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Amazon UK Glitch Sells Thousands of Products For a Penny

Posted by samzenpus on from the best-discount-ever dept.

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."

9 of 138 comments (clear)

  1. Sigh. by ledow · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Sigh. by Jamu · · Score: 4, Funny

      They could insert it after the bit of code that reads:

      if (price = 0.00)
      price = 0.01;

      --
      Who ordered that?
  2. currency by fightinfilipino · · Score: 4, Funny

    a British penny is worth like 100 U.S. pennies though, so it's ok.

    1. Re:currency by oodaloop · · Score: 4, Informative

      Officially, we don't have any pennies; we have One-cent Pieces. They are colloquially known as pennies, named after the British Penny. Sorry, the anal-retentive numismatist in me had to interject.

      --
      Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
    2. Re:currency by leathered · · Score: 4, Funny

      Only if you explain how Hershey's somehow make millions of dollars every year selling products that taste like, to use your colonial vernacular, ass.

      --
      For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
  3. Hmmmm ... legality? by gstoddart · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    1. Re:Hmmmm ... legality? by ledow · · Score: 4, Informative

      No.

      If the price is obviously a mistake, it's not a binding contract.

      Offer and then ACCEPTANCE is a basis of all contract law. You make an offer but then you BOTH have to accept the offer to make it valid. The point of acceptance is not necessarily when you get an email saying Amazon has received your order. It's worded quite carefully.

      Online, you get certain consumer protections but no consumer protection extends to obvious pricing errors, and sellers get the same kinds of protections.

      It's similar to the "moron in a hurry" test. And even a moron in a hurry knows that it's not 1p for a widescreen TV.

      And...

      IT WASN'T AMAZON. It was a third party bit of shitty software that automatically "adjusts" prices, not unlike an eBay sniping tool gone awry.

  4. Re:Amazon is run by Nazis by ledow · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  5. Sometimes sellers do truly ask for 1 cent by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.