It’s kind of interesting- the asymmetry of moral expectations and entitlement.<p>If you accidentally purchased a bag of M&Ms from Amazon for 500 dollars instead of 5, they will let you undo it. On the other hand, if the matter is reversed, Amazon is expected to be a good sport and take the loss — even if the purchase was made in bad faith (ie- knowing Amazon mis-priced it but purchasing it anyways.)<p>I’m not going to entertain any counter arguments that Amazon deserves this because they treat workers poorly or don’t pay taxes or whatever, those arguments are orthogonal. The same behavior would happen with a company with better public trust and respect. And it’s not like anyone is selling those cameras to donate money to a warehouse worker in need.<p>I just think it’s amazing how frail people’s morality is, how it goes out the window when certain conditions are met.
I got in on this! I got a Sony A7R II and a 24-70 2.8 II I'd always wanted but could never justify the purchase of. ($~3k value for $200)<p>A few observations:<p>- Despite the extraordinary deal we got, my friends (who also made a purchase) and I all have our joy offset by a feeling of regret that we didn't order more. Greed!<p>- Despite the fact that I couldn't justify the purchase before I owned them, I now definitely don't want to sell the gear. A clear cut case of the Endowment Effect in action [0]<p>- A lot of people saying the orders are going to be cancelled -- seeing as I currently have both body and lens in possession, I find that unlikely.<p>0. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect</a>
Sounds to me like someone at Amazon is good at marketing. Let a few things go for an insane deal, knowing it will hit the front page of every blog. Then reap the rush of next years prime day with people scouring the site for pricing "errors". Pretty cheap and effective marketing.<p>Kind of like a raffle but without having to get all the lawyers involved to make sure you comply with raffle laws.
> <i>Others also reported that they successfully price matched gear at retailers such as Best Buy and Walmart.</i><p>Wow, this is incredible if true. Not just as a sign of how much these traditional retailers will stick to their promises, but also how the ostensible safeguards of brick-and-mortar/human-touch can still be subverted by algorithmic error. I've never worked at retail but if I saw such a drastic reduction I'd call my manager.
A previous similar incident became a legendary in-joke over at MetaFilter 18 years ago:<p><i>Astounding. I can't take a moral argument seriously from any of you who jumped at the opportunity to take advantage of an honest mistake. I don't want to hear ever again about greedy corporations or crooked politicians. You people just showed that you're willing to turn a blind eye when it is to your benefit. How does that make you any different from those you rail against?</i> –
<i>posted by marknau at 6:45 PM on November 20, 2001 [4 favorites +] [!]</i><p><i>We have cameras.</i> – <i>posted by NortonDC at 6:48 PM on November 20, 2001 [164 favorites +] [!]</i><p><a href="https://www.metafilter.com/12512/#178067" rel="nofollow">https://www.metafilter.com/12512/#178067</a>
In California, at least, Amazon does not need to honor erroneous prices. Per CA Civ Code § 7103 (2018): <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?division=4.&part=5.5.&lawCode=CIV" rel="nofollow">https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.x...</a><p><pre><code> 7103. Improper pricing on the shelf or on the item due to unintentional error shall not constitute a violation of this division.</code></pre>
Amazon would be within their rights to refuse to honor such purchases. I also don't think it's ethical to take advantage of such mistakes. What if it was you who accidentally listed your house for $60,000 rather than $600,000? What if you accidentally included an extra 0 on the check you wrote?
They will cancel majority of the purchases. However, if you were smart, you'd have chosen 1 day shipping and have received the item.<p>Me? I was not smart and did not select 1 day shipping so it looks like my order will most likely be canceled once Amazon deals with this...
I like the comment suggesting articles like that being banned. That lens has been one of my dreams for years now for birding. Though 800mm is kinda ridiculous and probably impossible to hand hold.<p>I did nearly get lucky like this some years back when Walmart $100 gift cards were on sale for $10. All my orders were cancelled. It seems like several of these Amazon orders have been delivered.
IANAL. Any U.S.-based lawyers out here?<p>I believe a listed price is an "invitation to treat" which means a retailer can charge whatever they like regardless of listed price (whether in a physical or online store), but at what point can't an online retailer cancel/back-out of a transaction? Let's say the merchant and buyer are both California-based for simplicity. Would it be legally similar to "theft by discovery" (e.g., taking money falling out from an overturned armored truck) for accepting goods sold at an excessive, erroneous discount? Or would it require proving intent on part of the buyer that the price was a serious mistake they deliberately acted in bad-faith to exploit?<p>Let's say the (over-simplified) phases of a transaction are:<p>1. Agreed - Buyer clicks "Buy".<p>2. Paid - Payment is posted.<p>3. Shipped out - The product leaves the custody of the merchant.<p>4. Received - Customer receives the product.
I remember something similar happened at Best Buy 15 years ago with a high end nvidia card. I bought one, but Best Buy obviously chose not to fulfill on the glitch. I wasn't surprised or disappointed. I <i>was</i> surprised at how many people felt entitled to it, though. The number of calls to boycott Best Buy over it seemed insane.<p>I wonder how many people will feel entitled to Amazon honoring this glitch.
I doubt they will cancel the orders. Amazon lives by customer service. They seem to just write off their mistakes directly from revenue. I learned this when I was scammed for a $5000 and Amazon let the scammer keep, refunded me and closed the issue in one fell swoop.
My favorite ecommerce glitch was a guitar center coupon for $50 off being usable an unlimited number of times. I didn't push my luck and only applied it a few times. Surprisingly they honored it and I got a bunch of miscellaneous guitar accessories for free.
I'll go on and say something, perhaps, controversial.<p>This "price mistake" was not a mistake at all. This was intentional move by amazon to attract publicity.<p>Once these news spread, people will remember. And next year they will have a few extra million people browsing amazon "looking for that super deal".<p>This "price mistake" is simply part of the advertising/marketing stratagy by amazon to create extra excitement about prime day.<p>People will be coming back for years ... looking for that 100$ super lens. This is money well spent.<p>WELL DONE AMAZON MARKETING GURUS!!!
There was a similar incident in 2001:<p>> Amazon messes up a 'Buy this camera and get that bag free" promotion to be "Buy this bag and get that camera free." As a result you can get a $350 Minolta Maxxum SLR for $40.<p><a href="https://www.metafilter.com/12512/#178067" rel="nofollow">https://www.metafilter.com/12512/#178067</a>
Does anyone know if someone tried to order a ridiculous amount of the 13k Sony zoom lens? If I would have noticed this pricing error still in time to place an order I wouldn't have wasted a minute to think what I want, I would have ordered 100-1000 lenses worth 13000 for 95 each and later sold them on eBay for 10k each and bought myself a Tesla or something...<p>Why don't I read an actually interesting story about this pricing error, who cares that some people got a single item discounted... That's as interesting as someone winning $300 in the lottery. Happens all the time, not worth a story otherwise...
Given the algorithmic pricing on a lot of things (everything?) sold on Amazon there’s probably money to be made building some bot that checks for pricing mistakes and buys when one is found.
This is an unintentional by-product of shipping so quickly. As Amazon moves to quicker and quicker shipping policies, it means that errors like this can't be reversed in time.<p>I would imagine that Amazon could threaten to close the customer's account if they refused to return the camera equipment but that might be a bit extreme and might be very bad press.
Some think this is a marketing gimmick. I don’t:<p>1. They would not be able to resist making the price a cute number, like Prime day’s date, eg $7.16<p>2. They would later claim intentionality to not seem incompetent.<p>3. If they stuck to a product category, they would pick a category of mainstream or sympathetic appeal. Eg: pool toys for summer fun, back to school items, gaming pc or kids clothes.<p>4. They would bake in stop loss prevention. IE putting a per account quantity cap in place, and a global quantity cap.<p>I’m kind of surprised at many people thinking it was intentional— it’s a good use of imagination but going a bit deeper the execution does not fit with any imaginary world I can envision.
Amazon can eat that loss without batting an eye. If it's resellers, etc, I'm not sure how the situation would be remedied. I think cancelling the orders would be fair, because some small camera shop can't be expected to eat the same losses as the #2 multinational retailer. While I wish I had gotten one of those cameras, as 10kUSD would completely change my life, I can understand both sides I think...<p>If it was Amazon it would be the best PR for the next prime day you could think of. People will be scouring the site for these kind of deals next year.
What nobody is touching on here is that there are UPP/MAP restrictions on many items from different manufacturers. You'll see notice this in action when you see a price that's obfuscated behind some magical "add to cart" wall.<p>Regardless of the PR value here (which is worth more than this stunt IMO) I'm going to bet there are going to be more than a few MFRs whipping out their contracts for some type of damages here based on those ULP/MAP guidelines. The cost here is going to be much more than the gross loss on the items individually.
What if this was done on purpose to increase hype for the next Prime Day? They'll probably cancel the orders anyways, and there will some people who will visit Amazon on prime day hoping to score a ridiculous deal, only to settle on buying some random shit.
Leaving aside the question of right or wrong, I have always thought that the pride people take when they "beat" a large corporation is one of the most fundamentally American things there is.<p>How many times has someone given you a tip on what lie to tell to a customer service agent to get what you want? How many websites are there devoted to jumping on airline ticket pricing errors? How many times can you think of someone telling you their insurance paid out more than their loss was worth?<p>In some circles this even extends into taxes. People brag about how they minimize their tax burden even though that means the person you're bragging to will be the one receiving less govt. services. We have a president now who brags about not paying much in taxes, even though his current job would be meaningless without them!<p>I think in a purely capitalistic society, this is all rational behavior. But it's also the reason we have such antagonistic relationships with corporations. Both sides look to screw each other at the slightest hint of weakness.<p>This is the internet so I am sure I will be told which side is right, but that's really not what I am getting at. I just find the dynamic so interesting.
Yeah, it's Amazon losing money.. Big deal. However it does make me wonder the same people that jump on these kind of deals and justify it (rightly or wrongly) would do it to a much smaller company or even a person that's selling something.
Taking advantage of this "deal" is obviously morally untenable if you stop and think about it. Rather than posing the hypothetical of flipping it around between vendor and customer (i.e., "Would you be OK with it if Amazon charged you more?"), consider the case where it was a local mom and pop camera shop that made this mistake on its website. Then you would probably feel terrible about exploiting this and would be fine with the company requesting the merchandise be returned, say with a $100 store credit.<p>Now ask yourself why this scenario is really different from the store being Amazon from a moral standpoint. If you're being intellectually honest with yourself, you will conclude that it's the same reasoning that would support the idea that it's OK to steal from people as long as they are very rich and won't miss the money.
This happens a lot with HDDs and SSDs. At least once per month I get a notification about disks being really cheap. Looks like sellers make mistakes and put wrong numbers to quantity/price boxes. Most often orders are cancelled.
The customer is always right. Doubt Amazon will do anything about the customers that already received their merchandise. Hard learned lesson for Amazon and probably sucks to be the engineers dealing with the postmortem.
If I saw cheap photo equipment on Amazon, I'd assume it was some knockoff. It might be good, or not. I mean, really, how much does it cost to make a camera back? It's simpler than a smartphone.
A part of me wonders if this is a calculated marketing move for next years prime day. "Hey remember last year when $13k cameras were priced for $100? Lets see if that happens this year!"
I recently "got" free echos from Amazon pricing error only to see the orders get cancelled and a single echo shipped at the normal prime day pricing though that was not what I agreed to.
The markup on this gear is probably insane, it has a limited shelf life, if I told Amazon they could get this many column inches of good will for a few 100k they'd jump on it :)
Is there even any evidence that this was an accident? From what I’ve seen, there is no evidence that this wasn’t on purpose despite everyone stating it was surely an accident.
This bug probably cost Amazon far far far less than last year's prime day outage.<p>Also, it got them free press coverage. This could have totally been intentional.
I'd make an order and immediately ask Amazon if I can keep it or if it was an error.<p>Why? How come can I know for sure this is an error and not, say, a marketing strategy to show up for free on big news outlets?<p>Free publicity for the company and a free expensive product for me. They would be just using me to earn some publicity space, and I would be compensated a lot by it. Being a libertarian, I don't see any problem with this free trade.<p>Except, it was probably a huge mess on their pricing system. As this might be the case, if they wanted to cancel my order, I wouldn't complain at all.<p>What about if it was an error that turned out to be great for them because it drove more access to the camera area and they sold twice what they expected, and they admit it? I'd still be interested in returning the camera because I don't want to take advantage of an error, but I'd ask nicely if I can keep it and make it clear I have no intention to fight or complain if they said 'no'.
Didn't get on this, but reminds me of when Amazon didnt collect sales tax for states they didn't operate in. Was able to save about $300 on a stereo purchase because of that back in the day...
Thats brilliant marketing (intentional or not), because in my mind prime day is amazon selling of their crap. The last years there was not a single item I was interested in.
What are the guesses as to how this happened? At the risk of sounding conspiratorial I propose that sometimes these "accidents" are less accidental than they claim. So much hype over this has got to be worth something.