Amazon would be within their rights to refuse to honor such purchases. I also don't think it's ethical to take advantage of such mistakes. What if it was you who accidentally listed your house for $60,000 rather than $600,000? What if you accidentally included an extra 0 on the check you wrote?
I really don't understand the morality of an average HN user.
There was a post a few days ago about Spotifree (which mutes your ads), and everyone took it as a personal offense, every possible negative word was said about the person who made it, and the people that use it are lowlives who don't deserve anything in life if they won't cough up $10.
But now when it's Amazon losing thousands of dollars per product, it's okay because stealing from someone rich is acceptable and they should just eat their losses and move on. Do you understand that if you scale Amazon down to Spotifies size, their losses are way heftier?
I've also learned that stealing is justified if it's a machine error. So by that logic, if the receipt machine malfunctions in a store and prints out some large number, you would pay it?
There is no "average HN user." Some people on HN hate ads, and some people on HN write ad software for a living. Some people on HN own a business and sympathize with Amazon over lost profits. Others can't afford nice camera equipment and (maybe) would prefer a society where wealth is more evenly distributed.
I personally think that this is moral. I think that capitalism is inherently immoral so it's not immoral to "steal" from giant corporations. I consider myself a very moral person (you have to take morality very seriously if you disagree with the people around you about moral issues) but this doesn't bother me.
Stealing from corporations is stealing from people. Otherwise, I could justify stealing hubcaps from your car as stealing from the car, not you, so it's ok.
Besides, if you have a moral code that specifies who it is ok to steal from, you'll need to accept another's moral code that says it's ok to steal from you.
This is obviously false if you think about it for like a minute.
> Stealing from corporations is stealing from people.
Sure, whatever. It's still not immoral. I also think it's okay to steal slaves from plantations. "But stealing from plantations is stealing from people!" Sure, whatever, it's still not immoral.
> Besides, if you have a moral code that specifies who it is ok to steal from, you'll need to accept another's moral code that says it's ok to steal from you.
Total non-sequitur. Let's try this: Marxists think that capitalism is stealing from workers. You think that it's moral. Therefore, if you have a moral code that says that it's okay to steal from workers, you'll need to accept another's moral code that says it's okay to steal from you. Makes sense, right? No.
It's awfully coincidental that your concept of legitimate ownership just so happens to align with the concept given to your by legal and cultural authorities. It's almost like you haven't actually bothered to think about it for yourself. Can you give me an example of a kind of ownership that you think is illegitimate?
Well if I listed a house for $60,000 instead of $600,000, but I owned $1 trillion of houses and was selling several hundred of them every single second of the day, then sure there isn't anything wrong with buying one for $60K.
More comparable, if you write code for high speed trading algorithms and something goes wrong, nobody will roll back your transactions. This is a matter of size and connections though, but usually you've automated losses with no going back. Amazon seems to be somewhere in between.
Not if it's a OTC transaction like FX markets. I worked in FX industry and there have been several occasions where due to pricing engine error or trading platform error one party was able to profit.
So if you listed your car on Craigslist for $150 instead of the $15,000 you intended you’d honor the offer and not explain to buyers what had happened?
Your opinion doesn't even make sense. You are literally saying it's unethical for a customer to buy something at the price which Amazon is selling it for? Because it might cause Amazon to lose money?
You do realize businesses regularly sell products at a loss right? So at what point does the loss become so large that its unethical for the customer to buy it?
What if you accidentally paid extra to a bank, supermarket, paying back your friend, whomever and the recipient thought "Wow, great, I ain't tellin' -I get to keep that, that's awesome!"
This is not some over-burdened shop owner on the corner. I doubt any people were involved in setting these prices. Some algorithm messed up somewhere in a company for which this is a rounding error.
Does ethical analysis only rely on who made the mistake and not who suffers the consequence?
As I understand every corporation, passes on the cost the customer and aims for some specific number as a margin, if their costs increase either they increase productivity of their worker, or implement cost cutting measures, or pass the cost down to customers.
Lots of people think, Amazon's loss results in Bezoz getting a haircut on his paycheck.
What if Amazon starts asking for more productivity from its warehouse workers then buying something at Amazon's loss is directly tied to how they treat their workers.
What if is the right phrase. You assume they are only looking for a specific margin, which they have to optimize for. They already optimizing to maximize the total profit. If there is a productivity increase of the workforce possible they take it unless the conditions get so bad, that a lack of workforce or lawsuits result in higher losses. Same goes for a price increase, if the number of sold products shrinks less then the additional margin per products its a reasonable thing to do.
That piracy/fraud/costly mistakes increase the overall cost for consumers just doesnt happen, no large company in their right mind has additional profit potential lying around that they just dont take because they dont need to. What happens is that at some point the market segment becomes no longer profitable and companies leave that segment entirely.
No, I don't. Buying something for the listed price is perfectly ethical.
Your ethics are different. That's okay. People have different perspectives. My ethics don't require me to pay more than the asking price. I'll tip people who undercharge to the point that it's harmful to them (like albums on Bandcamp), but Amazon will be fine.
>> "People justify stealing $16 million from the government because it is just a rounding error every day :)"
I don't have the slightest idea what you're referring to here, but buying something for the price it's listed at is in no way stealing.
Has Amazon released a statement? We don't know that it was an error until they do. It's not unusual for a company like Amazon to sell things far below cost to conquer a market. This level of discount is out of the ordinary, but you don't really know until they say or someone says Amazon cancelled the order or asked for it back.
Maybe that sounds like rationalization to you. Let's go back to the article...
>> "Other members spoke to Amazon customer service about their order and were told that the order would indeed ship."
That doesn't sound like a company that made a mistake. And even if it is...
>> "While many Slickdeals members remarked that the orders would almost certainly be canceled by Amazon, the retail giant does have a history of honoring some pricing errors — even those that are significant."
Where's the lack of ethics? Amazon could stop it if they wanted to. Taking a deal Amazon offered and hasn't rescinded is about as pristine as it gets, mistake or not.
When dealing with a retail establishment (as opposed to a private sale), they should have controls in place to correct such mistakes before the sale is finalized. The key point here is that the error passed through enough people/systems acting as representatives of the seller that I can consider the organization as a whole to approve of the sale.
If a cashier accidentally gives me a $10 instead of a $1, that’s unethical to keep. But in this situation, the error started at the advertising stage and persisted through totaling the order, processing payment, and fulfilling for delivery several hours later, all steps at which, in a traditional business, someone could have flagged the error. At this point, it’s their intentional lack of safeguards rather than unintentional mistake that’s at fault and I have no moral qualms about that.
...No? What part of my statement gave you that idea?
Just because I believe they should have controls in place, doesn’t mean I approve of any control scheme they may think of— that would be absurdity. For example, I also wouldn’t approve of them hiring thieves to get their erroneously-priced merchandise back.
I would say that if amazon asked you to send it back and you refused, that would be unethical. If they don’t complain then it’s fine. Who exactly is hurt by this transaction?
By your insanely stupid logic, buying anything is unethical. Do you understand how markets work? Clearly not. Has Amazon even admitted it was a mistake and not a marketing ploy as others have suggested? No. So how do you know they didn't intend to sell at these prices? There's nothing unethical going on here only incredible misunderstanding and uninformed assumptions on your part. Maybe you should think twice next time before labeling things unethical when you clearly do not have the full facts.
Totally agree with you there. If I were on the other side of something like this it would SUUCK! But you know people, even honest ones find it hard to resist “sticking it to the man”, i.e. the one with advantage, the baddie. Many rationalizations will be made. “It’s peanuts to them”, etc.
In many countries prostitution is as legal as software development. I think we should refrain from these jokes, especially since most do it out of a lack of alternative careers and to feed families.
I read it completely the opposite. The son looks down at the prostitute, but the father sees humanity in her and does not judge and treats her as a fellow person with dignity.
I guess we found the common ground in the USA; pulling one over on Amazon to the tune of $10,000. Years of virtue signalling rendered moot by the shot at getting something unearned at the expense of somebody else. There is hope yet.
How is it unearned? They offer to pay the price, and if the transaction goes through, they get the product. This is exactly what businesses do when they offer the lowest possible wages to workers. There is zero difference.
If a businessperson does it, they are shrewd. If a customer does it, they are unethical.
Am I listing a $600K house for $60K while I have many many millions in the bank? Not the biggest deal. Otherwise using that sort of example as a comparison makes little sense.
Of course if someone has no savings and lives paycheck to paycheck and lists their house, their only asset, for $540K less than it’s worth, it’s an awful situation. But that’s sort of ridiculous to consider, no?
The numerals are a mere convenience. A bank is required to honor the spelled out amount, because that is what is legally binding. But to the parent's point, presumably you owed a certain amount before paying, so if you overpaid, you have a credit due. Either way, the terms of the contract remain the same.
Are you sure this is the law? You advertise something for a price, the item is paid for, invoiced and delivered. At what point does such a law kick in? If I sell something 5% can I claim it was a mistake? What about 25%, 50%? Where is that line?
In my ethical framework it is more than fine to take advantage of a mistake by one of the largest companies in the world. They'll take advantage of you if given the chance.
Whose mistakes is it ok to take advantage from? It's hard to draw a bright line to split the continuum that goes from, say, the neighborhood nonprofit shop that employs homeless and disabled people from the community, all the way to a ruthless global mega corporation such as Amazon, but that doesn't mean that one's ethics are crooked if it draws a distinction between cases where it's OK and cases where it's wrong.
Is it your contention that a neighborhood nonprofit cannot be run ruthlessly? Do you contend that all of Amazon‘s employees are unethical? what about union pension funds that invest in Amazon-are they unethical?
Neither of these things. I am certainly not arguing that Amazon is unethical. Only that it can be ethical for people to make different decisions about when to take advantage of someone else's mistake on a case-by-case basis, based on the circumstances involved, without being required to produce a bright-line test valid in all possible hypothetical situations, as you seemed to imply. I'm just of the opinion that it's important to accept nuance and common sense in ethics, even if it means that sometimes dilemmas will arise that cannot be resolved easily. I'm also rather convinced that no human moral system exists without such dilemmas anyways. But the existence of dilemmas does not mean that every case is a dilemma, and it can be ok to make different decisions in different actual cases without having an answer to every hypothetical case in between.
It's also worth digging into "the mistake" here, because it's very likely that no human made this mistake (and can be punished for it internally). Rather the larger system (machine or beast) that is Amazon created a pricing system that created this price. You can either take advantage of it or not. So the real question of applying the principle of reciprocity here is ... what is the entity making the mistake and being exploited?
Would you like to live in a world where Amazon creates systems that exploit the market but individual consumers feel moral responsibility to turn a blind eye to the opportunities created by the mistakes that that system makes because they project their own humanity onto the system and apply the golden rule?
I'll take this one. At the point where the loss would create a cash crunch that would materially affect any of the company's employees (e.g. layoffs, company goes out of business, etc.)
If the company is Amazon-sized you are taking profits away from Amazon shareholders due to a mistake in the algorithms that drive Amazon's profits, which is nothing if not fair.
Corporations are owned by regular people, especially the larger they are. Their shares are in retirement accounts and college funds, etc. That must count for something?
Not only is this mistake immaterial to Amazon's bottom line in the first place, it is even less material to Amazon's stock price (which is almost entirely predicated on the future), and retirement accounts / college funds diversify enough that there is a lot of dilution happening here. I'm having a hard time picturing a retiree or future student as a victim...
