Whooops! Amazon UK Repricer Error - Items for .01

[Vigilante]

Shoppers on Amazon UK snapped up expensive items from merchants for just a penny on Friday, but the pricing wasn't part of a sale. Rather, it was due to a glitch in a third-party repricing tool. Some gleeful customers will receive their one-penny bargains, while others will be disappointed to learn their orders have been cancelled. For merchants whose items were shipped before the error was discovered, it feels like the nightmare before Christmas

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y14/m12/i15/s01

What if your entire inventory disappeared in an hour?

 

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[AllenCrawley]

Wow. Scary stuff. Interesting that this is not the first time this has happened.

 

[Vigilante]

There's no indication how Amazon will respond. As of now, the sellers are just assuming they are screwed.

 

[Vigilante]

Unless you have thousands of items (not hundreds, but thousands) there is NO REASON to have the auto repricer turned on. If you are selling items that have significant downward price pressure, don't chase the spiral down. Take the items off Amazon for a while. Either wait for scarcity to increase, or take the items to other channels where recovery prices might be better.

 

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[smarty]

ouch, that feels like stealing because someone forgot their door open.

After that glitch, the RepricerExpress's homepage statement sounds a lot more "funny":



It's ridiculously simple, you could sell everything in your inventory for just 1 penny

 

[theag]

Must suck to have to compete on price. Must suck even more to rely on tools to do it. Didnt even know that such tools exist. Must suck even more if those tools fail and wipe out your business. Lots of sucks.

 

[RazorCut]

We never used that piece of software but did use other software that basically did the same thing. When you have 1000+ stock lines it is too many to keep track of manually so you set minimum and maximum pricing levels and allow the software to respond to competitive price changes and stock levels. It can save you a lot of money. Imagine a competitor attaches themselves to your product, drives the price down then either runs out of stock or puts their price back up. If you don't notice it could be some time before you pick up on the fact losing you decent profits in the meantime.

Of course if you didn't have everyone and their dog attaching themselves to your listing it wouldn't be necessary but that is how Amazon force prices down till their is little to no profit on competitive products while they happily rake in 15%.

 

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[RazorCut]

"But some customers were dissatisfied with that response, and some sellers who cancelled the 1-penny orders have already received negative feedback as a result.


Envy Boutique Outlet received 4.5 stars over the past 12 months, but on Friday, it racked up three 1-star reviews. One customer wrote, "Cancelled order with no explanation." A second wrote, "Rip off don't buy from them has they quote one price then cancel your order hopping that you will pay the new price I am now reporting them to fare trading standards as the price you show is the price you pay and shame on amazon for letting it happen." And a third wrote, "My order was cancelled due to the wrong price being set. If that had happened in a shop they would have normally sold it to me for the price they displayed out of courtesy. Not Happy!"

I hate this mentality, The customers OBVIOUSLY knew there was a problem when they ordered their items. Good luck with Trading Standards, they will tell them the vendor does NOT have to honour a pricing error. Neither does a Bricks and Mortar store. If I remember correctly the item has to be paid for first. If it has not yet been paid for the vendor can refuse the sale.

 

[SJVC]

I'd be trully p*issed off, thankfully I don't use the software. I saw someone lost $15k in stock...

It's bad that people took advantage of it really.

 

[smarty]

I hate this mentality, The customers OBVIOUSLY knew there was a problem when they ordered their items. Good luck with Trading Standards, they will tell them the vendor does NOT have to honour a pricing error. Neither does a Bricks and Mortar store. If I remember correctly the item has to be paid for first. If it has not yet been paid for the vendor can refuse the sale.

People starve for FREE things, same mentality here!

 

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[RazorCut]

People starve for FREE things, same mentality here!

Yes I was following your thread and seen it was taken down.

Beats me why people will camp out for days on end to save a few £,$,€. Or to give their hard earned money to Apple.

 

[GreedyBGoode]

Yes I was following your thread and seen it was taken down.

Beats me why people will camp out for days on end to save a few £,$,€. Or to give their hard earned money to Apple.

Because Apple got their marketing right when you can't really tell any of these Amazon sellers apart!

The repricer looks like its for the guys with ridiculous amounts of SKUs or selling a common product which they have no control over, then engage in a price war? I don't see why anyone who develops their own product would really want to use a repricer...

 

[Mouse]

I'm in a Facebook group with a guy who finds all these "deals" and then posts affiliate links to them. He has 41,000 members who jump on these mistakes.

 

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[Nomad]

I hate this mentality, The customers OBVIOUSLY knew there was a problem when they ordered their items. Good luck with Trading Standards, they will tell them the vendor does NOT have to honour a pricing error. Neither does a Bricks and Mortar store. If I remember correctly the item has to be paid for first. If it has not yet been paid for the vendor can refuse the sale.

Yes you are right - this is known as an invitation to treat (or invitation to bargain in the US).

So many 'entitled' people get this wrong - see here for more information:

http://www.findlaw.co.uk/law/small_business/business_contracts/500564.html

And for the lazy:

The classic example of an invitation to treat is when a shop owner puts a very low price on a product in the shop window. If you take the item to the counter the shopkeeper does not have to sell it to you. In strict legal terms it is you that makes the offer by offering to buy the product with your money. A shopkeeper who has mistakenly priced a product too cheaply is therefore not obliged to sell at that price.

 

[Digamma]

Can't the sellers sue the repricer company?

 

[Unknown]

I've built enough programs that this exact scenario was my first thought when I saw that Amazon offered automatic repricing. I feel sorry for these people, but they gave up control.

 

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