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!"
Amazon Accidentally Sold $13k Camera Gear for $100 on Prime Day
421–430 of 526 posts
Re: Amazon Accidentally Sold $13k Camera Gear for $100 on Prime Day
#422It’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’s kind of interesting- the asymmetry of moral expectations and entitlement. First, there is an asymmetry in power too. Amazon can afford to double check or triple check everything if it makes economic sense. Secondly, companies does not have morals. If you allow big corporations to change prices as they see fit because there is a "mistake". Companies will exploit that to their advantage with psychopathic precisi…
Companies are people. They fight very hard for that label in the courts (USA)
Re: Amazon Accidentally Sold $13k Camera Gear for $100 on Prime Day
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually the contract is in place when the order is confirmed. At least from EU webshops it's common to receive two mails, one for order received, another for order confirmed (potentially hours or even days later). This actually hit the spotlight recently in Spain as Dell advertised 1000-1800€ laptops for 29-35€ on their site[0]. Many people bought, received the first AND the second email around 5h later. If it wasn'…
My god Dell's webshop is a steaming pile of fun. I've only had to deal with being unable to order months on end - this sounds much more friendly!
Not friendly, they canceled the orders, breaching their own contract and the law doing so. They went past the "no backsies" point in the transaction and they actually backed out.
Re: Amazon Accidentally Sold $13k Camera Gear for $100 on Prime Day
#424Amazon 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?
I really don't understand the morality of an average HN user. There was a post a few days ago about Spotifree (which mutes your ads), and everyone took it as a personal offense, every possible negative word was said about the person who made it, and the people that use it are lowlives who don't deserve anything in life if they won't cough up $10. But now when it's Amazon losing thousands of dollars per product, it's…
There is no "average HN user." Some people on HN hate ads, and some people on HN write ad software for a living. Some people on HN own a business and sympathize with Amazon over lost profits. Others can't afford nice camera equipment and (maybe) would prefer a society where wealth is more evenly distributed.
Re: Amazon Accidentally Sold $13k Camera Gear for $100 on Prime Day
#425It’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…
Your comment reminded me of my time as a mortgage broker back in 2006. Borrowers it seemed knew more about the lax loan products but once things went south people screamed they had no idea.
Re: Amazon Accidentally Sold $13k Camera Gear for $100 on Prime Day
#426Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It’s kind of interesting- the asymmetry of moral expectations and entitlement. First, there is an asymmetry in power too. Amazon can afford to double check or triple check everything if it makes economic sense. Secondly, companies does not have morals. If you allow big corporations to change prices as they see fit because there is a "mistake". Companies will exploit that to their advantage with psychopathic precisi…
> First, there is an asymmetry in power too. Amazon can afford to double check or triple check everything if it makes economic sense. There's an asymmetry because Amazon can "afford" to double check everything? How? They lists millions of items. You're only in the market for a few. They're good at inventory management, but the scale is crazy which is why this mispricing is happening. Besides, I don't see why them "be…
I'm not sure that the fact that corporations sometimes fails disproves that they are evil or proves that they will not screw their customer's over. As an analogy: criminals often go to jail but that doesn't disprove that criminals exist or prove that they won't victimize people.
I'm also not sure that I agree that more deceptive companies are failing in favor of more honest ones. It seems to me that many modern business models make use of questionable strategies such as dark patterns, regulatory capture, and vendor lock-in.
Perhaps the greater point is not whether a corporation would take advantage in a specific situation. Rather the larger point could be that, due to their size and distributed nature, global corporations are not accountable in the way that individuals or local businesses are.
Re: Amazon Accidentally Sold $13k Camera Gear for $100 on Prime Day
#427Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only if its in your hand. They have ways.
To redirect a UPS shipment after a card has already been charged? Not even in pending - the charge has cleared at this point?
Your card being charged doesn't really matter. If they wanted to they could totally redirect the package and reverse the charge. Amazon does tons of refunds every day like that, they don't hurt the company's standing with the payment processing companies like chargebacks do.
Re: Amazon Accidentally Sold $13k Camera Gear for $100 on Prime Day
#428It’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…
I am not sure why I should feel any morality about a company failing to price things properly. They are a professional company after all not a mom-and-pop operation. Caveat Emptor can be a two way street.
Re: Amazon Accidentally Sold $13k Camera Gear for $100 on Prime Day
#429Earlier quoted context omitted.
You seriously review every single transaction on all of your credit cards? How many lifetime hours do you think you've spent doing this , and how much money have you saved?
Nope, but I do note in an app every time I make a transaction, and on which account it was charged to. At the end of the statement month, I can compare totals, and if they match, I don't need to review anything else. Maintaining any kind of budget requires tracking spending, so this isn't really a big deal if you practice any kind of proactive financial management.
It sounds like you are saying you essentially keep your own personal ledger of every charge you make, and then reconcile the total against the statement each month.
When I did this using MS Money or Quicken years ago, it took so much time to reconcile each month that I eventually gave up. And that was with automatically downloading transactions!
The idea that you could do this in a notes app and actually end up with an exactly matching total in app with the statement, where you don’t have to go back and review each transaction to figure out what you missed, is entirely implausible to me. First of all because the sheer number of scheduled recurring charges which may not be a fixed amount, second because the sheer number of quick charges that are run in a day where I am not stopping to open an app and record the total, third because my wife has a card on the same statement and even still sometimes borrows mine, forth of all because things like Amazon charges aren’t always totaled correctly when you first checkout (“estimated taxes”) and even then the total price on the invoice can be split across multiple charges, fifth of all because of various refunds which might occur due to a return made by someone else in the family for a purchase from a previous month, and similarly for orders placed on one day which aren’t shipped and charged until a future statement.
It’s an absolutely huge deal to precisely track your spending so well that the total balance in your personal tracker exactly matches your statement such that you don’t have to look at every charge on the statement and mentally account for it. It’s literally a multi-billion dollar problem and market opportunity.
Re: Amazon Accidentally Sold $13k Camera Gear for $100 on Prime Day
#430It’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…
Your use of the term “morality” here seems to ignore that it is moral to honor contracts.
The contract between amazon and the customer is and should be asymmetrical.
One example is, as a customer, I can return most items for a complete refund within a time period. Amazon isn’t expected to come take my stuff back from my house if they aren’t happy.
One reason for that is the buyer and seller in this case have a massive information asymmetry such that commerce might be impossible without the contractual asymmetry.
This is enough to explain the difference in expectations without wandering too far philosophically.