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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 th

by kls 7y ago

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.

fma 7y ago
Or someone on slickdeals is good at marketing because that's what half the article talks about. I'm surprised Amazon honored such a big price mistake. A few weeks ago, some Western Digital drives were priced incorrectly. About half off. Everyone got cancelations. And yes, I heard about it on front page of slickdeals...
- Syntaf 7y ago
  As a dev for Slickdeals, I can tell you this was not planned on our side haha. Once the deal was caught by one of our mods, the site went into a frenzy. Unfortunately I was AFK during the deal, but this will go down as one of the best price mistakes of the year if not the best.
- AnssiH 7y ago
  IIRC in the WD drive case the drives were on backorder so Amazon had a longer time window for cancellations. Similar things have happened on past Prime Days / Black Fridays, I remember some smartphones (Moto?) being sold for under $3 - some were canceled, but some shipped before Amazon managed to cancel them.
digitaltrees 7y ago
Ding! Ding! Ding! This feels like the right explanation. And if not, I am going to use it for future marketing efforts.
nkozyra 7y ago
> Sounds to me like someone at Amazon is good at marketing. Ah yes, finally someone will be talking about Amazon and Prime Day.
- pg_is_a_butt 7y ago
  they said "scouring"... not "talking". Ah yes, you don't understand the difference.
- bromuro 7y ago
  To me is the first time i hear about it.
  - meddlepal 7y ago
    I still do not know what it is :/
    - astura 7y ago
      Its one of those gimmick sale days like "Black Friday", "Cyber Monday", "Back to School Blowout", etc. The only difference is the sales have historically just been on junk[1] rather than desirable items. [1] Unless you are the type who needs a 55 gallons jug of lube. https://observer.com/2015/07/at-1k-55-gallon-bottle-of-lube-is-amazon-prime-days-best-deal/ https://observer.com/2015/07/at-1k-55-gallon-bottle-of-lube-...
      - cruano 7y ago
        Cheap cameras and lube... what a time to be alive
  - paganel 7y ago
    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.
chaostheory 7y ago
It's most likely a mistake this year. Used to work for an online retailer. With my experience, at any moment there's always several items with really terrible pricing mistakes that we probably have to honor.
- conductr 7y ago
  This is my guess. Prime Day loses its allure if word gets out that the low prices aren’t being honored, so they eat it. My wife is a buyer for B&M retail, pricing issues like this happen a lot. In her space, it’d probably take a week to fix.
- ecpottinger 7y ago
  Happen a few years ago at our local Walmart, a solar kit (panel, battery and invertor) for $999.99 was priced at $99.99 - even the cash registers showed that price. I found out about them when one of the guys at work bought two of them. By the time I arrive at the store later that day all the kits were gone and the price was corrected on the store's computer too.
the_reformation 7y ago
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.
- girvo 7y ago
  Oh no, Amazon's profit margin! Being less flip: it's a massive corporation, which by default don't really care about consumers happiness directly, just that which is necessary for us to part with our many. I find it hard to have sympathy for said corporation -- especially considering the power that they now wield over modern western society. And it wouldn't be the first time a corporation is duplicitous, that's for sure. I don't personally think this was done on purpose, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was.
  - harshaw 7y ago
    Having just spent time overnight dealing with customer pain I can assure that we do care about customer happiness and talk about it every day.
- DJBunnies 7y ago
  How much is the total press worth?
- rootusrootus 7y ago
  I see it more as people rationalizing their own decision to take advantage of such an obvious mistake.
- awkward 7y ago
  If you feel like you need to defend them from the accusation that they're doing marketing, it means they're really good at marketing.
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  I lost some pennies in my couch one time and I didn't go looking for them or even really regret their loss. This would be analogous to this situation, if Amazon had lost 100s of thousands of dollars.
VvR-Ox 7y ago
Exactly. The funny thing is: It's basically the same thing as the "prime day" itself. Provide stuff at a price point no one can compete - do this just good enough to hook people and keep the thought in their heads to buy at your place. Not totally reasonable when thinking it through but that's just marketing of people who know how the human psyche works. @amzn marketing: well done.
RomanBob 7y ago
My thought exactly, especially since they didn't cancel it.
anigbrowl 7y ago
Astute assessment.
cronix 7y ago
Or some employees had some fun as part of the Amazon protests.
mikorym 7y ago
I was thinking this exactly. How much would that kind of advertising cost? And the money essentially goes to their customers rather than an advertising agency.
trilila 7y ago
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!
coryfklein 7y ago
The Klein effect strikes again! > I need to coin a term for this concept, I see it on every Hacker News thread once it reaches a certain size. It is the attribution of the topic to some nefarious intention of a dude in marketing. Once you start noticing it you can't unsee. > Intel fires their CEO? It's a PR stunt. > Startup abandons Europe due to GDPR? PR STUNT! > AlphaZero beats professionals at Dota 2? You guessed it, it's just PR for oligarchy parent Alphabet. > I see this so often now it's becoming humorous. As if some how this being all about PR explains everything. It doesn't explain anything! Although I'm sure Bill over in marketing loves that he has subsumed the historical role of deity in explaining the unknown. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17499447 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17499447

by kls 7y ago

fma 7y ago

Or someone on slickdeals is good at marketing because that's what half the article talks about. I'm surprised Amazon honored such a big price mistake. A few weeks ago, some Western Digital drives were priced incorrectly. About half off. Everyone got cancelations. And yes, I heard about it on front page of slickdeals...

Syntaf 7y ago
As a dev for Slickdeals, I can tell you this was not planned on our side haha. Once the deal was caught by one of our mods, the site went into a frenzy. Unfortunately I was AFK during the deal, but this will go down as one of the best price mistakes of the year if not the best.
AnssiH 7y ago
IIRC in the WD drive case the drives were on backorder so Amazon had a longer time window for cancellations. Similar things have happened on past Prime Days / Black Fridays, I remember some smartphones (Moto?) being sold for under $3 - some were canceled, but some shipped before Amazon managed to cancel them.

digitaltrees 7y ago

Ding! Ding! Ding! This feels like the right explanation. And if not, I am going to use it for future marketing efforts.

nkozyra 7y ago

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

pg_is_a_butt 7y ago
they said "scouring"... not "talking". Ah yes, you don't understand the difference.
bromuro 7y ago
To me is the first time i hear about it.
- meddlepal 7y ago
  I still do not know what it is :/
  - astura 7y ago
    Its one of those gimmick sale days like "Black Friday", "Cyber Monday", "Back to School Blowout", etc. The only difference is the sales have historically just been on junk[1] rather than desirable items. [1] Unless you are the type who needs a 55 gallons jug of lube. https://observer.com/2015/07/at-1k-55-gallon-bottle-of-lube-is-amazon-prime-days-best-deal/ https://observer.com/2015/07/at-1k-55-gallon-bottle-of-lube-...
    - cruano 7y ago
      Cheap cameras and lube... what a time to be alive
- paganel 7y ago
  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.

chaostheory 7y ago

It's most likely a mistake this year. Used to work for an online retailer. With my experience, at any moment there's always several items with really terrible pricing mistakes that we probably have to honor.

conductr 7y ago
This is my guess. Prime Day loses its allure if word gets out that the low prices aren’t being honored, so they eat it. My wife is a buyer for B&M retail, pricing issues like this happen a lot. In her space, it’d probably take a week to fix.
ecpottinger 7y ago
Happen a few years ago at our local Walmart, a solar kit (panel, battery and invertor) for $999.99 was priced at $99.99 - even the cash registers showed that price. I found out about them when one of the guys at work bought two of them. By the time I arrive at the store later that day all the kits were gone and the price was corrected on the store's computer too.

the_reformation 7y ago

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.

girvo 7y ago
Oh no, Amazon's profit margin! Being less flip: it's a massive corporation, which by default don't really care about consumers happiness directly, just that which is necessary for us to part with our many. I find it hard to have sympathy for said corporation -- especially considering the power that they now wield over modern western society. And it wouldn't be the first time a corporation is duplicitous, that's for sure. I don't personally think this was done on purpose, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was.
- harshaw 7y ago
  Having just spent time overnight dealing with customer pain I can assure that we do care about customer happiness and talk about it every day.
DJBunnies 7y ago
How much is the total press worth?
rootusrootus 7y ago
I see it more as people rationalizing their own decision to take advantage of such an obvious mistake.
awkward 7y ago
If you feel like you need to defend them from the accusation that they're doing marketing, it means they're really good at marketing.
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
I lost some pennies in my couch one time and I didn't go looking for them or even really regret their loss. This would be analogous to this situation, if Amazon had lost 100s of thousands of dollars.

VvR-Ox 7y ago

Exactly. The funny thing is: It's basically the same thing as the "prime day" itself. Provide stuff at a price point no one can compete - do this just good enough to hook people and keep the thought in their heads to buy at your place. Not totally reasonable when thinking it through but that's just marketing of people who know how the human psyche works. @amzn marketing: well done.

RomanBob 7y ago

My thought exactly, especially since they didn't cancel it.

anigbrowl 7y ago

Astute assessment.

cronix 7y ago

Or some employees had some fun as part of the Amazon protests.

mikorym 7y ago

I was thinking this exactly. How much would that kind of advertising cost? And the money essentially goes to their customers rather than an advertising agency.

trilila 7y ago

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!

coryfklein 7y ago

The Klein effect strikes again! > I need to coin a term for this concept, I see it on every Hacker News thread once it reaches a certain size. It is the attribution of the topic to some nefarious intention of a dude in marketing. Once you start noticing it you can't unsee. > Intel fires their CEO? It's a PR stunt. > Startup abandons Europe due to GDPR? PR STUNT! > AlphaZero beats professionals at Dota 2? You guessed it, it's just PR for oligarchy parent Alphabet. > I see this so often now it's becoming humorous. As if some how this being all about PR explains everything. It doesn't explain anything! Although I'm sure Bill over in marketing loves that he has subsumed the historical role of deity in explaining the unknown. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17499447 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17499447