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."

Comments

Hmmmm ... legality?

[gstoddart]

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.

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.