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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

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.

Xelbair 7y ago
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.
sgift 7y ago
Amazon is a professional seller, they should know better. Buyers are not professionals, they shouldn't have to. Depending on the country this is even enshrined in law (e.g. customer protection laws against accidental buying).
- Mirioron 7y ago
  He's talking about it from the moral standpoint. Most customers will be able to tell that something is off when camera gear is that cheap.
  - sgift 7y ago
    Amazon is not a person, it's a company. Attributing moral to a transaction with non-person entities is frail itself. Does moral even apply here? What does it mean?
    - chillacy 7y ago
      I’m not the op but if you take morality to be an emotional thing then it does work: people (and primates) have an intrinsic sense of fairness. But that is sort of a relativist position, most people talk about morality like it’s some absolute truth.
    - ultrarunner 7y ago
      Someone is responsible for that listing and the pricing it receives. The company operates collectively, but there is ultimately a human behind each sale. OP seems to be interested in the morality surrounding the treatment of the people involved, not the legal entity they’ve invented.
      - paulintrognon 7y ago
        But it still a big difference at the end; if the customer lose money, that's money he or she cannot spend for himself/herself. Whereas on Amazon's side, all of the employees' wages will remain identical. The people at that company won't be impacted, just treasury of the company is. That's where the disctinction is important.
        ultrarunner 7y ago
        In some cases, yes, but to the extent that third parties sell on Amazon you could easily have a Chinese sole proprietor shoot himself in the foot. The concept carries up to multiple employees, it’s just diluted. Does dilution affect morality? I don’t know. I kind of suspect not though.
      - rkachowski 7y ago
        That's not necessarily true. There's nothing to say that this wasn't an intentional stunt to push Prime Day to the front of various deal websites by selling camera equipment to professionals as a loss leader. The size of Amazon is such that they can afford to bleed heavily from selling mid range pro camera equipment at a significant loss whilst recouping the profit from all the incidental purchases and traffic that the attention brought. I'm not saying that this is what happened, but marketing budgets run into the millions (especially for a highly promoted yearly event like Prime Day) and dropping a few hundred thousand on a scheme like this isn't so outrageous.
  - hrktb 7y ago
    It goes both ways, something too cheap will also get you no sympathy when it ends up being fake or a knockoff. On a moral standpoint I think it evens out.
  - antihero 7y ago
    I don't think there's really that much morally decadent in taking advantage of the mistakes one of the richest companies and quite morally dubious companies on the planet.
  - dwild 7y ago
    > Most customers will be able to tell that something is off when camera gear is that cheap. It's Amazon, I expect them not to make any mistake. Theses prices are crazy, but they advertise Prime Day as a day of crazy deals.
- luckylion 7y ago
  > Depending on the country this is even enshrined in law (e.g. customer protection laws against accidental buying). Isn't that usually the case for the seller as well, i.e. obvious pricing errors allow the seller to void the contract?
  - bschne 7y ago
    As far as I know in Switzerland this is symmetrical and an error on one party's side that is considered to be "obvious" to the other party makes it possible for the disadvantaged party to void the contract. Not sure about other countries.
MisterPea 7y ago
I think who you're purchasing from does make a lot of difference though and it is not necessarily an orthogonal topic in morality. I'd imagine a lot less people would take advantage of this pricing error against a mom and pop store than a multinational corporation like amazon.
moksly 7y ago
Is it really about morals? I see it more as a service that makes people chose your site over the competition. It basically boils down to “the customer is always right”, doesn’t it? Morally the customer isn’t always right, but you sell more when you protect them from their own mistakes as well as yours.
- close04 7y ago
  > Morally the customer isn’t always right The customer isn't always right regardless of metric. That saying is just a distilled version of "treat your customers right even when they're wrong and you will gain more than you lose". But it's a choice the shop makes, it's not a law. And many customers (try to) abuse it.
stefan_ 7y ago
Amazon is famously the company that sells you counterfeit crap only to point at some anonymous third party.
dvdbloc 7y ago
I think it’s also proportional though. Like this amount of money isn’t even pennies to Amazon and I think people recognize that. If this was something much crazier, a mistake that could put Amazon out of business in the same way a financial mistake to an individual could make them homeless, I think at least more people second guess what they are doing.
- Sherl 7y ago
  You know that you or me need to pay for those costs(losses) somehow?
  - paulintrognon 7y ago
    We are aleardy paying /have already paid for those. The margin Amazon makes is (way) bigger than the losses they just had. So all the previous buyers that gave Amazon money and contributed to those margins "paid" for those cost, I think.
    - sagebird 7y ago
      Dollars don’t really maintain identity when they are grouped into accounts and later withdrawn. There are different ways to do accounting, fifo, lifo etc, it’s mostly a construction ( though it is necessary to be consistent), not exactly “real”. I would be less concerned about who paid for it, and more concerned on who would receive an effect as a result.
ace_of_spades 7y ago
I would argue that this is just a product of capitalistic logic in action. You see an opportunity and want to profit as this is how you are SUPPOSED to play the game. Look at all the things that Amazon is trying to do to make a profit... Not the least of it listening with microphones in peoples home to private conversations in the hope of training more powerful AI systems and making a few more sells of toilet paper on the way. Or Uber breaking the law in multiple places. Not to mention everyones favorite... FB... If these players are „permitted“ to do those things, it‘s just a normal consequence that the small person is trying everything they can to profit in return. Capitalism (at least as practiced today) is not a moral system. We live in a capitalistic society. Thus, our society is not moral. I am not really surprised and don‘t really feel like it‘s super useful to just blame the people for a more systemic issue.
- ohnope 7y ago
  For me, this is really the answer. It’s a fair move in the realm of the game being played, especially considering the big player. I don’t think the move is always fair with any match up in capitalism, but for this scenario it works on a moral level.
reallydontask 7y ago
> If you accidentally purchased a bag of M&Ms from Amazon for 500 dollars instead of 5, they will let you undo it. It's just good PR for Amazon to undo it Also, as pointed out by other commenters the asymmetry might also be related to the asymmetry in financial resources between the parties involved. A lot of shops will not honour deals like this, maybe even Amazon in the past (I could well be remembering this wrongly and not be Amazon but other online retailers)
- ultrarunner 7y ago
  Computer parts often get priced erroneously low. People manage to order them, but I’ve never heard of someone not having their order canceled.
cf498 7y ago
I think the underlying question is, is it unethical to act morally towards immorally acting people? Not immoral actions in the past but continuing behavior? Especially once unethical actors count on you still acting morally towards them? Amazon is maximizing profits at all cost, why should my actions towards them not be influenced by their behavior? edit: It gets interesting once you take it one step further, is it ethical to act ethically towards unethical actors? Or more specific, are you obliged to steal Hitlers wallet? http://www.aeromental.net/2012/04/05/the-book-with-the-question-about-stealing-hitlers-wallet/ http://www.aeromental.net/2012/04/05/the-book-with-the-quest... edit2: Less abstract, there is also a real life example, some women who scammed ISIS by posing as to be wives on the internet. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11775228/Three-Chechen-girls-catfished-isis.-Now-theyre-internet-heroes.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11775228/Three...
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thaveedu 7y ago
How would we differentiate a genuinely huge discount from a mis-priced sale ? Ethically both parties are obliged to cancel the deal if the transaction doesn't incentivise both parties . But big players look at these as a good PR rather than mistake since the losses might be a fraction of what they are spending for marketing
comex 7y ago
On the other hand... Who doesn't have a story of being 'screwed over' by some company or other – usually many stories? Who hasn't had their share of bad customer service interactions? It's not because companies are evil. Maybe some are – but it's an inherent asymmetry that when you are one customer out of anywhere from thousands to (in Amazon's case) hundreds of millions, you're not going to get personalized attention. You have to deal with their system, whatever it is, and if their system screws up, it probably hurts you more than it hurts them. Speaking of Amazon in particular, I've heard they have quite good customer service. But I was still pretty disappointed a few months ago to learn firsthand that the "guaranteed delivery" they keep promising just means that if they miss it, you can get a free month of Prime. Not even automatically; you have to spend the time to contact customer service. Now, I've ordered a ton of packages from Amazon and they've almost always been very reliable; overall I'm a highly satisfied customer. My package that got lost wasn't even important! But they said "guaranteed", and when I learned that that basically meant nothing, I felt kind of screwed over. So when, for once, it's Amazon that gets screwed over by the little guy... to me it feels karmic.
coldtea 7y ago
>It’s kind of interesting- the asymmetry of moral expectations and entitlement Not really. Non symmetric things (a behemoth of a company and individual regular Joe/Jane customers) shouldn't be treated symmetrically in the first place. Screw the company, all power to the consumer makes a lot of sense morally. >I just think it’s amazing how frail people’s morality is, how it goes out the window when certain conditions are met. I think it makes total sense for morality to adapt to circumstances, and not be some rigid changeless set of rules that one enforces like a Vulcan. Else it would be like Anatole France's description of the law: "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread". Now that's injustice -- having a fixed "morality" that treats everyone the same for the same transgression. And, of course, if it was a little store down the corner, people would have had different sympathies, if old Roger there made a pricing mistake. They'd be much more in favor of the former than of the consumer who benefited from it...
niklasrde 7y ago
I've had an Amazon (Marketplace) order cancelled on me, which was due to a pricing error (£500 instead of £1000), and there's nothing I can do about it. I kind of expected it as it was too good to be true, but what annoyed me was that it took them a week to cancel it.
londons_explore 7y ago
I rent cars from a rental company that seems to have a pricing mistake and the prices are $0 for a week's car rental. Sometimes at busy periods, the price goes up to $0.25. I've been doing it for 3 years now, and every time the member of staff at the desk looks at the price and goes "whoa - that's a good deal!". There's no fake names, hacking, or free trials involved - anyone can get the deal by clicking the right buttons on their website. I would guess they have a very complex pricing database, and the boss said "we aren't competitive, reduce all prices by $10 per day", and that left some prices at or below zero... Is it morally wrong? How is it different from my neighbour lending me a car for free?
- ridaj 7y ago
  Rental car companies frequently resort to personalized pricing. I've been in situations where just by using a different country TLD to make your reservation you could get a 2x price difference. Same car, same options, everything. So, good for you that you get a good deal out of this.
- _rs 7y ago
  To give some idea of scale, is that a smaller company, or a nationwide chain? Could you say which country?
- sagebird 7y ago
  It’s very different. The rental company knows that you do this, you have showed employees this, and they chose not to change the falling price algorithm. The difference is that it is not an obvious error, but a strategy.
kartan 7y ago
> 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 precision. You will get your package at home and then you will be informed that the price "was a mistake" and was 10% more expensive. They will print prices in adverts and then say that it was a mistake when people gets to the shop. Companies are not human beings, as other comments already have said, to involve morality in this issue makes no sense whatsoever. The real question is: is this an efficient way of improving the consumers well being? If this rules avoid companies of abusing price changes and labeling anything as being a "mistake" and at the same time it encourages better quality on price setting and the "punishment" is not big enough to send all companies to foreclosure. Then it seems a very good deal. It makes economic sense.
- readhn 7y ago
  This was not a price "mistake"! This was a well executed marketing campaign - they are looking to see how much ROI they will get on such marketing move. By the next prime day there will be millions more people logged in - looking for super deals!!!! Do you really think they dont have a complex system in place that would flag this huge price discrepancy 100x before the product ships out? I dont think so.
- readhn 7y ago
  "Companies are not human beings" I beg to differ... Corporate personhood is the legal notion that a corporation, separately from its associated human beings (like owners, managers, or employees), has at least some of the legal rights and responsibilities enjoyed by natural persons (physical humans).
  - moate 7y ago
    "Human beings" =/="personhood".
normalhuman 7y ago
> If you accidentally purchased a bag of M&Ms from Amazon for 500 dollars instead of 5, they will let you undo it. Of course, and they do it out of self-interest. On one hand, 495 dollars are not worth losing a client for life. More importantly, it is not in their interest to scare people away from using their service. The story could spread and cause significant damage to their reputation. > On the other hand, if the matter is reversed, Amazon is expected to be a good sport and take the loss Yes, because the situation is asymmetrical. Amazon is afraid of losing customers, but customers are not afraid of losing Amazon. > I just think it’s amazing how frail people’s morality is, how it goes out the window when certain conditions are met. I don't think that the majority of people nowadays believes that "the system" is fair. Most people perceive the game as rigged in favor of the rich and powerful, so they feel no moral obligation towards them. But you are right, human beings are depressingly flawed. Many people will steal or take an unfair advantage if they know they won't be caught. The customer taking advantage of a mistake to receive an unfair deal and Amazon not paying taxes are more or less the same behavior.
- Slartie 7y ago
  > The customer taking advantage of a mistake to receive an unfair deal and Amazon not paying taxes are more or less the same behavior. This is the key insight. The customer takes advantage of Amazons' inability to deal with its highly complex and huge pricing system of millions of articles without occasionally making fatal errors, while Amazon is taking advantage of the world's population's inability to deal with the highly complex tax rule interplay between many different countries which still want to interface with each other (= do trade) and thus occasionally create loopholes that can be exploited. The latter is impossible for the consumer due to scale (there's millions of consumers paying tiny amounts of taxes each, exploiting loopholes doesn't scale down that much), and the former is impossible for Amazon due to its scale (there's just one Amazon with a giant cash flow, to exploit a pricing failure of another online store in a way that makes a difference to this cash flow is impossible for several reasons, most importantly that there is no other online store large enough).
- shawnz 7y ago
  > The customer taking advantage of a mistake to receive an unfair deal and Amazon not paying taxes are more or less the same behavior. Disagree. Amazon are forced and obligated to use legal tax avoidance strategies to be competitive and to fulfill their fiduciary duty. You might say that tax avoidance isn't in the spirit of the law but then why don't lawmakers implement mitigations for it? Because they don't want to, they want to preserve the possibility of tax avoidance to appease corporations. So to me that means that tax avoidance actually is in the spirit of the law as it stands currently.
arghwhat 7y ago
The simple conclusion is that there were never any morals involved. There was only greed and selfishness, that in some cases just so happened to be justifiable as moral. Of course, I believe that consumers should have good (but reasonable) protection, as consumers are usually the weaker end of the transaction, with the least knowledge and capacity, and due to an evil customer being able to do far less harm than an evil company. However, one side isn't any more moral than the other. My only problem with this incident was that I didn't get a chance to get in on it... Instead of having to make excuses for myself as to why upgrading to full-frame can wait a few years as it's too expensive, I could just have done it now. One thing is getting a good deal, but getting something today that would otherwise only be possible in the future is something entirely different. You cannot set a price on gaining time.
mehrdadn 7y ago
> 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 Your "reverse" is not the inverse situation, which is what you should be really comparing against. The real question you need to ask is what people would do in Amazon's shoes. The answer to that is far less clear to me.
masonic 7y ago
Amazon is expected to be a good sport and take the loss In several cases of mine, they just canceled the order. They certainly let FBO resellers flake on "errors". I've bought items that were priced low, bought the entire inventory, then found the order "cancelled" as "out of stock"... only to find the reseller list the exact same item in the same quantity with a new Amazon product number (but the same UPC) at a higher price. I pointed this out to Amazon, who insisted this was fine.
datarake 7y ago
accidentally? I don't think so. Just take a look at this thread and the other hundred of sites where this news was on the first page... n x (13k-0.1k) is much less than the amount of money necessary for a such advertising campaign
jspash 7y ago
This reminds me of a quandary we found ourselves in when my company first started selling on the Amazon Marketplace. We produce & sell art prints. We had just signed a new supplier of images (a well-known auction house) who decided to release the rights to photographs of all the items they've sold over the past 50-100 years. Great! New images that the world has probably never seen. It's always good to get a new range in, especially when it comes with an established name. So we pipe in their data feed into our system. And out it goes in the Amazon data feed without a hitch. But we hadn't yet eyeballed the data or images. Long story short, we ended up selling things like a "Pure silver antique tea pot. circa 1890" "French hand-sewn wedding dress. Turn of the century" "Two wooden panels found in Syrian tomb 1200A.D. with gold leaf detail" etc. £19.95 each!! The list goes on. In the beginning customers were quite understanding as long we cancelled the order with an explanation before it shipped. But a few "antiques" were indeed printed and sent to customers. Rolled up in a brown cardboard tube. Disappointing to say the least.
rawTruthHurts 7y ago
It doesn't need to be Amazon: had such mistake been made by a small law-abiding worker-rights-observant webshop, people would still find moral arguments to justify "it's their right". I despise Amazon as the next man, and would have loved to take advantage of the mistake; but, on double standards, this subthread is king.
blue_devil 7y ago
The price of the goods is negligible. Amazon just got the best PR with this. Millions more people will be spending millions of hours sifting through deals any time there's some kind of Deal Day.
99_00 7y ago
It's not about "moral expectations". When customers buy from a respected retailer they expect pricing mistakes in the customer's favour to be honoured because it is an industry norm among respected retailers. If Amazon wants to market its self as a respected retailer they will act the way customers expect a respected retailer to act.
raducu 7y ago
I don't know about other countries, but where I live you are allowed to return any product you bought online within 30 days of your purchase. It's not about morals, it's about the laws that give different privileges and responsibilities to different actors.
incompatible 7y ago
The asymmetry comes from the value of the outcomes. For Amazon, a multi-billion dollar corporation, the mistake is negligible. For a photographer, it may be the deal of a lifetime.
afiori 7y ago
I disagree with you, but also with many of the answers that disagree with you. My stance is that the reason you are allowed to get refunds is to maintain an healthy consumer ecosystem and disincentivize online scams. I agree that it is not a morally good choice to take advantage of a obvious mistake (even if consideration of who gets damaged by this is relevant and non trivial) and in this sense I agree that there is a moral asymmetry in consumer-company relations that is not entirely morally justified. On the other hand from a legal standpoint I believe this is how it should be.
donkeyd 7y ago
In the Netherlands, two similar cases went to court and judges have ruled that the selling party does not have to deliver in such a case. Dutch sources here: https://www.rechtspraak.nl/Organisatie-en-contact/Organisatie/Rechtbanken/Rechtbank-Zeeland-West-Brabant/Nieuws/Paginas/Leen-Bakker-hoeft-geen-hoogslapers-van-24-euro-te-leveren.aspx https://www.rechtspraak.nl/Organisatie-en-contact/Organisati... https://www.techzine.nl/nieuws/42639/otto-hoeft-goedkope-lcd-televisies-niet-te-leveren.html https://www.techzine.nl/nieuws/42639/otto-hoeft-goedkope-lcd...
- tripzilch 7y ago
  Thanks, I was wondering and half-expected such a thing to be the case in NL. Note that the customer also has a 14 day window to return their (unopened) bag of M&Ms when ordered online.
- dtech 7y ago
  This is also formalized in Dutch law. A consumer is entitled to the list price, unless there has been a "obvious" mistake. The classical example is an item being listed for €5,99 instead of €599,-
  - brokenmachine 7y ago
    I know we're talking about what the actual law is, but interestingly in that classical example you state, making a product cost 599 is clearly to take advantage of the average person's cognitive weaknesses in thinking of 599 as significantly less than 600. If they made the prices a round number like 600 as a rule then it would be much more obvious, and probably they would be less likely to make the mistake of making it 100x less than they intended. Bad luck for them. I wonder how much less they would have made over a year if they made all products that were x.99 be x+1. I'm sure that effect has been measured by these companies at some stage, and that's why they continue to do it. I don't have a lot of sympathy for any company that makes such a mistake, as the consumers aren't repaid the difference due to their price fiddling, and I'm willing to bet the instances in which a company makes a mistake add up to less than the extra money spent by consumers having their innate biases exploited into paying all those extra cents all day every day.
tobr 7y ago
> If you accidentally purchased a bag of M&Ms from Amazon for 500 dollars instead of 5, they will let you undo it. [citation needed] Audible (part of Amazon) started billing me silently for a subscription I did not use, for several years, after I had used a free trial. When I discovered it and canceled the subscription, I could see how around the time the free trial was converted to a running paid subscription, they had also stopped emailing me about anything. My card was automatically charged in the middle of each month, for a relatively small amount, and the bank statement did not make it clear that it was for Audible - all clearly designed to make me not notice what was going on. It worked. All in all, they charged me hundreds of dollars for nothing. Were they a good sport about it? No, I had to sit on the phone for half an hour to talk to someone with very poor English skills, and got only the last payment back.
- mytailorisrich 7y ago
  > [citation needed] You can cancel an order before it ships, and you can return items, can't you?
- gwd 7y ago
  FWIW Audible emails me every month to tell me have a new credit available. Possibly put in place after your experience; but it seems more like just "keeping people engaged in our service" is a better way to sustain subscriptions than hoping people forget about it. And, not to victim-blame here, but I can't quite understand your response to mysterious charges that appear on your card every month. I try to understand where each and every transaction comes from; and if I were to get one I didn't understand several in a row, I'd call the credit card company to contest the charge / get the merchant blocked / get a new credit card.
  - tobr 7y ago
    > FWIW Audible emails me every month to tell me have a new credit available. Perhaps you actually use your Audible account? As I said, they emailed me during the trial, then stopped. They know a certain percentage of users will be unaware of the charges, and they likely prefer to keep it that way. > not to victim-blame here Thanks, but you did just that anyway. I know I could have been more careful. I was responding to a comment claiming that Amazon is forgiving when a customer accidentally spends 100’s of dollars they didn’t mean to, which, given what happened to me, simply isn’t true. Good on you for reviewing each and every transaction, but I have no reason to believe that most people do that.
nobrains 7y ago
This has nothing to do with morality. It is purely economic. Amazon makes a decision whether they can afford to absorb this mistake, and gain brownie/internet/karma/customer-service/loyalty points, or that they cannot afford to absorb and in that case they will simply not honor the mistake. A smaller vendor would probably not have the luxury of that option. Economics, really.
lagadu 7y ago
You seem to be operating under the impression that we as a society have the same expectations of people and of corporations. Let me be very clear: we do not. Corporations are allowed to operate at the pleasure of the people; I was going to say that they're effectively second-class citizens but they're not citizens, they're just a tool that we allow to exist. Because of that we put more burdens on them than we do on people. As to the matter at hand specifically: one of those extra burdens we put on corporations vs what we put on people is: errors on the part of a corporation are not tolerable under any circumstances. There are many such examples of extra burdens: I (this is EU-wide) can return stuff I buy online within 14 days of buying it without giving any reason, just because I feel like it and the seller pays the shipping. Why? Because as a society we decided that we have that right.
- dsr_ 7y ago
  The prices will reflect the percentage of people who use this right -- and this is also valuable information to the seller.
barking 7y ago
The asymmetry stems from the fact that all parties are self interested. Amazon seem to have decided to suck up this loss because it feels it's in their interest to do so. We as onlookers in this situation can empathise with the lucky purchasers but our empathy would pretty quickly dry up if we discovered that this mistake would result in a cost to us.
defertoreptar 7y ago
Amazon is expected to be good sports and take the loss exactly because that is their business strategy. Their mission statement is something like, "we seek to become Earth's most customer centric company." If they didn't have a relaxed refund policy, they wouldn't have the reputation they currently enjoy. Contrary to what you've said, they do have public trust: just in the form of "Amazon does right by the customer." It's trust, not morality, that forms these expectations. For the trustworthy customers who are equally concerned about their reputation, they wouldn't dare "cheat the system" by exploiting a pricing glitch. For them, there is symmetry of expectations. The asymmetry only happens for customers who do not care about their reputation for being trustworthy. This can go the other way as well: an unscrupulous company who takes advantage of naive and trusting customers.
- dotancohen 7y ago
  And I am a loyal customer due to that strategy. I had a month in which I had to cancel my credit cards, and my AWS account went unpaid. I knew it would be an entire month before I could put another card on the account due to stupidity at my bank. I called them up and the rep not only let the account continue to operate unpaid, he waived the payment for the month. I have never, ever seen such customer service. AWS might be expensive, it might have a clunky interface and IAM might be a pain in the ass. But I know that I can trust them to keep my business running no matter what.
crispyambulance 7y ago
> It’s kind of interesting- the asymmetry of moral expectations and entitlement. Amazon made a relatively small mistake considering their scale. It's OK. They can mitigate this by stopping orders that haven't shipped. For the items that did ship, they can contact the buyers and ask nicely for them to return the items, perhaps in exchange for an amazon gift card. I don't think it's reasonable to put consumer "morality" in question here.
ashelmire 7y ago
We have laws about truth in advertising so that people don't get shafted by these big companies. Sure, they could say it was a mistake, but then they might have to fight it... and it really is a drop in the bucket for them. Amazon still made billions in revenue each of those days.
msiyer 7y ago
Morality has no place when dealing with a corporation. Legality is the only thing that counts. >> If you accidentally purchased a bag of M&Ms from Amazon for 500 dollars instead of 5, they will let you undo it If it is technically possible, then it is the seller's mistake and the customer deserves a refund. The seller may choose to not undo. The customer may choose to sue them. It is a PR nightmare in today's world. It is illegal. >> 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.) If it is technically possible, and if the customer has not hacked the system in any way, it is the seller's mistake. The customer should not care. Once the sale is made, it is legally over. The seller has no legal way of recovering the money from the customer. The seller should have verified the prices.
- jtuente 7y ago
  > Once the sale is made, it is legally over. No the sale isn't the final step, delivery of the product is. In this case, Amazon has not delivered the product therefore the transaction is not complete. To borrow from a sibling post, the chickens in his cart could be considered delivered and paid for making it legally untenable to reverse the transaction.
tripzilch 7y ago
> I’m not going to entertain any counter arguments that Amazon deserves this (...) > I just think it’s amazing how frail people’s morality is, how it goes out the window when certain conditions are met. The condition in this case being you dismissing large parts of that morality because they are supposedly "orthogonal" (to you). Of course it's going to seem frail to you, if you decide beforehand you will ignore any reasoning behind a moral position. I'm willing to say it, I don't care about their loss because they are a huge multi national corporation that makes billions. Not a person, but one of those weird gigantic business machines that share our planet now. That's such an incredibly huge power differential between you and another entity, anyone pretending they apply the same moral reasoning to both is truly deluding themselves. BTW, deluding yourself is for instance, anthropomorphizing an entity made of paper and laws, to "be a good sport" or not. Ridiculous, what does that even mean? You realize this makes about as much sense as being angry at your coffee machine if it breaks? Yes it happens, yes people do it, but no it's not to be taken seriously. But ultimately what it comes down to is whether Amazon is legally required to fulfill these orders. Because you can give a corporation a legal code, but not a moral code. If they are not, then that's fine, it's not like the customers had a specific right to buy a $13k camera for $100. But really you just wrote this to feel good about yourself? > I just think it’s amazing how frail people’s morality is, how it goes out the window when certain conditions are met. But you're better than that, aren't you? Not being like most people. And just had to tell us about it
thatcat 7y ago
I think its probably hard to feel bad gouging amazon on the price of camera equiptment when they do the same on a daily basis as a policy. By the time you consider their complex tax evasion schemes, you'll have already clicked buy. Treat people how you expect to be treated and all that...
lloydatkinson 7y ago
how it goes out the window when certain conditions are met. Almost as if one is an organisation worth literally billions and the other is an individual who has to worry about money every month.
almog 7y ago
Being able to cancel is formalized in Amazon's terms and condition, not a courtesy.
peterburkimsher 7y ago
"If you accidentally purchased a bag of M&Ms from Amazon for 500 dollars" - Uber accidentally overcharged people for their taxi rides, and people are outraged [1]. Will Amazon pay the full price to the original manufacturer (in this case Sony)? I feel like there's a parallel to be made with media piracy in here somewhere. If you could steal a magic Mars bar [2] that didn't deprive someone else of it, why should you still pay for it? I'm not sure that taking advantage of a glitch like this for cheap physical items is ethical, but I can't really express why. I have no such issues with people using Sci-hub, because Elsevier doesn't pay researchers anything. For music my views are very grey - even though piracy does deprive the artist of income today, I would never have discovered many of my favourite bands if I hadn't been able to listen to their music for free (on the radio or from other sources), and I've tried to compensate for their loss by going to hundreds of concerts, buying T-shirts, and supporting the original artist. When Apple takes a 30% cut and the record company takes 65%, the original artist doesn't stand to lose or gain much through record sales, so it doesn't feel "as wrong". Hardware is a lot more finite though, and I would want to be sure the engineers are actually getting paid before taking a deal that seems like someone is getting ripped off. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49031165 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49031165 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6vgkDbMcZc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6vgkDbMcZc
chrischen 7y ago
The opposite sort of thing happens on Airbnb. Most Airbnbs have/had strict cancellation policies, but if they screw up and you are out of accommodations last minute you can get a refund of what you would have paid, or at best alternate accommodations.
bufferoverflow 7y ago
That's not true. If you read the SlickDeals forum thread, most people expected Amazon to cancel all these orders. But it looks like they just didn't. And neither did they ask the buyers to return the items.
mikeash 7y ago
I’m pretty sure everyone expects them to cancel these orders. The reason this is getting so much attention is because they actually honored the price, at least for some customers. Nobody forced them to do that.
- brokenmachine 7y ago
  And in so doing earned many times that value in free advertising and feel good stories about how great they are. Coincidence?
XorNot 7y ago
Amazon is a limited liability corporation. It can lose money and go bankrupt without an ability to recover debts from the actual people running it. There is absolutely no relevant moral equivalency here.
ZeroFries 7y ago
I've purchased products and handed over money and still not honoured for a price claimed to be a mistake. Latest example 40g of marijuana priced at $1/g. They ended up shipping a quarter ounce instead, 20% of the original deal.
hartator 7y ago
I think a small doubt remains that’s a clever ad for prime day. And that makes it okay from a moral standpoint.
- sagebird 7y ago
  I don’t think it is a pr / marketing stunt. 1. They would have used a cute price eg the prime day date. 2. They would later claim intentionally as to not seem incompetent. 3. They would pick a more relatable or mainstream product that has a optimal pr spin. Like a family friendly, or youth demographic. Not sure what the best example would be. A gaming pc or outdoor patio kit, something other than a 10k camera lens for photo nerds.
stanfordkid 7y ago
A mega corporation with billions of dollars and thousands of workers is going to be held to different moral standard than a single person buying a camera lens. Clearly society doesn't judge 4 year olds to the same moral standard as 50 year old men. You'd laugh at a 50 year old man crying over spilling his juice ... but not a 4 year old. So why should we judge individuals to the same moral standards as mega-corporations? The relative value of $500 for an individual is orders of magnitude higher than $13k for Amazon.
ip26 7y ago
Amazon is expected to be a good sport and take the loss — even if the purchase was made in bad faith Expected? Are they? Most sentiment on this sort of event seems to be something like, "will it show up? we'll see", and when it does get canceled it's "shucks :)" I can understand some of the feelings, in part it's just fantastical to observe these powerful systems screw up. I once incredulously ordered an item I wanted, priced at $0.00, and was shocked to see it arrive at my doorstep (I corrected the retailer and paid)
gkilmain 7y ago
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.
nathanvanfleet 7y ago
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.
whiddershins 7y ago
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.
skizm 7y ago
The only reason they will "let you undo it" (buying something for $500 instead of $5) is because goodwill is hard to buy and doesn't cost them anything in this case. It isn't like the company is "being moral" or anything like that, it's just marketing. Same with eating the cost here. They might have some legal recourse to get the items back or the money, but at the of the day, some amazon analysts are doing a math problem and trying to determine if they will lose more money (from bad press) than they will by just eating the cost. Morality doesn't come into either of these situations.
DINKDINK 7y ago
>asymmetry of moral expectations and entitlement. What does morality have anything to do with the market expectation of "When I shop with firm X I want to have a good experience"? If a consumer has to always second guess whether or not a seller will try to clawback their goods because they miscalculated their asking price, that's a horrible consumer experience. If I want to contract with a firm (say a credit provider such as a credit card network) that will defend me if I signal I'm going to default on a payment because I'm unhappy with a price, the market can sort those needs, desires, actions properly. I'm pretty sure the free advertising Amazon is getting from this "gaff" (Was it a gaff? was it guerilla marketing?) and the customer loyalty they gain if they provide "When you shop with the Amazon firm you have a great experience" will be worth it. Markets don't survive because they adhere to a mosaic of subjective beliefs about morality, they survive because people uphold their commitments.
la_barba 7y ago
I think you're giving people too much credit, I doubt the people were thinking about Amazons HR policies, or any moral or otherwise nuanced socio-economic arguments. That's not to say they're horrible people, well.. maybe just a little greedy and/or without any shame. I know a lot of people that are very religious (or non-religious but 'principled') who will still lie on their resume. Its just a human thing I guess..
runarberg 7y ago
The counter argument that you are not entertaining is precisely the argument that you should entertain. This behavior is called tit for tat and it is often the optimal strategy in many game theory situations. There are some evidence that people behave according to tit for tat, that is they are more likely to take advantage of an actor that has previously acted in bad faith. I don’t think this is a demonstration of how frail people’s morality is. But rather yet another demonstration that peoples morality can be explained in big part by game theory.
TallGuyShort 7y ago
I don't believe the asymmetry here is because of morals or entitlement. Amazon is the one that advertizes the price. Once it's advertised and a transaction has been completed, that's a contract. That contract includes the possibility of returns because they compete in the retail space, where there is an asymmetry in that the company has had ample opportunity to evaluate the product and price it accordingly, but the customer doesn't otherwise have much to evaluate on. If Amazon does this at such an astronomical scale that they don't notice a big price discrepancy, that's the cost of operating such an astronomical scale. They still made the contract - and it was even their lawyers who wrote the contract and spend hours poring over it. If I order truck loads of landscaping material to be delivered to my house and I later learn that it wasn't such a great price, you better believe I'm now stuck with that material and the bill. I actually had a similar event happen in a real-world retail store. They were advertising frozen chickens for an absurdly low price. I checked with an employee that the price listed was not a mistake - they said it was correct. I grabbed a manager, and checked that the price listed was not a mistake - they said it was correct. I took 2 cart loads of frozen chickens to the front of the store - and they didn't notice the price was absurdly low until I had already swiped my credit card and the cashier was telling me the total. By the time she grabbed a manager, the transaction was complete, and the same manager who confirmed the price now told me it was a mistake. Fuck them - they listed the price, I checked, I finalized the transaction.
- stronglikedan 7y ago
  Different strokes. I'm sure they were hoping you were one type of person, but willing to take the loss if you weren't.
- cr0sh 7y ago
  I had basically the same thing happen to me several years ago, but on hamburger; $1.49/lb for 5 lb? Nope - $1.49 each! After a cartload at one store; went to another - same. It was system-wide. So I went to a couple more over the next couple of days (I had a large chest freezer at the time). Finally, about the third day in the discrepancy was noticed and the signs/system changed. Best "mistake deal" I've gotten so far - but nothing like this camera deal at Amazon.
- 7y ago
hellllllllooo 7y ago
I don't see any moral issue until Amazon indicates it made a mistake and is actually asking for the return of the goods or for more money. I haven't seen them do that. Maybe their intention was to provide a great deal to their customers. Even if it was unintentional the relative cost to Amazon is tiny and but the relative cost to any individual customer could be quite large. What you can afford to pay is not absolute so damage caused is not equivalent between an individual and a billion dollar corporation. In life and money there are no moral absolutes and treating all corporations and individuals the same is not necessary. For me, immoral actions are those with the potential to cause harm, and I don't see equivalent harm in your two examples.
zip6 7y ago
A while ago I ordered a 10TB backup drive for $80, knowing it was a pricing mistake. Amazon cancelled the order and gave me a $20 gift card. I believe whether or not the retailer has to honour pricing mistakes depends which country you live in (I'm in UK). Annoyingly, the $20 gift card wasn't applied automatically to the next purchase, as it was supposed to (maybe because it only applies to USA Amazon?) (Funnily enough, the pricing mistake did manage to get the product to be the #1 best seller.)
johnfn 7y ago
Amazon has high millions to billions of dollars to throw around. A consumer does not. There’s no asymmetry when you consider dollar value proportionality.

Xelbair 7y ago

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.

sgift 7y ago

Amazon is a professional seller, they should know better. Buyers are not professionals, they shouldn't have to. Depending on the country this is even enshrined in law (e.g. customer protection laws against accidental buying).

Mirioron 7y ago
He's talking about it from the moral standpoint. Most customers will be able to tell that something is off when camera gear is that cheap.
- sgift 7y ago
  Amazon is not a person, it's a company. Attributing moral to a transaction with non-person entities is frail itself. Does moral even apply here? What does it mean?
  - chillacy 7y ago
    I’m not the op but if you take morality to be an emotional thing then it does work: people (and primates) have an intrinsic sense of fairness. But that is sort of a relativist position, most people talk about morality like it’s some absolute truth.
  - ultrarunner 7y ago
    Someone is responsible for that listing and the pricing it receives. The company operates collectively, but there is ultimately a human behind each sale. OP seems to be interested in the morality surrounding the treatment of the people involved, not the legal entity they’ve invented.
    - paulintrognon 7y ago
      But it still a big difference at the end; if the customer lose money, that's money he or she cannot spend for himself/herself. Whereas on Amazon's side, all of the employees' wages will remain identical. The people at that company won't be impacted, just treasury of the company is. That's where the disctinction is important.
      - ultrarunner 7y ago
        In some cases, yes, but to the extent that third parties sell on Amazon you could easily have a Chinese sole proprietor shoot himself in the foot. The concept carries up to multiple employees, it’s just diluted. Does dilution affect morality? I don’t know. I kind of suspect not though.
    - rkachowski 7y ago
      That's not necessarily true. There's nothing to say that this wasn't an intentional stunt to push Prime Day to the front of various deal websites by selling camera equipment to professionals as a loss leader. The size of Amazon is such that they can afford to bleed heavily from selling mid range pro camera equipment at a significant loss whilst recouping the profit from all the incidental purchases and traffic that the attention brought. I'm not saying that this is what happened, but marketing budgets run into the millions (especially for a highly promoted yearly event like Prime Day) and dropping a few hundred thousand on a scheme like this isn't so outrageous.
- hrktb 7y ago
  It goes both ways, something too cheap will also get you no sympathy when it ends up being fake or a knockoff. On a moral standpoint I think it evens out.
- antihero 7y ago
  I don't think there's really that much morally decadent in taking advantage of the mistakes one of the richest companies and quite morally dubious companies on the planet.
- dwild 7y ago
  > Most customers will be able to tell that something is off when camera gear is that cheap. It's Amazon, I expect them not to make any mistake. Theses prices are crazy, but they advertise Prime Day as a day of crazy deals.
luckylion 7y ago
> Depending on the country this is even enshrined in law (e.g. customer protection laws against accidental buying). Isn't that usually the case for the seller as well, i.e. obvious pricing errors allow the seller to void the contract?
- bschne 7y ago
  As far as I know in Switzerland this is symmetrical and an error on one party's side that is considered to be "obvious" to the other party makes it possible for the disadvantaged party to void the contract. Not sure about other countries.

MisterPea 7y ago

I think who you're purchasing from does make a lot of difference though and it is not necessarily an orthogonal topic in morality. I'd imagine a lot less people would take advantage of this pricing error against a mom and pop store than a multinational corporation like amazon.

moksly 7y ago

Is it really about morals? I see it more as a service that makes people chose your site over the competition. It basically boils down to “the customer is always right”, doesn’t it? Morally the customer isn’t always right, but you sell more when you protect them from their own mistakes as well as yours.

close04 7y ago
> Morally the customer isn’t always right The customer isn't always right regardless of metric. That saying is just a distilled version of "treat your customers right even when they're wrong and you will gain more than you lose". But it's a choice the shop makes, it's not a law. And many customers (try to) abuse it.

stefan_ 7y ago

Amazon is famously the company that sells you counterfeit crap only to point at some anonymous third party.

dvdbloc 7y ago

I think it’s also proportional though. Like this amount of money isn’t even pennies to Amazon and I think people recognize that. If this was something much crazier, a mistake that could put Amazon out of business in the same way a financial mistake to an individual could make them homeless, I think at least more people second guess what they are doing.

Sherl 7y ago
You know that you or me need to pay for those costs(losses) somehow?
- paulintrognon 7y ago
  We are aleardy paying /have already paid for those. The margin Amazon makes is (way) bigger than the losses they just had. So all the previous buyers that gave Amazon money and contributed to those margins "paid" for those cost, I think.
  - sagebird 7y ago
    Dollars don’t really maintain identity when they are grouped into accounts and later withdrawn. There are different ways to do accounting, fifo, lifo etc, it’s mostly a construction ( though it is necessary to be consistent), not exactly “real”. I would be less concerned about who paid for it, and more concerned on who would receive an effect as a result.

ace_of_spades 7y ago

I would argue that this is just a product of capitalistic logic in action. You see an opportunity and want to profit as this is how you are SUPPOSED to play the game. Look at all the things that Amazon is trying to do to make a profit... Not the least of it listening with microphones in peoples home to private conversations in the hope of training more powerful AI systems and making a few more sells of toilet paper on the way. Or Uber breaking the law in multiple places. Not to mention everyones favorite... FB... If these players are „permitted“ to do those things, it‘s just a normal consequence that the small person is trying everything they can to profit in return. Capitalism (at least as practiced today) is not a moral system. We live in a capitalistic society. Thus, our society is not moral. I am not really surprised and don‘t really feel like it‘s super useful to just blame the people for a more systemic issue.

ohnope 7y ago
For me, this is really the answer. It’s a fair move in the realm of the game being played, especially considering the big player. I don’t think the move is always fair with any match up in capitalism, but for this scenario it works on a moral level.

reallydontask 7y ago

> If you accidentally purchased a bag of M&Ms from Amazon for 500 dollars instead of 5, they will let you undo it. It's just good PR for Amazon to undo it Also, as pointed out by other commenters the asymmetry might also be related to the asymmetry in financial resources between the parties involved. A lot of shops will not honour deals like this, maybe even Amazon in the past (I could well be remembering this wrongly and not be Amazon but other online retailers)

ultrarunner 7y ago
Computer parts often get priced erroneously low. People manage to order them, but I’ve never heard of someone not having their order canceled.

cf498 7y ago

I think the underlying question is, is it unethical to act morally towards immorally acting people? Not immoral actions in the past but continuing behavior? Especially once unethical actors count on you still acting morally towards them? Amazon is maximizing profits at all cost, why should my actions towards them not be influenced by their behavior? edit: It gets interesting once you take it one step further, is it ethical to act ethically towards unethical actors? Or more specific, are you obliged to steal Hitlers wallet? http://www.aeromental.net/2012/04/05/the-book-with-the-question-about-stealing-hitlers-wallet/ http://www.aeromental.net/2012/04/05/the-book-with-the-quest... edit2: Less abstract, there is also a real life example, some women who scammed ISIS by posing as to be wives on the internet. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11775228/Three-Chechen-girls-catfished-isis.-Now-theyre-internet-heroes.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11775228/Three...

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thaveedu 7y ago

How would we differentiate a genuinely huge discount from a mis-priced sale ? Ethically both parties are obliged to cancel the deal if the transaction doesn't incentivise both parties . But big players look at these as a good PR rather than mistake since the losses might be a fraction of what they are spending for marketing

comex 7y ago

On the other hand... Who doesn't have a story of being 'screwed over' by some company or other – usually many stories? Who hasn't had their share of bad customer service interactions? It's not because companies are evil. Maybe some are – but it's an inherent asymmetry that when you are one customer out of anywhere from thousands to (in Amazon's case) hundreds of millions, you're not going to get personalized attention. You have to deal with their system, whatever it is, and if their system screws up, it probably hurts you more than it hurts them. Speaking of Amazon in particular, I've heard they have quite good customer service. But I was still pretty disappointed a few months ago to learn firsthand that the "guaranteed delivery" they keep promising just means that if they miss it, you can get a free month of Prime. Not even automatically; you have to spend the time to contact customer service. Now, I've ordered a ton of packages from Amazon and they've almost always been very reliable; overall I'm a highly satisfied customer. My package that got lost wasn't even important! But they said "guaranteed", and when I learned that that basically meant nothing, I felt kind of screwed over. So when, for once, it's Amazon that gets screwed over by the little guy... to me it feels karmic.

coldtea 7y ago

>It’s kind of interesting- the asymmetry of moral expectations and entitlement Not really. Non symmetric things (a behemoth of a company and individual regular Joe/Jane customers) shouldn't be treated symmetrically in the first place. Screw the company, all power to the consumer makes a lot of sense morally. >I just think it’s amazing how frail people’s morality is, how it goes out the window when certain conditions are met. I think it makes total sense for morality to adapt to circumstances, and not be some rigid changeless set of rules that one enforces like a Vulcan. Else it would be like Anatole France's description of the law: "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread". Now that's injustice -- having a fixed "morality" that treats everyone the same for the same transgression. And, of course, if it was a little store down the corner, people would have had different sympathies, if old Roger there made a pricing mistake. They'd be much more in favor of the former than of the consumer who benefited from it...

niklasrde 7y ago

I've had an Amazon (Marketplace) order cancelled on me, which was due to a pricing error (£500 instead of £1000), and there's nothing I can do about it. I kind of expected it as it was too good to be true, but what annoyed me was that it took them a week to cancel it.

londons_explore 7y ago

I rent cars from a rental company that seems to have a pricing mistake and the prices are $0 for a week's car rental. Sometimes at busy periods, the price goes up to $0.25. I've been doing it for 3 years now, and every time the member of staff at the desk looks at the price and goes "whoa - that's a good deal!". There's no fake names, hacking, or free trials involved - anyone can get the deal by clicking the right buttons on their website. I would guess they have a very complex pricing database, and the boss said "we aren't competitive, reduce all prices by $10 per day", and that left some prices at or below zero... Is it morally wrong? How is it different from my neighbour lending me a car for free?

ridaj 7y ago
Rental car companies frequently resort to personalized pricing. I've been in situations where just by using a different country TLD to make your reservation you could get a 2x price difference. Same car, same options, everything. So, good for you that you get a good deal out of this.
_rs 7y ago
To give some idea of scale, is that a smaller company, or a nationwide chain? Could you say which country?
sagebird 7y ago
It’s very different. The rental company knows that you do this, you have showed employees this, and they chose not to change the falling price algorithm. The difference is that it is not an obvious error, but a strategy.

kartan 7y ago

> 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 precision. You will get your package at home and then you will be informed that the price "was a mistake" and was 10% more expensive. They will print prices in adverts and then say that it was a mistake when people gets to the shop. Companies are not human beings, as other comments already have said, to involve morality in this issue makes no sense whatsoever. The real question is: is this an efficient way of improving the consumers well being? If this rules avoid companies of abusing price changes and labeling anything as being a "mistake" and at the same time it encourages better quality on price setting and the "punishment" is not big enough to send all companies to foreclosure. Then it seems a very good deal. It makes economic sense.

readhn 7y ago
This was not a price "mistake"! This was a well executed marketing campaign - they are looking to see how much ROI they will get on such marketing move. By the next prime day there will be millions more people logged in - looking for super deals!!!! Do you really think they dont have a complex system in place that would flag this huge price discrepancy 100x before the product ships out? I dont think so.
readhn 7y ago
"Companies are not human beings" I beg to differ... Corporate personhood is the legal notion that a corporation, separately from its associated human beings (like owners, managers, or employees), has at least some of the legal rights and responsibilities enjoyed by natural persons (physical humans).
- moate 7y ago
  "Human beings" =/="personhood".

normalhuman 7y ago

> If you accidentally purchased a bag of M&Ms from Amazon for 500 dollars instead of 5, they will let you undo it. Of course, and they do it out of self-interest. On one hand, 495 dollars are not worth losing a client for life. More importantly, it is not in their interest to scare people away from using their service. The story could spread and cause significant damage to their reputation. > On the other hand, if the matter is reversed, Amazon is expected to be a good sport and take the loss Yes, because the situation is asymmetrical. Amazon is afraid of losing customers, but customers are not afraid of losing Amazon. > I just think it’s amazing how frail people’s morality is, how it goes out the window when certain conditions are met. I don't think that the majority of people nowadays believes that "the system" is fair. Most people perceive the game as rigged in favor of the rich and powerful, so they feel no moral obligation towards them. But you are right, human beings are depressingly flawed. Many people will steal or take an unfair advantage if they know they won't be caught. The customer taking advantage of a mistake to receive an unfair deal and Amazon not paying taxes are more or less the same behavior.

Slartie 7y ago
> The customer taking advantage of a mistake to receive an unfair deal and Amazon not paying taxes are more or less the same behavior. This is the key insight. The customer takes advantage of Amazons' inability to deal with its highly complex and huge pricing system of millions of articles without occasionally making fatal errors, while Amazon is taking advantage of the world's population's inability to deal with the highly complex tax rule interplay between many different countries which still want to interface with each other (= do trade) and thus occasionally create loopholes that can be exploited. The latter is impossible for the consumer due to scale (there's millions of consumers paying tiny amounts of taxes each, exploiting loopholes doesn't scale down that much), and the former is impossible for Amazon due to its scale (there's just one Amazon with a giant cash flow, to exploit a pricing failure of another online store in a way that makes a difference to this cash flow is impossible for several reasons, most importantly that there is no other online store large enough).
shawnz 7y ago
> The customer taking advantage of a mistake to receive an unfair deal and Amazon not paying taxes are more or less the same behavior. Disagree. Amazon are forced and obligated to use legal tax avoidance strategies to be competitive and to fulfill their fiduciary duty. You might say that tax avoidance isn't in the spirit of the law but then why don't lawmakers implement mitigations for it? Because they don't want to, they want to preserve the possibility of tax avoidance to appease corporations. So to me that means that tax avoidance actually is in the spirit of the law as it stands currently.

arghwhat 7y ago

The simple conclusion is that there were never any morals involved. There was only greed and selfishness, that in some cases just so happened to be justifiable as moral. Of course, I believe that consumers should have good (but reasonable) protection, as consumers are usually the weaker end of the transaction, with the least knowledge and capacity, and due to an evil customer being able to do far less harm than an evil company. However, one side isn't any more moral than the other. My only problem with this incident was that I didn't get a chance to get in on it... Instead of having to make excuses for myself as to why upgrading to full-frame can wait a few years as it's too expensive, I could just have done it now. One thing is getting a good deal, but getting something today that would otherwise only be possible in the future is something entirely different. You cannot set a price on gaining time.

mehrdadn 7y ago

> 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 Your "reverse" is not the inverse situation, which is what you should be really comparing against. The real question you need to ask is what people would do in Amazon's shoes. The answer to that is far less clear to me.

masonic 7y ago

Amazon is expected to be a good sport and take the loss In several cases of mine, they just canceled the order. They certainly let FBO resellers flake on "errors". I've bought items that were priced low, bought the entire inventory, then found the order "cancelled" as "out of stock"... only to find the reseller list the exact same item in the same quantity with a new Amazon product number (but the same UPC) at a higher price. I pointed this out to Amazon, who insisted this was fine.

datarake 7y ago

accidentally? I don't think so. Just take a look at this thread and the other hundred of sites where this news was on the first page... n x (13k-0.1k) is much less than the amount of money necessary for a such advertising campaign

jspash 7y ago

This reminds me of a quandary we found ourselves in when my company first started selling on the Amazon Marketplace. We produce & sell art prints. We had just signed a new supplier of images (a well-known auction house) who decided to release the rights to photographs of all the items they've sold over the past 50-100 years. Great! New images that the world has probably never seen. It's always good to get a new range in, especially when it comes with an established name. So we pipe in their data feed into our system. And out it goes in the Amazon data feed without a hitch. But we hadn't yet eyeballed the data or images. Long story short, we ended up selling things like a "Pure silver antique tea pot. circa 1890" "French hand-sewn wedding dress. Turn of the century" "Two wooden panels found in Syrian tomb 1200A.D. with gold leaf detail" etc. £19.95 each!! The list goes on. In the beginning customers were quite understanding as long we cancelled the order with an explanation before it shipped. But a few "antiques" were indeed printed and sent to customers. Rolled up in a brown cardboard tube. Disappointing to say the least.

rawTruthHurts 7y ago

It doesn't need to be Amazon: had such mistake been made by a small law-abiding worker-rights-observant webshop, people would still find moral arguments to justify "it's their right". I despise Amazon as the next man, and would have loved to take advantage of the mistake; but, on double standards, this subthread is king.

blue_devil 7y ago

The price of the goods is negligible. Amazon just got the best PR with this. Millions more people will be spending millions of hours sifting through deals any time there's some kind of Deal Day.

99_00 7y ago

It's not about "moral expectations". When customers buy from a respected retailer they expect pricing mistakes in the customer's favour to be honoured because it is an industry norm among respected retailers. If Amazon wants to market its self as a respected retailer they will act the way customers expect a respected retailer to act.

raducu 7y ago

I don't know about other countries, but where I live you are allowed to return any product you bought online within 30 days of your purchase. It's not about morals, it's about the laws that give different privileges and responsibilities to different actors.

incompatible 7y ago

The asymmetry comes from the value of the outcomes. For Amazon, a multi-billion dollar corporation, the mistake is negligible. For a photographer, it may be the deal of a lifetime.

afiori 7y ago

I disagree with you, but also with many of the answers that disagree with you. My stance is that the reason you are allowed to get refunds is to maintain an healthy consumer ecosystem and disincentivize online scams. I agree that it is not a morally good choice to take advantage of a obvious mistake (even if consideration of who gets damaged by this is relevant and non trivial) and in this sense I agree that there is a moral asymmetry in consumer-company relations that is not entirely morally justified. On the other hand from a legal standpoint I believe this is how it should be.

donkeyd 7y ago

In the Netherlands, two similar cases went to court and judges have ruled that the selling party does not have to deliver in such a case. Dutch sources here: https://www.rechtspraak.nl/Organisatie-en-contact/Organisatie/Rechtbanken/Rechtbank-Zeeland-West-Brabant/Nieuws/Paginas/Leen-Bakker-hoeft-geen-hoogslapers-van-24-euro-te-leveren.aspx https://www.rechtspraak.nl/Organisatie-en-contact/Organisati... https://www.techzine.nl/nieuws/42639/otto-hoeft-goedkope-lcd-televisies-niet-te-leveren.html https://www.techzine.nl/nieuws/42639/otto-hoeft-goedkope-lcd...

tripzilch 7y ago
Thanks, I was wondering and half-expected such a thing to be the case in NL. Note that the customer also has a 14 day window to return their (unopened) bag of M&Ms when ordered online.
dtech 7y ago
This is also formalized in Dutch law. A consumer is entitled to the list price, unless there has been a "obvious" mistake. The classical example is an item being listed for €5,99 instead of €599,-
- brokenmachine 7y ago
  I know we're talking about what the actual law is, but interestingly in that classical example you state, making a product cost 599 is clearly to take advantage of the average person's cognitive weaknesses in thinking of 599 as significantly less than 600. If they made the prices a round number like 600 as a rule then it would be much more obvious, and probably they would be less likely to make the mistake of making it 100x less than they intended. Bad luck for them. I wonder how much less they would have made over a year if they made all products that were x.99 be x+1. I'm sure that effect has been measured by these companies at some stage, and that's why they continue to do it. I don't have a lot of sympathy for any company that makes such a mistake, as the consumers aren't repaid the difference due to their price fiddling, and I'm willing to bet the instances in which a company makes a mistake add up to less than the extra money spent by consumers having their innate biases exploited into paying all those extra cents all day every day.

tobr 7y ago

> If you accidentally purchased a bag of M&Ms from Amazon for 500 dollars instead of 5, they will let you undo it. [citation needed] Audible (part of Amazon) started billing me silently for a subscription I did not use, for several years, after I had used a free trial. When I discovered it and canceled the subscription, I could see how around the time the free trial was converted to a running paid subscription, they had also stopped emailing me about anything. My card was automatically charged in the middle of each month, for a relatively small amount, and the bank statement did not make it clear that it was for Audible - all clearly designed to make me not notice what was going on. It worked. All in all, they charged me hundreds of dollars for nothing. Were they a good sport about it? No, I had to sit on the phone for half an hour to talk to someone with very poor English skills, and got only the last payment back.

mytailorisrich 7y ago
> [citation needed] You can cancel an order before it ships, and you can return items, can't you?
gwd 7y ago
FWIW Audible emails me every month to tell me have a new credit available. Possibly put in place after your experience; but it seems more like just "keeping people engaged in our service" is a better way to sustain subscriptions than hoping people forget about it. And, not to victim-blame here, but I can't quite understand your response to mysterious charges that appear on your card every month. I try to understand where each and every transaction comes from; and if I were to get one I didn't understand several in a row, I'd call the credit card company to contest the charge / get the merchant blocked / get a new credit card.
- tobr 7y ago
  > FWIW Audible emails me every month to tell me have a new credit available. Perhaps you actually use your Audible account? As I said, they emailed me during the trial, then stopped. They know a certain percentage of users will be unaware of the charges, and they likely prefer to keep it that way. > not to victim-blame here Thanks, but you did just that anyway. I know I could have been more careful. I was responding to a comment claiming that Amazon is forgiving when a customer accidentally spends 100’s of dollars they didn’t mean to, which, given what happened to me, simply isn’t true. Good on you for reviewing each and every transaction, but I have no reason to believe that most people do that.

nobrains 7y ago

This has nothing to do with morality. It is purely economic. Amazon makes a decision whether they can afford to absorb this mistake, and gain brownie/internet/karma/customer-service/loyalty points, or that they cannot afford to absorb and in that case they will simply not honor the mistake. A smaller vendor would probably not have the luxury of that option. Economics, really.

lagadu 7y ago

You seem to be operating under the impression that we as a society have the same expectations of people and of corporations. Let me be very clear: we do not. Corporations are allowed to operate at the pleasure of the people; I was going to say that they're effectively second-class citizens but they're not citizens, they're just a tool that we allow to exist. Because of that we put more burdens on them than we do on people. As to the matter at hand specifically: one of those extra burdens we put on corporations vs what we put on people is: errors on the part of a corporation are not tolerable under any circumstances. There are many such examples of extra burdens: I (this is EU-wide) can return stuff I buy online within 14 days of buying it without giving any reason, just because I feel like it and the seller pays the shipping. Why? Because as a society we decided that we have that right.

dsr_ 7y ago
The prices will reflect the percentage of people who use this right -- and this is also valuable information to the seller.

barking 7y ago

The asymmetry stems from the fact that all parties are self interested. Amazon seem to have decided to suck up this loss because it feels it's in their interest to do so. We as onlookers in this situation can empathise with the lucky purchasers but our empathy would pretty quickly dry up if we discovered that this mistake would result in a cost to us.

defertoreptar 7y ago

Amazon is expected to be good sports and take the loss exactly because that is their business strategy. Their mission statement is something like, "we seek to become Earth's most customer centric company." If they didn't have a relaxed refund policy, they wouldn't have the reputation they currently enjoy. Contrary to what you've said, they do have public trust: just in the form of "Amazon does right by the customer." It's trust, not morality, that forms these expectations. For the trustworthy customers who are equally concerned about their reputation, they wouldn't dare "cheat the system" by exploiting a pricing glitch. For them, there is symmetry of expectations. The asymmetry only happens for customers who do not care about their reputation for being trustworthy. This can go the other way as well: an unscrupulous company who takes advantage of naive and trusting customers.

dotancohen 7y ago
And I am a loyal customer due to that strategy. I had a month in which I had to cancel my credit cards, and my AWS account went unpaid. I knew it would be an entire month before I could put another card on the account due to stupidity at my bank. I called them up and the rep not only let the account continue to operate unpaid, he waived the payment for the month. I have never, ever seen such customer service. AWS might be expensive, it might have a clunky interface and IAM might be a pain in the ass. But I know that I can trust them to keep my business running no matter what.

crispyambulance 7y ago

> It’s kind of interesting- the asymmetry of moral expectations and entitlement. Amazon made a relatively small mistake considering their scale. It's OK. They can mitigate this by stopping orders that haven't shipped. For the items that did ship, they can contact the buyers and ask nicely for them to return the items, perhaps in exchange for an amazon gift card. I don't think it's reasonable to put consumer "morality" in question here.

ashelmire 7y ago

We have laws about truth in advertising so that people don't get shafted by these big companies. Sure, they could say it was a mistake, but then they might have to fight it... and it really is a drop in the bucket for them. Amazon still made billions in revenue each of those days.

msiyer 7y ago

Morality has no place when dealing with a corporation. Legality is the only thing that counts. >> If you accidentally purchased a bag of M&Ms from Amazon for 500 dollars instead of 5, they will let you undo it If it is technically possible, then it is the seller's mistake and the customer deserves a refund. The seller may choose to not undo. The customer may choose to sue them. It is a PR nightmare in today's world. It is illegal. >> 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.) If it is technically possible, and if the customer has not hacked the system in any way, it is the seller's mistake. The customer should not care. Once the sale is made, it is legally over. The seller has no legal way of recovering the money from the customer. The seller should have verified the prices.

jtuente 7y ago
> Once the sale is made, it is legally over. No the sale isn't the final step, delivery of the product is. In this case, Amazon has not delivered the product therefore the transaction is not complete. To borrow from a sibling post, the chickens in his cart could be considered delivered and paid for making it legally untenable to reverse the transaction.

tripzilch 7y ago

> I’m not going to entertain any counter arguments that Amazon deserves this (...) > I just think it’s amazing how frail people’s morality is, how it goes out the window when certain conditions are met. The condition in this case being you dismissing large parts of that morality because they are supposedly "orthogonal" (to you). Of course it's going to seem frail to you, if you decide beforehand you will ignore any reasoning behind a moral position. I'm willing to say it, I don't care about their loss because they are a huge multi national corporation that makes billions. Not a person, but one of those weird gigantic business machines that share our planet now. That's such an incredibly huge power differential between you and another entity, anyone pretending they apply the same moral reasoning to both is truly deluding themselves. BTW, deluding yourself is for instance, anthropomorphizing an entity made of paper and laws, to "be a good sport" or not. Ridiculous, what does that even mean? You realize this makes about as much sense as being angry at your coffee machine if it breaks? Yes it happens, yes people do it, but no it's not to be taken seriously. But ultimately what it comes down to is whether Amazon is legally required to fulfill these orders. Because you can give a corporation a legal code, but not a moral code. If they are not, then that's fine, it's not like the customers had a specific right to buy a $13k camera for $100. But really you just wrote this to feel good about yourself? > I just think it’s amazing how frail people’s morality is, how it goes out the window when certain conditions are met. But you're better than that, aren't you? Not being like most people. And just had to tell us about it

thatcat 7y ago

I think its probably hard to feel bad gouging amazon on the price of camera equiptment when they do the same on a daily basis as a policy. By the time you consider their complex tax evasion schemes, you'll have already clicked buy. Treat people how you expect to be treated and all that...

lloydatkinson 7y ago

how it goes out the window when certain conditions are met. Almost as if one is an organisation worth literally billions and the other is an individual who has to worry about money every month.

almog 7y ago

Being able to cancel is formalized in Amazon's terms and condition, not a courtesy.

peterburkimsher 7y ago

"If you accidentally purchased a bag of M&Ms from Amazon for 500 dollars" - Uber accidentally overcharged people for their taxi rides, and people are outraged [1]. Will Amazon pay the full price to the original manufacturer (in this case Sony)? I feel like there's a parallel to be made with media piracy in here somewhere. If you could steal a magic Mars bar [2] that didn't deprive someone else of it, why should you still pay for it? I'm not sure that taking advantage of a glitch like this for cheap physical items is ethical, but I can't really express why. I have no such issues with people using Sci-hub, because Elsevier doesn't pay researchers anything. For music my views are very grey - even though piracy does deprive the artist of income today, I would never have discovered many of my favourite bands if I hadn't been able to listen to their music for free (on the radio or from other sources), and I've tried to compensate for their loss by going to hundreds of concerts, buying T-shirts, and supporting the original artist. When Apple takes a 30% cut and the record company takes 65%, the original artist doesn't stand to lose or gain much through record sales, so it doesn't feel "as wrong". Hardware is a lot more finite though, and I would want to be sure the engineers are actually getting paid before taking a deal that seems like someone is getting ripped off. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49031165 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49031165 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6vgkDbMcZc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6vgkDbMcZc

chrischen 7y ago

The opposite sort of thing happens on Airbnb. Most Airbnbs have/had strict cancellation policies, but if they screw up and you are out of accommodations last minute you can get a refund of what you would have paid, or at best alternate accommodations.

bufferoverflow 7y ago

That's not true. If you read the SlickDeals forum thread, most people expected Amazon to cancel all these orders. But it looks like they just didn't. And neither did they ask the buyers to return the items.

mikeash 7y ago

I’m pretty sure everyone expects them to cancel these orders. The reason this is getting so much attention is because they actually honored the price, at least for some customers. Nobody forced them to do that.

brokenmachine 7y ago
And in so doing earned many times that value in free advertising and feel good stories about how great they are. Coincidence?

XorNot 7y ago

Amazon is a limited liability corporation. It can lose money and go bankrupt without an ability to recover debts from the actual people running it. There is absolutely no relevant moral equivalency here.

ZeroFries 7y ago

I've purchased products and handed over money and still not honoured for a price claimed to be a mistake. Latest example 40g of marijuana priced at $1/g. They ended up shipping a quarter ounce instead, 20% of the original deal.

hartator 7y ago

I think a small doubt remains that’s a clever ad for prime day. And that makes it okay from a moral standpoint.

sagebird 7y ago
I don’t think it is a pr / marketing stunt. 1. They would have used a cute price eg the prime day date. 2. They would later claim intentionally as to not seem incompetent. 3. They would pick a more relatable or mainstream product that has a optimal pr spin. Like a family friendly, or youth demographic. Not sure what the best example would be. A gaming pc or outdoor patio kit, something other than a 10k camera lens for photo nerds.

stanfordkid 7y ago

A mega corporation with billions of dollars and thousands of workers is going to be held to different moral standard than a single person buying a camera lens. Clearly society doesn't judge 4 year olds to the same moral standard as 50 year old men. You'd laugh at a 50 year old man crying over spilling his juice ... but not a 4 year old. So why should we judge individuals to the same moral standards as mega-corporations? The relative value of $500 for an individual is orders of magnitude higher than $13k for Amazon.

ip26 7y ago

Amazon is expected to be a good sport and take the loss — even if the purchase was made in bad faith Expected? Are they? Most sentiment on this sort of event seems to be something like, "will it show up? we'll see", and when it does get canceled it's "shucks :)" I can understand some of the feelings, in part it's just fantastical to observe these powerful systems screw up. I once incredulously ordered an item I wanted, priced at $0.00, and was shocked to see it arrive at my doorstep (I corrected the retailer and paid)

gkilmain 7y ago

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.

nathanvanfleet 7y ago

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.

whiddershins 7y ago

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.

skizm 7y ago

The only reason they will "let you undo it" (buying something for $500 instead of $5) is because goodwill is hard to buy and doesn't cost them anything in this case. It isn't like the company is "being moral" or anything like that, it's just marketing. Same with eating the cost here. They might have some legal recourse to get the items back or the money, but at the of the day, some amazon analysts are doing a math problem and trying to determine if they will lose more money (from bad press) than they will by just eating the cost. Morality doesn't come into either of these situations.

DINKDINK 7y ago

>asymmetry of moral expectations and entitlement. What does morality have anything to do with the market expectation of "When I shop with firm X I want to have a good experience"? If a consumer has to always second guess whether or not a seller will try to clawback their goods because they miscalculated their asking price, that's a horrible consumer experience. If I want to contract with a firm (say a credit provider such as a credit card network) that will defend me if I signal I'm going to default on a payment because I'm unhappy with a price, the market can sort those needs, desires, actions properly. I'm pretty sure the free advertising Amazon is getting from this "gaff" (Was it a gaff? was it guerilla marketing?) and the customer loyalty they gain if they provide "When you shop with the Amazon firm you have a great experience" will be worth it. Markets don't survive because they adhere to a mosaic of subjective beliefs about morality, they survive because people uphold their commitments.

la_barba 7y ago

I think you're giving people too much credit, I doubt the people were thinking about Amazons HR policies, or any moral or otherwise nuanced socio-economic arguments. That's not to say they're horrible people, well.. maybe just a little greedy and/or without any shame. I know a lot of people that are very religious (or non-religious but 'principled') who will still lie on their resume. Its just a human thing I guess..

runarberg 7y ago

The counter argument that you are not entertaining is precisely the argument that you should entertain. This behavior is called tit for tat and it is often the optimal strategy in many game theory situations. There are some evidence that people behave according to tit for tat, that is they are more likely to take advantage of an actor that has previously acted in bad faith. I don’t think this is a demonstration of how frail people’s morality is. But rather yet another demonstration that peoples morality can be explained in big part by game theory.

TallGuyShort 7y ago

I don't believe the asymmetry here is because of morals or entitlement. Amazon is the one that advertizes the price. Once it's advertised and a transaction has been completed, that's a contract. That contract includes the possibility of returns because they compete in the retail space, where there is an asymmetry in that the company has had ample opportunity to evaluate the product and price it accordingly, but the customer doesn't otherwise have much to evaluate on. If Amazon does this at such an astronomical scale that they don't notice a big price discrepancy, that's the cost of operating such an astronomical scale. They still made the contract - and it was even their lawyers who wrote the contract and spend hours poring over it. If I order truck loads of landscaping material to be delivered to my house and I later learn that it wasn't such a great price, you better believe I'm now stuck with that material and the bill. I actually had a similar event happen in a real-world retail store. They were advertising frozen chickens for an absurdly low price. I checked with an employee that the price listed was not a mistake - they said it was correct. I grabbed a manager, and checked that the price listed was not a mistake - they said it was correct. I took 2 cart loads of frozen chickens to the front of the store - and they didn't notice the price was absurdly low until I had already swiped my credit card and the cashier was telling me the total. By the time she grabbed a manager, the transaction was complete, and the same manager who confirmed the price now told me it was a mistake. Fuck them - they listed the price, I checked, I finalized the transaction.

stronglikedan 7y ago
Different strokes. I'm sure they were hoping you were one type of person, but willing to take the loss if you weren't.
cr0sh 7y ago
I had basically the same thing happen to me several years ago, but on hamburger; $1.49/lb for 5 lb? Nope - $1.49 each! After a cartload at one store; went to another - same. It was system-wide. So I went to a couple more over the next couple of days (I had a large chest freezer at the time). Finally, about the third day in the discrepancy was noticed and the signs/system changed. Best "mistake deal" I've gotten so far - but nothing like this camera deal at Amazon.
7y ago

hellllllllooo 7y ago

I don't see any moral issue until Amazon indicates it made a mistake and is actually asking for the return of the goods or for more money. I haven't seen them do that. Maybe their intention was to provide a great deal to their customers. Even if it was unintentional the relative cost to Amazon is tiny and but the relative cost to any individual customer could be quite large. What you can afford to pay is not absolute so damage caused is not equivalent between an individual and a billion dollar corporation. In life and money there are no moral absolutes and treating all corporations and individuals the same is not necessary. For me, immoral actions are those with the potential to cause harm, and I don't see equivalent harm in your two examples.

zip6 7y ago

A while ago I ordered a 10TB backup drive for $80, knowing it was a pricing mistake. Amazon cancelled the order and gave me a $20 gift card. I believe whether or not the retailer has to honour pricing mistakes depends which country you live in (I'm in UK). Annoyingly, the $20 gift card wasn't applied automatically to the next purchase, as it was supposed to (maybe because it only applies to USA Amazon?) (Funnily enough, the pricing mistake did manage to get the product to be the #1 best seller.)

johnfn 7y ago

Amazon has high millions to billions of dollars to throw around. A consumer does not. There’s no asymmetry when you consider dollar value proportionality.