Live data from Hacker News

Amazon Accidentally Sold $13k Camera Gear for $100 on Prime Day

petapixel.com

231–240 of 526 posts

Re: Amazon Accidentally Sold $13k Camera Gear for $100 on Prime Day

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sounds to me like someone at Amazon is good at marketing. Ah yes, finally someone will be talking about Amazon and Prime Day.

To me is the first time i hear about it.

I personally first heard about the Prime Day strike, figured it had to be some sort of sell-day mania in the middle of summer. Anyway, tactics like this one have been carried out by the biggest webshop in my country for a few years now. The first time it happened most of us thought it was a genuine mistake, the following iteration though revealed the move for what it really was: pure marketing.

Re: Amazon Accidentally Sold $13k Camera Gear for $100 on Prime Day

#234
post #123

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) A few observations: - 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! - Despite the fact that I couldn't justify the purchase before I owned them, I now definitely do…

You are one hell of a lucky guy !!

Re: Amazon Accidentally Sold $13k Camera Gear for $100 on Prime Day

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Netherlands this also happened some times on webshops. And everytime a judge ruled people had to bring the goods back or should pay the full amount. The reason is that it is very clear for the buyer it is a mistake. And almost all webshops have a legal notice about wrong or false prices.

I think that if Amazon does ship these (and it seems some already did) it's actually pretty neat advertisement for them. Any publicity is good publicity, right? I wonder how much an advertisement campaign with this amount of buzz usually costs.

Absolutely. It is a tiny fraction with significant publicity effect. It's even here on HN discussion.

Re: Amazon Accidentally Sold $13k Camera Gear for $100 on Prime Day

#236
post #108

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. Kind of like a raffle but without having to get all the lawyers involved to make sure you comply with raffle laws.

Even when literally losing thousands of dollars to honor a price advertised to customers, HN manages to spin's Amazon's actions as somehow duplicitous.

You are HN as well. Don't be so dismissive.

Re: Amazon Accidentally Sold $13k Camera Gear for $100 on Prime Day

#237
post #108

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. Kind of like a raffle but without having to get all the lawyers involved to make sure you comply with raffle laws.

My first thought was “next year i have to dig into all of amazon’s offering to find such ‘mistakes’”. It immediately had the effect of gaining me as a new customer. Excellent marketing indeed!

Re: Amazon Accidentally Sold $13k Camera Gear for $100 on Prime Day

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here an example (in Dutch): http://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/inziendocument?id=ECLI:NL:G...

Ah, I see. So, in short, you can be forced to return an order, but that is only because the order was not made with a "legal" price [0], so no legal transaction has taken place, and all that happened was you sending the webshop money without cause, and they mistakenly sending you a product, which both must be returned upon request by the other party. [0] a "legal" price is a price which the customer would expect for…

Yes. It is a little more complicated than I posted earlier, but the point is that not all parties agreed on the arrangement so there was no arrangement.

Re: Amazon Accidentally Sold $13k Camera Gear for $100 on Prime Day

#239
It’s kind of interesting- the asymmetry of moral expectations and entitlement.

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.)

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.

I just think it’s amazing how frail people’s morality is, how it goes out the window when certain conditions are met.

Re: Amazon Accidentally Sold $13k Camera Gear for $100 on Prime Day

#240

It’s kind of interesting- the asymmetry of moral expectations and entitlement. 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.) I’m not going to en…

It is just asymmetry of power.

We all would condemn someone who was stealing from poor(relatively speaking), while stealing from rich isn't frowned upon that much.

This is nothing new, nothing related to Amazon itself. Just part of human nature.

Post reply on HN