A select group of Amazon customers made out like bandits, reports MSN , due to a glitch in a third-party software named “Repricer Express” that caused certain Amazon products to sell for only one penny on Friday.
As such, this reporter just typed the following search terms into Google to try and uncover any more products listed on the United States version of Amazon and the UK version of Amazon – where the one penny glitch appears to have happened – to uncover any more products still listed for one penny on Amazon.
( -aws “Price: $0.01” site:amazon.com )
( -aws “Price: $0.01” site:amazon.co.uk )
Alas, the only Amazon products that appear to be selling for one penny as of December 15 are those intentionally set at one penny, such as old books – not the DVDs, CDs, and large foam mattress covers that Amazon shoppers are bragging about obtaining for a total of 27 cents (as shown in the above linked-to MSN video) in comment sections across the internet.
The “Repricer Express” glitch has caused folks who sell their inventory through Amazon to complain on Amazon’s seller forums that it’s time to drop that “Repricer Express” service, because the service that is intended to help Amazon sellers automatically adjust their product prices in a way that helps them stay competitive in that elusive Amazon seller “buy box” – one that provides more sales and a prominent position to hawk their wares to Amazon buyers – is the same software that accidentally dropped their Amazon product prices down to a penny.
“So yesterday Repricer Express dropped 1/3 of my SKUs to a penny. In the forty minutes nearly every SKU sold out. We worked out we are going lose about $15k give or take by the time you work out our FBA costs and our lost inventory cost. Amazon was able to cancel some orders however most were sent out priority, etc., so they will not cancel them.”
Angry sellers have even begun a Facebook group threatening to sue over the Repricer Express error that dropped their Amazon inventory down to one penny – with sad testimonials about how the error will affect their family life.
“Last night I had to explain to my wife, and 3-, 4- and 5-year-old that we could not take our trip to Disney in February that we had planned (to celebrate adopting them); I am 100% devastated and think we can still operate with this big loss.”
According to the Guardian , some stores – like MB Housewares – escaped a nearly $157,000 loss when owner Martin Le Corre got a call from his competitor, asking if they realized their inventory was selling for one penny each.
“We got a call from a competitor to say ‘Do you realize all your listings are at a penny?’ By the end of the hour, we had 1,600 orders. People were buying 10, 50, 100 copies of everything. It is £50,000, £60,000, £100,000 of stock; we can’t even work it out.”
Amazon can’t be blamed for this fiasco, because the repricing tool is a third-party software. According to the Inquisitr , Amazon is busy working on making deliveries to their New York customers within one hour.