EXPIRED Amazon Marketplace Bargains

Round_The_Bend

Thanks to the recent posters for their experiences. My purchases are all now showing as 'dispatching soon' but nothing so far from Amazon to indicate that anything is amiss.

If I do hear anything, I will post immediately. Hopefully though, this is just a genuine clearout and not an error. Given the sellers' history, it's unlikely to be a scam, I think.

thunderbird

My guess is that either they changed prices to 16p by mistake and someone has now rushed around correcting them
or
They have just all sold really quickly!

nakmeister

I'm an Amazon Marketplace seller. You can't just search by Amazon marketplace as far as I know and equally you can't look at everything someone is selling, I don't think. I might list something at £1 because I want to get rid of it. Also some people price to be competitive with Amazon- so if Amazon sells a book for £4.95, they might price at £1 +£2.80 postage = £3.80 hoping that the £1.15 less might encourage someone to buy it second hand. Then suddenly Amazon sells their last copy of the book and it goes back to the RRP and your book at £1 looks completely random next to the next higher price. Some book might not be very popular at a high price but there could be loads of people would get it if it goes on for a low price. Amazon Marketplace is apparently up to 15 minutes out of date.

Also sometimes I think you can see items available and then you can't actually purchase them or they become no longer available as the seller doesn't actually post to your country but the system doesn't initially recognise this- I remember this happening a while ago. Maybe they never sorted it out!

Dinah93

Still a lot of books showing as 1p 0r 16p hours later, but when you click on them that price option isn't there. It's a UK seller, I'm in the UK, I don't get it.

Round_The_Bend

Dinah93 wrote: »

Still a lot of books showing as 1p 0r 16p hours later, but when you click on them that price option isn't there. It's a UK seller, I'm in the UK, I don't get it.

Despite the names, both sellers are based in the US. I'm inclined to think that an error has been made, as some items are still listed at 1p or 16p but when you click, they are no longer listed.

The orders are still showing up as 'dispatching soon' on my account but given that the sales were on a Saturday and the time difference, it's likely that any messages from the seller to advise that it was an error won't be received until late Monday afternoon at the earliest.

If it is an error, it will be interesting to see if the sellers honour exisiting orders, although I am aware that they are under no obligation to do so under Amazon's t & c. The other possibility that occurred to me is that with the US tax year end coming up, are they intending to use prospective losses on hard to shift books to write down their tax liabilities?

I will post as soon as I become aware of any developments, positive or negative.

squidworth

Normally you can click on the marketplace sellers name to view more info, and from a link near the top then visit their storefront to view all their products

nakmeister wrote: »

I'm an Amazon Marketplace seller. You can't just search by Amazon marketplace as far as I know and equally you can't look at everything someone is selling, I don't think. I might list something at £1 because I want to get rid of it. Also some people price to be competitive with Amazon- so if Amazon sells a book for £4.95, they might price at £1 +£2.80 postage = £3.80 hoping that the £1.15 less might encourage someone to buy it second hand. Then suddenly Amazon sells their last copy of the book and it goes back to the RRP and your book at £1 looks completely random next to the next higher price. Some book might not be very popular at a high price but there could be loads of people would get it if it goes on for a low price. Amazon Marketplace is apparently up to 15 minutes out of date.

Also sometimes I think you can see items available and then you can't actually purchase them or they become no longer available as the seller doesn't actually post to your country but the system doesn't initially recognise this- I remember this happening a while ago. Maybe they never sorted it out!

Aquino

I too made several seemingly outrageous purchases yesterday (2 from paperbackbooks1 and 1 from G_B). The low distribution academic books have a combined value of about £100 although I got them for £8.58! Thinking that this was too good to be true, I visited both their storefronts where it seems that their thousands of titles are 'unavailable'. Whilst the status of my orders is 'preparing your packages' or something like that, I too am anticipating an e-mail explaining some sort of system error as the cause, an apology and an assurance that my funds will be reimbursed. I came across this site (MoneySavingExpert) as my contact with Amazon about this seemingly suspicious matter had been vague and I wanted to see if anyone knew anything else. I would be amazed if these orders were ultimately completely.

chalkysoil

I've bought cds, tweezers and other stuff from marketplace sellers for a few pence delivered and had the order delivered, so some do honour their weird prices. Another time I got an email from a seller explaining Amazon had listed the price wrongly and the order was cancelled.

Franco_OK

I had a similar experience on Friday night and Saturday morning. I was lucky to spot what was happening at about 11pm, so I stayed up until about 2.15am buying 1p stuff.

To be honest I'm not going to detail what I bought except to say that if the deals are honoured then really it's beyond belief. As others have said above, all the items I bought have disappeared from their listings now and the orders I've created all say "dispatching soon". I fully expected to get a barrage of emails from the 2 firms concerned (the same firm actually) saying that it's all a big mistake. But I haven't.

Marketplace sellers can be penalised for too high a cancellation rate - so if they were to cancel hundreds of these 1p deals, they might possibly find themselves in trouble with Amazon itself.

As for the items appearing at 1p on the search results page and then "no longer available" when you put it in your basket - that's because somebody else was doing the same as you, and paid before you did - it takes about 10 minutes for the Amazon page to update to the next cheapest seller. When I was buying late on Friday night, only one or two items failed to make it through checkout, and the same again early Saturday morning - but by about 10.30 Saturday morning, a lot of buyers had fallen in and things were being snapped up right left and centre. Hence you'd still see something at listed 1p but in reality it had already sold a few minutes before.

Let's see what happens over the next few days and meanwhile.... frankly, seriously.... I'd keep quiet about it. Too much talk on the net and alarm bells might start ringing somewhere! :cool:

Franco_OK

As of midday today.... a flood of emails cancelling my orders.

"Our apologies, this item has been incorrectly priced due to an error
within our automated pricing system. Our IT department have now resolved this issue."

I hope Amazon bollock 'em.