Amazon Accidentally Sold $13,000+ Camera Gear For $100 On Prime Day (petapixel.com) 144
An anonymous reader quotes a report from PetaPixel: Amazon discounted a wide range of camera gear for Prime Day this week, but some photographers scored what may be the best deals of their lives. Thanks to a pricing error, many people were able to purchase high-end camera gear bundles, some worth over $5,000, for just around $100. It all started when someone noticed that the $550 Sony a6000 and 16-50mm lens bundle was being listed at just $94.50 on Amazon, and the person shared the "deal" on Slickdeals, where it hit the front page.
Many users were able to see the same price and place orders, while other users reported still seeing the normal price of $550. And it wasn't 3rd-party sellers that the $94.50 price applied to -- the gear was being sold and shipped by Amazon. But then people noticed that other cameras and bundles were also being sold for $94.50, and that's when the real frenzy started. "Literally everything is $94.48," one member writes. "I have bought like 10k worth of stuff that was like 900 dollars total." "I got a $13,000 lens for $94," another member writes regarding their Canon EF 800mm f/5.6L IS order. "LOL waiting for the cancellation but thats like 99.3% off." Other members spoke to Amazon customer service about their order and were told that the order would indeed ship. Others also reported that they successfully price matched gear at retailers such as Best Buy and Walmart.
Many users were able to see the same price and place orders, while other users reported still seeing the normal price of $550. And it wasn't 3rd-party sellers that the $94.50 price applied to -- the gear was being sold and shipped by Amazon. But then people noticed that other cameras and bundles were also being sold for $94.50, and that's when the real frenzy started. "Literally everything is $94.48," one member writes. "I have bought like 10k worth of stuff that was like 900 dollars total." "I got a $13,000 lens for $94," another member writes regarding their Canon EF 800mm f/5.6L IS order. "LOL waiting for the cancellation but thats like 99.3% off." Other members spoke to Amazon customer service about their order and were told that the order would indeed ship. Others also reported that they successfully price matched gear at retailers such as Best Buy and Walmart.
they should be forced to ship for that price or pa (Score:3)
they should be forced to ship for that price or pay an change fee to any one they back out on.
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I bought two, I'll be selling the other one.
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I couldn't believe it but I hit order and they shipped it to me for that low price.
I contacted a few friends about it after I hit the buy button, but apparently Amazon found the error before they got to it.
Damn....that $13K canon lens would have been sweeeeeeet.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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In the UK once the item is with you they can't demand it back. Same if you already left a physical shop with the item. I believe it's broadly similar in the rest of Europe.
With Amazon when they ship for next day it gives them a narrow window to spot the mistake. Once it's on the truck there is probably not that much they can do to get it back.
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I think 99.3% off the price is pretty reasonably assumed to be an error. No one sells a $13,000 lens for $100.
I agree that Amazon will/ought to just take the loss, but it's hard to argue that they ought to be required to do so in some of the more obviously-error cases.
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Amazon shouldn't have to take the loss for errors. Although in this situation where they were specifically having a discount day:
it seems like the failure was especially grievous on their part --- Amazon could definitely have implemented an "approval" system on the discounts or a verification/sanity check to make sure the discount on an item wasn't more than a certain percentage for a "physical" good above a certain wholesale price.
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"No one sells a $13,000 lens for $100."
Says who? there have been amazing deals before. I buddy of mun got a 55" LG OLED for 99$.
It was a loss leader for advertising. How are consumers suppose to know the difference?
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I agree with your points, but for goodness' sake, sort out "where" and "were".
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That could be reason for them to either charge the full price or ask BOTH back. As you clearly where aware that they made an error.
There, fixed it for you. Basic equitable relief for a unilateral mistake of fact [wikisource.org].
Where A intentionally pays money to B, and B intentionally receives it as payment from A, plainly the legal title has passed; and a Court of law, if the money has been paid under a proper case of mistake, compels B to restore to A the money so received, not because the Court does not regard B as
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adorable, but if it's sent through the mail, then that's it.
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Except amazon has Amazing price drops all the time, so the consumer has no way of knowing which is an error and which isn't.
And a history of "errors" as advertising doesn't help companies.
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Well, if you're a dishonest cunt defrauding an online vendor then you can tell them it didn't arrive anyway and demand a refund. No need to wait for a pricing error.
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It depends on where you live and the difference in price. When I worked in Ohio I got hit with a decent sized tax bill from the state because I bought a car from a friend for 14k less than what it was worth. He was moving out of country for work and was about to just give it to me so I insisted on at least giving him what his and his wife's airline tickets cost plus what it cost to ship their belongings. I found out the hard way that they have some law that was designed to keep people from shuffling assets
Re:they should be forced to ship for that price or (Score:5, Insightful)
RTFA, they are shipping, some have already been received.
Pissed that I missed this...
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Exactly. They probably posted their wholesale price. Camera gear is way overpriced at retail. That $550 DLSR probably only costs them $95.
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They probably posted their wholesale price.
No they did not. Not even close.
Camera gear is way overpriced at retail. That $550 DLSR probably only costs them $95.
No it does not. It's a hugely competitive market that has been shrinking. If someone could make money selling high end cameras for less they would be doing so. As it is companies like Nikon have been losing a lot of money lately so it's pretty clear their margins aren't covering costs. Those DSLR and DSLM cameras are really complicated devices and they don't sell in anywhere near the sorts of volumes products like smartphones do.
As for whether they are overpriced it migh
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You don't make a high quality 800mm lens for $95.
Trust me, if you find out a way, you'll get very very rich by charging a mere 500% margin.
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Maybe. You can bet that there will be a lot more people online next "Prime day".
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RTFA, they are shipping, some have already been received.
The reputation Amazon gained for shipping goods sold is worth much more than whatever loss incurred. Reputation they literally could not buy no matter how much they spend on PR.
With Amazon's size, they would be a fool to revoke these orders.
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Yep, they'd be crazy not to ship. One of the biggest advantages Amazon enjoys in the online market place is a reputation for WYSIWYG. I am sure Amazon gets a lot sales where people actually 'google' or use some price watching site first. Maybe they find a lower price some places else but then they check Amazon and even its a few $ more there they buy it from Amazon anyway.
Why because
1) Amazon already has their credit info on file
2) Amazon is trusted to not leak (1)
3) Amazon is trusted to charge (1) what t
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I'm more surprised that anyone price-matched. Most places have get-out clauses for pricing mistakes, online only offers etc.
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I'm more surprised that anyone price-matched. Most places have get-out clauses for pricing mistakes, online only offers etc.
I just thought that usually they added/changed a letter to the SKU/product code/model, and would only price match for that exact code. Of course, that model would only be carried within that store chain, so any advertised price in another store on what is in reality the exact same item doesn't qualify for the price match.
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They used to do that, but around here at least stopped when people just whipped out their phones in front of them and ordered the cheaper version. I bet the most visited site on their "free" wifi is amazon.com.
Re:they should be forced to ship for that price or (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not a lawyer, but from what I recall from the Contract Law course I did at University, they're under no legal obligation to ship - there is a "reasonable person" test that applies to situation like this: would a reasonable person believe that the price is genuine, or a mistake? If it's the latter, the offer is invalid and therefore there is no contract. Given the volume of comments making it clear that people recognise that it was a mistake, I don't think they'd have any problem winning any case that might be brought if they don't ship.
On the other hand, from a PR point of view, they might be better advised to write off the losses they make on those items and just ship - having people know that they might benefit from a ridiculous accidental discount will bring them to the site, whereas cancellation will just cause complaints and give them a reputation for stinginess.
Re:they should be forced to ship for that price or (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a lawyer, but from what I recall from the Contract Law course I did at University, they're under no legal obligation to ship
Fast shipping is one of the points of shopping on Amazon so they probably already shipped them before anybody noticed the mistake.
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Not just from PR, but from an advertising sense! This story will be spread wide and far, it's being talked about everywhere, Amazon, Amazon, Amazon on and on.
I doubt they lost more than $1M, and that's barely a local prime time TV ad spot buy, back in the days when someone might advertise in a large city. No biggie at all.
So combine that, plus the potential PR loss? Hell, could have even be on purpose! After all, only some people got that deal...others showed normal pricing!
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I'm not a lawyer, but from what I recall from the Contract Law course I did at University, they're under no legal obligation to ship - there is a "reasonable person" test that applies to situation like this: would a reasonable person believe that the price is genuine, or a mistake?
Maybe the laws are different in the USA but under most sales contract laws the contract is binding once 3 tests are fulfilled: Offer made, Offer accepted, and money changed hands. Reasonable person tests don't come into it once money has changed hands as this is an indication that *both* sides have accepted the terms.
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Money does not change hands until they actually charge your card... which happens when the shipping department confirms they shipped your order. (Amazon will validate the payment is good before releasing the order to the warehouse for fulfillment, but they do not actually charge you until they ship it.)
They can cancel the order before shipping it, having only met two of your three criteria up until that point.
Amazon will typically fulfill these kind of orders -the publicity is worth much more than the cost
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Re:they should be forced to ship for that price or (Score:5, Insightful)
Mistakes [wikipedia.org] are common in contracts, and are sufficient grounds for a court to invalidate the contract. Amazon is under no obligation at all to honor the (mistaken) advertised price. Although they may choose to do so in the interest of PR.
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So you believe if you sign an employment contract agreeing to work for a salary of $7k per year instead of $7k per month, you should be forced to honor it,
This is voidable because it doesn't pay at least minimum wage for employment (the contract was illegal from the get-go)
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What if the yearly salary only expects you to work 40 hours a year?
Well, that sounds like a suddenly lucrative employment contract for the employee's part.
Supposing the $7k is distributed in 104 bi-weekly installments, that's what: $269.23 every two weeks?
So if I do all 40 hours of the contract in the first week of the contract.. i'm at $134 a week for zero hours of work
for the rest of the term and... the first week of work had to have been adjusted up to a minimum of $290's worth of pay for that week.
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Employment contract are not the same as purchasing goods.
Stop with the Bullshit already.,
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The problem is buyers are profiting from a grave error, and some buyers (As in professionals, or anyone intending to resell) may have been deliberately profiting with good reason to know of an error. A retailer such as Amazon can correct the error and cancel the order: in some circumstances they might have the right to recourse (Return of the goods or repayment of their fair market value and then a refund of the buyer), even if Amazon had already formed the contract and shipped goods.
See this discussi [washington.edu]
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The consumer has no way of knowing whats an error, and what a loss leader. Companies take a loss on good all the time, some times substantially.
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or slow....wait until the cheap ones get sold off, the price will go back up
too bad you didn't post this in time ... (Score:1)
... why do I always find out about deals like this only after they are over?
Re:too bad you didn't post this in time ... (Score:5, Funny)
... why do I always find out about deals like this only after they are over?
If you're looking for timely news, look somewhere other than slashdot!
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... why do I always find out about deals like this only after they are over?
If you're looking for timely news, look somewhere other than slashdot!
Don't feel too bad. From the the Slickdeals discussion thread it looks like it lasted about 30 minutes from midnight to about 12:30am Eastern on Sunday night / Monday morning. So, while the deal would have been sweet, you would have to have been online late at night on Sunday and refreshing Slickdeals every 10 to 15 minutes to have found it in time to place an order (or be paying attention to an already set up alert). In other words, it would be similar to winning the lottery...
Re:too bad you didn't post this in time ... (Score:4, Informative)
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Two or 3 funny mods on that? I think it deserves a sadly true mod and I'm not seeing the humor.
Reminds me of first finding out about some major news at my employer via Slashdot. Many years ago, and now I can't even recall if it was the closure of Yamato or the divestiture of ThinkPad before that or something else... My fuzzy recollection is that Slashdot had the first solid scoop after months of scuttlebutt. If it was the Yamato closure, then years of scuttlebutt.
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There is place that post news before it happens? sweet.
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No shit. Nothing this good ever happens to me.
Re: too bad you didn't post this in time ... (Score:2)
Try again.
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It's called having a life.
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Gutted for the workers (Score:2)
Good luck getting Amazon to abide (Score:3)
I ordered. They shipped me the wrong item. I returned it, and they have never sent me the proper product.
Every time I call, they say "there are none in stock", despite their website showing that it is in stock through a 3rd party vendor.
I haven't ordered anything from Amazon since, and moved my company off of AWS. (Which, I willingly admit, doesn't even qualify as a drop in the bucket for lost-sales vs. their billions in revenue.)
They have stopped responding to my inquiries, calls and tweets to their customer service.
So, good luck to these people receiving their products.
Re:Good luck getting Amazon to abide (Score:4, Insightful)
"Every time I call, they say "there are none in stock", despite their website showing that it is in stock through a 3rd party vendor. "
You do understand that 3rd parties are *not* Amazon, right?
If you buy a camera at Best Buy do you think you can return it to Staples because they sell the same model?
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Exactly... Retailers like Amazon are not brokers whose job is to obtain the product for you even if they don't have it:
as a merchant Amazon is a SELLER who sells you items they own and they stock that come from their approved suppliers.
They cannot go to another vendor and expect to buy the same goods at the same price from a vendor with the same warranty rights (and safety/security regarding the authenticity of the supply chain, that products are not counterfeit or tampered with) as items they receive fro
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I'd say it's more like buying something at Walmart and getting shipped the wrong item. When you call WM to get the right one, they say they don't have any. Now you expect them to go to Target to get one and ship it to you.
Under EU law, that is pretty much what they have to do. A seller cannot, in general, void a sale just by refunding. They have to supply the product as agreed if that is possible. (And it is in this case, they can just get it from their OWN web page!).
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(And it is in this case, they can just get it from their OWN web page!).
Not necessarily. Amazon is ultimately a clearing house for 3rd party sellers. If you run a shop on Amazon and a customer returned *your* item and *you* have no more of those items in stock you are under no obligation to go buy it from another party to fulfill your order. Even in Europe.
Amazon is not a shop. It's a shopping centre with a centralised logistics service.
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It depends on how exactly you view third-party listings on Amazon, either as the retailer that sells products or as the owner of a shopping mall that leases space.
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I ordered. They shipped me the wrong item. I returned it, and they have never sent me the proper product.
So you likely found two errors. Of course retailers are not required to honor the erroneous price, and many will not.
despite their website showing that it is in stock through a 3rd party vendor.
3rd Party vendors are not Amazon, despite the fact that Amazon allows 3rd party vendors to list on their website.
Amazon does not fulfill returns of a product to Amazon by buying things from a 3rd party
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Ah yes the old "What they did isn't THAT bad, so keep giving them money" technique.
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So, good luck to these people receiving their products.
Most a receiving them just fine.
Price Matching? (Score:1)
If other retailers are price matching does this start exposing that maybe there is a gigantic markup in photography gear made for the high end?
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No... its probably exposing a weakness in approval safeguards related to their specific price matching system.
They should probably have some kind of input parameter that is the store's cost to stock a particular item,
and require an extra approval on price matches for high-value items if the price match is more than a few hundred $$$
below what it cost the store to stock the item.
Some are probably very concerned, however, that consumers
take their price matching system seriously so actually come shop there
Bought 2 server racks with $4 shipping (Score:2)
Back in 2009 around the time Prime shipping started, I needed to buy 2 server racks. I found two server racks on Amazon and saw that they would allow me to use the $4 option to ship them. Normally shipping server racks costs a few hundred dollars in freight costs. Sure enough, the racks arrived and someone somewhere had to pay for the cost of freight, but it wasn't me. All in all I saved about $700 in shipping costs when compared with other vendors. Given that prime cost $70/year, it basically covered th
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Re:Bought 2 server racks with $4 shipping (Score:5, Funny)
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You can get free shipping on anvils, too. I haven't actually ordered an anvil from Amazon, but I've been tempted to just see how it would be delivered...
I've ordered a kettlebell on Amazon. Literally just 25lb of cast iron. Free shipping.
Re:Bought 2 server racks with $4 shipping (Score:4, Interesting)
I ordered a transmission jack for $70 with free shipping. It weighed about 80 lbs and came in a wooden crate. I was impressed the delivery was brought all the way up to my garage door at the top of a hill. How they can even ship that amount of weight for that cost let alone manufacture something is beyond me.
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Make sure to check the 'Amazon Instant Delivery' checkbox and watch the sky carefully...
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Last time I did that it was delivered by helicopter, piloted by a coyote of all things. It was very clumsily lowered to the ground; dropped, really.
Really... (Score:2)
"Others also reported that they successfully price matched gear at retailers such as Best Buy and Walmart."
And know you all know what the actual markup is on these items.
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It's happened to me, and to a buddy of mine.
Way back when Pricewatch was still worth using a company basically put a decimal point in the at the time brand new socket A AMD processors that were sooooo powerful. He ordered two and had the order canceled.
Same thing happened to me an LCD monitor that suddenly was "sold out" went off the site for a few days and came back with the decimal place in the right spot. I can't even remember the name of that site, classic nerd selling site that doesn't exist anymore,
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CompGeeks!
Can't believe I forgot that name after all the dollars I dumped on them.
It might be real discount from manufacturers (Score:2)
There was a recent article about new computer simulations that had found a way to massively correct optical aberrations. It was something like ten decimal places of accuracy.
Presumably the maths could be applied immediately to next gen lenses.
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The research was just published, and you expect retail products to be out right away, cutting prices of everything to a few percent of what it used to be?
Been using SlickDeals for a couple of years now (Score:2)
totally worth it.
Occasionally an oops is posted. Last oops I recall was some Dual Shock 4 controllers at Target that were way under priced. Every Target I went to was "out" despite what Brick Seek said, and the comments basically said that some people made it to the checkouts and were basically admonished by the employees for trying to steal them. A central pricing system issue.
Still, most of the time the deals aren't an oops and it's the best way to get items that often fluctuate in price, or that elusi
Clearly a pricing error (Score:1)
If Amazon wants to make this a big PR win, in addition to honoring the prices, they should do the following:
* Make an offer to anyone who got this deal: Donate part or all of your savings to charity and we will match it.
* Make an offer to any vendor who price-matched this: We are sorry we screwed up. How much did you lose because our error basically coerced you into lowering your prices? We'll donate that amount to your company's charitable foundation or to a charity of your choice. We'll also pay you
Sorry I missed it (Score:2)
It is not a bug, but a feature! (Score:2)
Ship just one or two at low price to maintain credibility.
profit?
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Or just sell a few cameras on the cheap and gain a massive amount of "free" marketing.
Not a mistake (Score:3)
Just cheaper marketing.
There goes our future (Score:2)
Let's see... (Score:2)
Amazon Prime Day... *yawns*...
Suddenly, glitch allowing $13,000 camera products to be purchased for $94!!!
OMG, EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT AMAZON PRIME DAY!!!!
And those (like me who were too busy) will likely be more mindful next year. So how much did Amazon lose if it shipped those? Versus the free viral advertising it received for Prime Day due to those errors.
Curious minds are curious...
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$13,000 is for the lens and that is what it costs to buy, not make. The 800mm f5.6 Canon lens does cost that much retail. The comparable Nikon 800mm f5.6 is just over $16,000.
These are the big boys, the ones you see nature and sports photographers use. They only make a small number of these lenses (compared to other lenses) because they are specialized. Not many people want to lug around a lens weighing ten pounds for any extended period of time.
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Not many people want to lug around a lens weighing ten pounds for any extended period of time.
Agreed. I do slickdeals religiously and saw them come across. For better or worse, I picked Olympus years ago for my pedestrian photography needs, and none of the gear I saw was applicable to me--fantastic deal or not. If I knew more it would have been a great opportunity to switch. :)
On a general note to everyone who says that 90% off is an obvious error, remember that the company has spent years hyping up this annual savings event. The average uneducated-in-this-category consumer like me would not thi