Amazon Prime Day was a huge disappointment for many people who were anticipating a better-than-Black-Friday shopping blitz, but one small group of extremely lucky Redditors were able to take advantage of Prime Day's best deal ever, thanks to a mistake Amazon made in pricing.
What appears to have been a glitch in Amazon's pricing system has given the metallic gray 32 GB LG G4 a price of $0.01. Amazon was virtually giving away LG's latest flagship and one of the best Android smartphones on the market for nothing but a single penny.
The pricing error was first noticed by Redditor DualAxes and reported by the International Business Times. Naturally, the folks who read about the "deal" rushed to Amazon making a beeline for the $0.01 LG G4, hoping against hope that Amazon will not notice the massive price drop from $600 to almost free.
Unfortunately, by around 10 a.m. Pacific Time on July 15, Amazon noticed the sharp uptick in orders for the LG G4 and started cancelling the orders. But this was not without some lucky buyers had their orders pushed so far down the fulfillment line that Amazon was unable to cancel them.
Reddit user the-end has posted a picture of his five LG G4 smartphones purchased from Amazon for just $0.01 each, landing him an awesome deal for five top-tier smartphones for just five pennies all in all. The user says he did not expect for his order to go through but he chose to have same-day delivery for his smartphones. At around 9:30 a.m., his order's status said it was out for delivery.
While it's still unknown who else received their orders, pretty much everyone else were unable to take advantage of Amazon's error. Many people on the thread say their orders have been cancelled without Amazon telling them why. Some who spoke with a customer service representative say Amazon is claiming that the phone has gone out of stock, while others have admitted it was clearly a pricing error.
"We're writing to let you know that, due to an error in our pricing systems, we unfortunately could not honor your order," one rep tells one of the disappointed buyers. "We sincerely apologize for this error and any inconvenience it may have caused. You will not be charged for the items cancelled."
To make up for its mistake, Amazon is offering free gift cards worth anywhere from $3 to $25 to everyone whose order was cancelled, but some users are complaining about the inconsistency in amounts, since all of them tried to buy the same thing anyway.
Photo: Kārlis Dambrāns | Flickr
