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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."

6 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. 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.