them to take back the recipe and reduce my bill and they said they were sorry, but because all the recipes were this expensive so not just everyone could duplicate any of our bakery recipes....the bill would stand. I waited, thinking of how I could get even or even try and get any of my money back.

I just said, "Okay, you folks got my $250.00 and now I'm going to have $250.00 worth of fun." I told her that I was going to see to it that every cookie lover will have a $250.00 cookie recipe from Neiman-Marcus for nothing. She replied, "I wish you wouldn't do this." I said, "I'm sorry but this is the only way I feel I could get even," and I will.

So, here it is, and please pass it to someone else or run a few copies....I paid for it; now you can have it for free. (Recipe may be halved):

2 cups butter
4 cups flour
2 tsp. soda
2 cups sugar
5 cups blended oatmeal**
24 oz. chocolate chips
2 cups brown sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 8 oz. Hershey Bar (grated)
4 eggs
2 tsp. baking powder
3 cups chopped nuts (your choice)
2 tsp. vanilla

Cream the butter and both sugars. Add eggs and vanilla; mix together with flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder, and soda. Add chocolate chips, Hershey Bar and nuts. Roll into balls and place two inches apart on a cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes at 375 degrees. Makes 112 cookies.

** measure oatmeal and blend in a blender to a fine powder.

Re:Sounds like Neiman Marcus

[KiahZero]

Um... you didn't notice when you signed the sales receipt that you were being charged $285?

If you didn't sign a credit card receipt, you should have called your card issuer, because the sale was invalid.

Cancellation emails were recieved

[nsingapu]

http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=740701&page=9

What do they say...

[trawg]

about things that seem to good to be true?

What about the honest approach?

[richardkelleher]

Does it occur to anyone that the most appropriate thing to do when finding something so obviously mis-priced is to contact Amazon and tell them so. Is it required that the company be punished just because someone in the supply chain mistyped a value.

As far as honoring a pricing policy, I purchased a camera for $900 last year. About a month and a half later I noticed the price had decreased a lot. I sent an email to Amazon with my order number and all relevant dates and asked them if I was eligible for their price decrease guarantee which allows for a 30 day window. I even told them in the email that I had no idea when the price had been cut. They could have just said, no, the price cut came after your 30 day window, but instead, within a couple of hours, late on a Saturday night, they sent me an email telling me my credit card had been credited for the full $265 reduction in price. All in all, I think they do a pretty good job of taking care of their customers. It made it a lot easier when they backordered the lens I was getting for xmas into late January.

This isn't the first time.

[DeVilla]

This happened a while back with the book "Lisp in Small Pieces". This lisp community was thrilled and then shocked.

http://xach.livejournal.com/133661.html
http://jonphilpott.blogspot.com/2007/08/lisp-on-amazonca.html
http://constantly.at/blog/2007/08/14/i-see-no-reason-to-do-further-business-with-you/

Well put.

[Valdrax]

Another element of a contract it the "meeting of the minds". Where one party clearly makes an unreasonable pricing mistake, contract law allows the contract to be repudiated. Well put. I stand corrected. I originally thought that this would be within reason for a DVD boxed set, but then I followed the link to the product, realized as the summary noted that it was actually a music CD boxed set and that the picture makes amply clear that there's no way it could sell for so little.

Yeah. Not a chance in hell in this case.

Yeah, okay, he's got it right; not me.

[Valdrax]

If there was a breach, it was only the failure to notify the buyer of the order cancellation. I'm not sure from the contract terms whether a court would find there was a breach. The terms may be read as suggesting Amazon's current policy of notification rather than binding themselves to do so. In any event, a buyer would not be able to recover for the contract price - the best available price because that does not reflect the damages actually suffered. The buyer's expectation damages ought to put him in the position he would have been in had the contract been performed. Since Amazon's only failure was to notify him of the order cancellation, damages should be assessed based on the harm which resulted from lack of notification. Very well put. I bow to your superior expertise on this was well as the UCC commentary that I didn't quote. This is what happens when one posts right before passing out to sleep.

Beware: Parent is urban legend. :-)

[Qbertino]

Check Google for Neiman Marcus + Cookie recipe.

since noone has asked this yet of OP

[zen-theorist]

jazz? you must be gay. plus you've been caught whining. both are punishable offences on slashdot.

Bad Faith Purchase

[linuxtweaker]

I hate to side with a corporation, but in this matter I do have to agree with Amazon:

This box set has been around since 2003. It's not something that a casual music listener purchases. It's something that will attract musicologists, historians, and hard core jazz fans.

The fact that Amazon managed to lay their hands on three copies of this set to sell is amazing! I searched for it a few years ago, and only found one or two new copies of it. The used copies that were on the market were going for $600 or more.

To be honest, I am totally baffled by what the problem is here? Amazon has a cancellation policy if an item is priced incorrectly. At least one person has posted a notice they received of the cancellation.

Is it wrong for a company to not get raped for $1500? Is it wrong for them to not honor a bad faith sale? Is it wrong for them to correct an error in their system? (How many errors have they corrected in customer's favor?)

Back to my previous perusal of this set: I wanted this set, but I knew that I couldn't afford to spend $500 on any CD collection, despite the fact that it is an EXCELLENT set. My solution was to scrounge hard and find the four 3-disc box sets. They provided an excellent overview of the material in the larger set, and satisfied my hunger for the bigger set. Alas, my quick search of Froogle didn't turn up many copies of them (however, if memory recalls, they were difficult to find the first time around - I think I had to search by the individual box titles).

Honestly, the author of this piece just needs to suck it up. If he really wants the set (and, even at $500 it is still an EXCELLENT bargain - only $6.67 per disc!) then buy it at the proper price. If he really doesn't want to pay the $500, then try to find the other sets, or look elsewhere.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Amazon Erases Orders To Cover Up Pricing Mistake

[Footsienabackyard]

8) Not me, in fact their swift to collect, sure to deliver! Despite what I have to pay!

Order disappearing from account history

[gonzoxl5]

Other replies to this story have adequately dealt with the issue of whether Amazon had a right to cancel an order for an item which had been incorrectly priced.

Further replies seem to indicate that Amazon sent many of its customers emails advising them of the cancellation and would have likely attempted to do so in the case of the customer who reported this story.

What I haven't seen debated is the point about the disappearance of the item from the order history - I had an issue in the Uk last month where Amazon becamse unable to supply a book I had orders three months ago due to continued isuses obtaining stock of the book, they wrote to me confirming that the order was cancelled and at that point THE ITEM WAS COMPLETELY REMOVED FROM MY ACCOUNT HISTORY (not just listed as canncelled, just gone !)

I have no problems with amazon cancelling orders at a point where they decide they can't reasonably fulfill them, I don't think its good system design on their part for these cancellations to result in the item completly disappearing from users account records.

So, I think the only real debate remaining is, should they change that practice ?

(I vote yes)

normal...

[Anonymous Coward]

Same thing happened when I preordered an Inside Lightwave book a while back and they cancelled the order after they realized it was underpriced.

Why is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm serious: why is this news on Slashdot?

Go to one of the many "deals" forums out there (Fatwallet for one). Read about all the people trying to take advantage of a company's typographic error. There's a lot of "d00d! i just got this from amazon for a dollar and i'm going to ebay it for sure!" posts out there. This happens all the time and if I were the company, I wouldn't honor any of these orders either.

This is the Internet equivalent of following an armored car around waiting for a bag of money to fall out. What a shame it doesn't work out for them.

I gave it a try; the order was canceled w/ email

[joe_n_bloe]

Greetings from Target.com.

Due to an unexpected error, the following item(s) you have ordered
were incorrectly priced at the time of your order.

'Jazz in Paris'

We're sorry, but we are unable to offer this item for the incorrect
price. The correct price is $499.98. We have canceled your order for
this item. If you would like to order this item at the correct price,
please visit Target.com and reorder.

Despite our best efforts, a small number of items on our site are
occasionally mis-priced. We do, however, verify prices as part of our
shipping procedures. If we discover that an item's correct price is
higher than our stated price, we will either contact you for
instructions before shipping or cancel your order and notify you of
the cancellation. This pricing policy is posted in the Help section
on Target.com.

Again, we're sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused
you. Thank you for being our valued guest.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm out of points :(

I call BS... Amazon's service has been exceptional

[voxluna]

"In short, Amazon for me represents the most successful of the new online retailers; they have won my trust and admiration, no easy feat, and so I find this Slashdot story to be questionable at best."

I'll do you one better: I had signed up for Amazon Prime because of the free shipping spiel. I forgot when the trial period ended, and at the last minute, I panicked and tried to cancel it. For some reason I couldn't, so I wound up with an overdraft in my checking account.

When I called Amazon about it, the very first person I talked to refunded the $79 and my $38 NSF fee, without even asking for proof.

That's service.

Exactly Right.

[baboo_jackal]

Another revealing way to look at it is this:

How would you feel if the same laws were applied to your garage sale?