Pricing algorithm went nuts (modern tech and AI eh, who'd have thought ) and priced up thousands of products at £0.01 including £1000 tv's and lasted an hour before discovered Allgedly some sellers lost £100k of stock for a few hundred quid
Just been on the news that most of these orders will be cancelled, I guess that means a few got through and despatched but they didn't go into that.
Seems if the ock was held at A warehouse it was likley despatched, if not then seller just didnt send it Wonder what trading standards have to say about right to buy once contract committed? From my retail days (a career ago) if you had mis-prived and refused to sell, all products of the same had to be reoved from sale for a period of time.
Amazon have to make up their minds. Once you have clicked on the appropriate box, they insist that you have now entered into a binding contract to purchase the goods. I would like to see them argue that that statement does not mean what it says, and that it was not a binding contract after all - when it suits them. And if they do argue that, I would like to see them then try to enforce a contract to buy against a buyer. They will of course want to have their cake and eat it - who doesn't?
They accepted no responsibility whatsoever. They provide the widget that does the calculations, but insist its the sellers provider. We deal with amazon for cloud services. Their attitude is no surprise to me.
I purchased at the weekend some Keen sandals @£66.00 normal high street price is £109.99. They arrived yesterday and I am very impressed with them, so no, I will not be sending them back.
You so right, they even do a colour that will match my leathers, so much better than heavy boots in summer!!
This is not the first time it's happened - I think the first big one was the Kodak camera misprice, which saw a £329 camera listed for £100 on their site. Loads of people rushed in and ordered, big noise about it and Kodak said it was a pricing mistake and all orders were void, until someone pointed out that they had legally accepted the offer by taking payment and said as much in confirmation emails. Kodak honoured most/all of the orders and people got their bargain camera. (see Kodak error shows need for legal protection) As Pete says above, they found themselves hoist by their own petard so didn't have a choice. I expect that there are always things like this that slip through the net and most will be gone before the public at large are aware of them. Would I return it? If I'd paid for it and it was sent to me, legally it is mine and I am under no obligation to do so. I'm sure Amazon can afford to swallow these small mistake - after all they only paid £4.2m in tax on £4.3bn in sales...
Excuse the tangent but can you elaborate Bradders, I've been considering introducing AWS services where I work. Pm if you want.
Esentially, they supply the tools but not the monitoring of the activity against thise tools, paraphrasing from memory. So the algorithim calculated the lowest price, the matching service did likewise and auto reduced the prices, which if was being supplied from the Amazon warehouse was despatched pretty quickly. They washed their hands of any responsibility. We use AWS, not certain I find it the most flexible approach to business...bit like dealing with Apple or Google
I don't use amazon or any of the other tax dodgers. Would rather pay more to a local business if possible.
