Slashdot Mirror
Amazon UK Glitch Sells Thousands of Products For a Penny
An anonymous reader writes For about an hour on Friday a few lucky Amazon UK shoppers were able to take advantage of a price glitch which discounted thousands of marketplace products to the price of 1p. An Amazon spokesman said: "We are aware that a number of Marketplace sellers listed incorrect prices for a short period of time as a result of the third party software they use to price their items on Amazon.co.uk. We responded quickly and were able to cancel the vast majority of orders placed on these affected items immediately and no costs or fees will be incurred by sellers for these cancelled orders. We are now reviewing the small number of orders that were processed and will be reaching out to any affected sellers directly."
WAS NOT AMAZON.
It was a junky piece of third-party software that automatically adjusted prices for Marketplace sellers.
The software cocked up, made everything a penny, and - I imagine - everyone stopped using it.
a British penny is worth like 100 U.S. pennies though, so it's ok.
So, once the order has been placed, haven't you effectively entered into a contract for sale or something?
At which point you the seller don't really the the option to say "Ooops, we didn't mean to do that, we're cancelling your order".
Maybe it's different in the UK, but I thought they couldn't change the terms of sale just because they want to.
If I had made the purchase, I'd be pissed, because this means they can change the terms of sale after they've been offered.
Your website/pricing stuff broke .. NMFP, you offered it 1 penny, I expect to get it for that price.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Was not Amazon.
I'm not going to waste mod points on this, so I'll just reply instead:
You are a dumb-ass. First of all, it isn't bait and switch, it was an accident. Second, save the Hitler references for situations where it's actually called for. AFAIK Hitler never sold something cheap on the internet, then canceled the deal... so I'm not even sure how you made the connection. Third, it wasn't even Amazon... it says right in the summary that it was a third party pricing tool. If you can't read the actual article, please at least read the summary.
In conclusion, you are a dumb-ass.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
He might be a dumb-ass, but he's a VERY effective troll too...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Doesn't matter - Amazon listed a valid listing from the 3rd parties.
The fact that the 3rd parties put up a price they didn't like doesn't change the contract that was made when people placed the orders.
It wasn't a glitch at Amazon but from a third party software. But headlines never were the strong point of Slashdot ;-)
RTFA, it wasn't Amazon but some piece of software called Repricer that automatically updated the prices. Amazon caught the mistake and cancelled some orders.
it was so bad competitors were calling each other to give a heads up
First we got skyrocketing prices, now a glitch is causeing near 0 prices. How hard is it to manually set a price, or at the very least set minimum bounds based on the cost to produce and reasonable maximum bounds?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
That same contract gives Amazon the right to cancel orders for pricing mistakes.
What contract is that? You don't agree to something just by purchasing, at least if you do it doesn't trump local laws which are pretty clear about vendors having to honor prices advertised.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Not if the price is obviously an error.
And not until both sides have consciously accepted the contract. Acknowledging receipt of your order request is NOT acceptance of the contract.
English law contains this, so I imagine American law and almost all first-world law systems are similar.
Just last week I looked on Amazon for an old CD that's now out of print. It's an old classical music CD not rare or of particular interest outside of fans of the artist. In fact, you can rather easily find it available in MP3 or AAC formats on Amazon, iTunes, and a few other places. One seller only wanted 1 cent for a used copy with about 2 to 3 dollars for shipping. Sometimes people will sell old CDs, DVDs or books that have little collectable value for 1 cent just to make it up a little on shipping charges because Amazon ranks the copies by lowest price first in the Marketplace without counting the shipping cost. So while you could charge $2.01 for it and offer free shipping and make just as much as charging 1 cent and 2 dollars shipping, the 1 cent offer will go to the top of the list and the $2.01 offer in my example would be listed after anyone with a lower cost for the item, even if the item+shipping cost was much larger. You could sell it for 1 cent and charge $4 for shipping and get listed earlier than a $2.01 charge with free shipping.
So, once the order has been placed, haven't you effectively entered into a contract for sale or something?
No, not until your credit card has been charged. If they have done that then you have them under the credit card agreement but before that they can wriggle out of it as a mistake under their own terms.
The contact on the order checkout page that says, By placing an order, you agree to the privacy policy and conditions of use."
If you bother to read those, you'll see there is a long contact that says they have the right to cancel for many different reasons, including price errors.
The actual wording, since I looked it up for you, is:
"With respect to items sold by Amazon, we cannot confirm the price of an item until you order. Despite our best efforts, a small number of the items in our catalog may be mispriced. If the correct price of an item sold by Amazon 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. Other merchants may follow different policies in the event of a mispriced item."
Whilst I know the Sale of Goods Act 1979 says that for a bricks-and-mortar store the invitation to treat doesn't need to be honoured until the money has been accepted for the goods, I'm wondering for online transactions at what point the implicit contract is "signed". Does the retailer sign the "contract" when they take payment, when they deliver, what?
It's the same. Receipt of money.
it was an accident
So were you, but your mom still had to pay for you.
Sorry, that was unnecessarily rude, but the setup was too perfect to pass up. Point is, why should this accident get an undo? These people should be held liable for their (mis)use of this automatic price setting bot, we shouldn't be going "oh, well, if it sets it too low, we'll just cancel those orders".
My personal experience with Tiger Direct is it may be cancelled until it is shipped. I bought 6 Xbox 360's from TD at a listed price of $5.95 each plus shipping, They cancelled the order the morning it should of shipped.
I recently took delivery of 4 sound bars for $4.95 each that I sold on Craigslist for $75 each. The price was changed a few hours after my shipping confirmation to $99. I got them with no problem.
TD makes this mistake frequently, only once (the sound bars) did I actually receive the merchandise, but I always try when I see an obviously incorrect advertised price.
Sometimes you just get lucky.
After all, once it's shipped it becomes difficult (and perhaps impossible?) to tell a customer to send it back because you made a boo-boo.
There is no fraud involved even if you think the price is wrong, you merely took advantage of a killer sale.
The downside is that it has taken TD nearly 2 weeks to refund my money each time I have tried this, in spite of their stated policy to refund within IIRC, 48 hours.
Anecdotal I realize, but my $0.02 anyway....(-;
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
I'm not disputing that, but I would like to know why. Once they have taken my payment and sent me an email thanking me for my order, how in the hell is that not acceptance of the contract?
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
And that sometimes makes things interesting in the case of responsible retailers who don't charge your card until they are ready to ship, because you're in a kind of limbo as a customer if you've placed an order but the merchant is delayed before sending it.
As I understand it, Amazon is generally reasonable about how it handles these situations. For example, if you have placed an order but it hasn't shipped and been charged yet, you can probably change or cancel it. But you have to watch out with less scrupulous trading partners, who will happily try to eat their cake and have it by claiming your order is final yet also claiming that have no obligation to ship it until they take the payment.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The GP post didn't say anything about taking your payment. Contractually speaking, that is often a more significant act than merely showing a web page or sending an e-mail acknowledging an order.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
In some jurisdictions, shipping is taxed differently than the item price. So $0.01 item + $2.00 shipping may yield a different total consumer cost than $2.01 item + free shipping.
AFAIK Hitler never sold something cheap on the internet, then canceled the deal...
No, but he sold the idea of moving east to some people, then switched the deal, AND he did so using IBM machines. OK, not an exact analogy but comes somewhat close.
Ezekiel 23:20
Because most Marketplace sellers on Amazon UK charge postage (and often hefty amounts even for small/light items), they often use a bad feature of Amazon's "sort by price" option - it doesn't include postage in the sort - to mark many items as costing a penny. Those items then very annoyingly appear first in multiple pages of "sorted" results and it's only when you click on them that you find the postage is 500 times the so-called cost of the product.
If you ask me, it's karma coming back to bite those sellers on the arse - maybe the third-party software dropped the postage charge by mistake? I do wish Amazon UK would sort prices *inclusive* of postage - this misleading price sort has been going for many, many years. Failing that, at least set price minimums (e.g. 49p without postage and 99p with postage).
"Penny?" knock knock knock. "Penny?" knock knock knock. "Penny?"
On Amazon, normally as soon as you click purchase your card is charged.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Not in the UK.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
If you saw an item that should cost $10 priced at $0.01, and you believed the listing erroneous, would you take advantage of the error to get a quick bargain? What if the item should actually cost $1000?
If so, what is your justification?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Fair enough.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
The downside is that it has taken TD nearly 2 weeks to refund my money each time I have tried this, in spite of their stated policy to refund within IIRC, 48 hours.
I am greedy and played unfair with a company, now they're playing unfair with me. Wah!
They will never know the simple pleasure of a monkey knife fight
Well, no, that's not true. TD often advertises fake prices just so they can upsell. Taking advantage of a price as advertised, even knowing it's likely to be changed isn't not playing fairly.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Those things don't tend to stand up in court, fyi.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Can you find a case where this was brought to court?
I highly doubt most people would bother to sue, but you're welcome to try.