A DERRY company whose glitch led to expensive items being sold on Amazon for 1p is in more trouble today after Amazon said it won’t compensate businesses.
Strand Road based RepricerExpress uses software to make goods on sale on the website more competitive.
But last Friday it crashed prices to just 1p by mistake. The company apologised and said Amazon would compensate businesses – some of them family-run small businesses.
Amazon however has now told selling partners who have lost tens of thousands of pounds after the software glitch that they will not get compensation from the online retailer.
The company, which had sales of more than $74bn (£48bn) last year, has emailed sellers to tell them that “as of now Amazon will not be providing any reimbursements for this issue”.
In an email seen by the Guardian newspaper in Britain, an Amazon “seller support” worker said: “I completely understand how stressful this time may be.
“As of now Amazon will not be providing any reimbursements for this issue. You will need to contact the third party software who are responsible for this error.”
The email to Go2Games, which estimates it lost £10,000 as a result of the glitch, signs off with “have a nice day”.
Sellers report that RepricerExpress, the third-party company behind the faulty software, has also not offered compensation. The Derry-based company has said it is “truly sorry for the distress this has caused our customers”.
Amazon would not say whether it carried out due diligence into RepricerExpress’s software reliability.
Daniel Pizzey, who said his baby clothing company Baby Best Buy has lost £25,000-£30,000 as a result of the glitch, said: “I am totally disgusted at the way Amazon has dealt with this matter.
“Their reactions have been so slow and they have not once cared about the financial situation facing their sellers, especially at the most important time of the year.
“For a company the size of Amazon, and also being one of the biggest companies in the world, they have failed as a company and not cared about our items in which they are meant to have a duty of care to look after them while they are in their possession.”
Pizzey said his company was swamped with 30-40 orders a minute during the 1p glitch on Friday night. “Customers were ordering like 40-50 of the same items and just paying 50p for it. Surely Amazon would have picked up on this and questioned it before sending it out?”
Amazon, which said on Monday it had “reached out to all the sellers that were affect”, and declined to comment on Tuesday.
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