Bots Exploit 1-Minute Pricing Error – Amazon Support Fails to Cancel Orders
Fellow Sellers,
I’m facing a critical situation and urgently need your advice - support.
What Happened:
Pricing Error: Listed my £599 product at £10 for 1 minute (in order to see difference in amazon fees).
Bot Exploitation: 30 units bought instantly, likely by bots.
Support Failure: Account manager promised cancellations, but 18/30 orders have shipped.
Financial Loss: £17,700+ at stake, threatening my small business and family (newborn twins).*
Actions Taken:
Immediate price correction.
Refunded Payment Complete orders (no guarantee of cancellation).
Escalated to Seller Support, Account Manager, and the Jeff email which is apparently a line to executives.
Amazon’s Contradiction:
Account Manager: “Orders will be cancelled” (see screenshot).
Reality: Shipments continue, support unresponsive.*
Questions for the Community:
Has anyone successfully cancelled orders after a pricing error? How?
How do I escalate this when Amazon’s systems keep failing?
Are bots exploiting pricing errors a known issue?*
Screenshots Attached:
Account manager’s cancellation promise.
Shipment confirmations post-assurance.*
This is a systemic failure. If Amazon won’t protect sellers from bot exploitation, what’s next? Please share your insights or similar experiences. #PricingError #AmazonFail
Bots Exploit 1-Minute Pricing Error – Amazon Support Fails to Cancel Orders
Fellow Sellers,
I’m facing a critical situation and urgently need your advice - support.
What Happened:
Pricing Error: Listed my £599 product at £10 for 1 minute (in order to see difference in amazon fees).
Bot Exploitation: 30 units bought instantly, likely by bots.
Support Failure: Account manager promised cancellations, but 18/30 orders have shipped.
Financial Loss: £17,700+ at stake, threatening my small business and family (newborn twins).*
Actions Taken:
Immediate price correction.
Refunded Payment Complete orders (no guarantee of cancellation).
Escalated to Seller Support, Account Manager, and the Jeff email which is apparently a line to executives.
Amazon’s Contradiction:
Account Manager: “Orders will be cancelled” (see screenshot).
Reality: Shipments continue, support unresponsive.*
Questions for the Community:
Has anyone successfully cancelled orders after a pricing error? How?
How do I escalate this when Amazon’s systems keep failing?
Are bots exploiting pricing errors a known issue?*
Screenshots Attached:
Account manager’s cancellation promise.
Shipment confirmations post-assurance.*
This is a systemic failure. If Amazon won’t protect sellers from bot exploitation, what’s next? Please share your insights or similar experiences. #PricingError #AmazonFail
8 replies
Seller_9eJuqiyWVgZn5
I do sympathise, but fundamentally this is a user error and not an Amazon-caused pricing error which is a different kettle of fish (eg when their repricing algo went a bit crazy last year and dropped a lot of prices).
There are many tables for calculating fees of all kinds, or the offer could have been closed before changing to such a low price-point.
Pedantic, but the root cause is not an Amazon problem. Nor can we really cry foul about bots buying the inventory, that's a hard thing to prove as there are entire communities of humans who monitor the site 24/7 looking for bargains and quickly posting when they find prices below usual sellings (eg look at HUKD / Pepper - 2.6m users and 2.8m 'deals' shared, 2m followers on socials). Even if it could be proven that bots were scraping pages for pricing errors, Amazon are not going to take action as a sale is a sale in their eyes.
If there was an assurance Support would cancel the orders, that's something to take them up on. Sounds like that part has failed which is a pity.
Seller_7pTs15IYXmTOB
This is an unfortunate incident and I empathise with you.
However, as others have articulated very well, for a change, this is not Amazon fault at all.
Many sellers are employing tactics to draw attention to their page, pitifully failing. I am not suggesting that you did it. However, I have had a seller beg me to cancel an order, which I did. It was clear that he priced it low to bring in footfall into his store. In your case, you were doing a test. These are not bot purchases or exploitation. Amazon is a platform where there are millions browsing every second. Footfall increases if price decreases. It is a clever mechanism and the buyer needs it, we sellers want it for our businesses. We sellers must tread very carefully when manipulating pricing.
However, amazon is not obliged to cancel. The seller support must have agreed to avoid seller wrath and earn a quickie positive feedback. They don't mean what they say, they know it, many of us have learnt it from experience, just that you didn't see it.
As someone said, a sale is a sale. It would affect amazon portfolio to cancel sales. I have had miss-pricing purchases from the great store, selfridges. They randomly have miss-pricing errors. They have always upheld the sale. It is a hallmark of a good store that trades with integrity. Wouldn't you be disappointed if a store cancels your purchases?
This is the way I would suggest coping with it. "Financial Loss: £17,700+ at stake" @Seller_m5CFZOyYOWL8C The figure is not your "actual loss". It is your "perceived loss".
Your loss is the purchase amount, which I am sure should have been substantial considering you sell it for £500 and the purchases were £10.
I am sorry it happened but you may feel free of a sense of huge loss, if you just see the "actual loss".
If I were you, I would just detach from this unfortunate loss purely to be free of that sense of loss and battle on issues that I can cope with.
Channelise your energies to devise a clever plan to compensate for this loss like bringing in unit with more margin and more target audience. Good Luck.
Seller_Uo7DjOjHQDtfz
Amazon systems can take over an hour to update, meaning your one-minute change might remain active longer than expected.
It looks like a very expensive way to calculate Amazon fees!
Also, why are you calling people who see a £599 product for £10 bots?
If people had this item in their baskets, or saved items, they would get notifications of this huge price drop... You'd be a bot not to buy it!
Seller_HJ3Y1oyHnOeit
You literally have calculators for all your fees on the manage inventory page.
In what world is it a good idea to set a live in stock listing valued at £600 to £10 for any amount of time.
I think you need to start looking inward instead of asking why Amazons systems are failing. Take some accountability, can't really sympathize with you when your looking at the perspective of "its everyone elses fault"
Seller_ptdawyUOAQA1G
Firstly, I do sympathise, but I still have no clue why you would ever risk changing the price just to check on the fees.
Secondly, it takes a good 15-30 minutes for the fee change to show on your account, giving plenty of time for people to buy all the stock if permitted. So this didn't happen all in 1 minute.
Thirdly, every time I have ever made a pricing error, (usally by adding a comma instead of a full stop to make my product 599.00 instead of 5.99) Amazon immediately supress the listing and email me of the 'potential pricing error'.
If this didn't happen then I would suggest this to be an Amazon issue and their fault.
Fourthly, I can never understand why anyone would happily give Amazon control of any stock worth that much. I understand it's not much to some businesses but personally I'd never give them control of any stock worth more than 5-10K. This is exactly what can happen and you have absolutely zero control over it. They will now send your 17K stock to their wonderful customers for £10.
Also, id like to know, is this 17k retail or purchase price? If that's your purchase price, I'd be crying too.
Spencer_Amazon
Hello @Seller_m5CFZOyYOWL8C,
This thread is a duplicate of URGENT: Bots Exploit 1-Minute Pricing Error – Amazon Support Fails to Cancel Orders
Please continue to post there. I am closing this thread as a duplicate.
Regards, Spencer
Bots Exploit 1-Minute Pricing Error – Amazon Support Fails to Cancel Orders
Fellow Sellers,
I’m facing a critical situation and urgently need your advice - support.
What Happened:
Pricing Error: Listed my £599 product at £10 for 1 minute (in order to see difference in amazon fees).
Bot Exploitation: 30 units bought instantly, likely by bots.
Support Failure: Account manager promised cancellations, but 18/30 orders have shipped.
Financial Loss: £17,700+ at stake, threatening my small business and family (newborn twins).*
Actions Taken:
Immediate price correction.
Refunded Payment Complete orders (no guarantee of cancellation).
Escalated to Seller Support, Account Manager, and the Jeff email which is apparently a line to executives.
Amazon’s Contradiction:
Account Manager: “Orders will be cancelled” (see screenshot).
Reality: Shipments continue, support unresponsive.*
Questions for the Community:
Has anyone successfully cancelled orders after a pricing error? How?
How do I escalate this when Amazon’s systems keep failing?
Are bots exploiting pricing errors a known issue?*
Screenshots Attached:
Account manager’s cancellation promise.
Shipment confirmations post-assurance.*
This is a systemic failure. If Amazon won’t protect sellers from bot exploitation, what’s next? Please share your insights or similar experiences. #PricingError #AmazonFail
Bots Exploit 1-Minute Pricing Error – Amazon Support Fails to Cancel Orders
Fellow Sellers,
I’m facing a critical situation and urgently need your advice - support.
What Happened:
Pricing Error: Listed my £599 product at £10 for 1 minute (in order to see difference in amazon fees).
Bot Exploitation: 30 units bought instantly, likely by bots.
Support Failure: Account manager promised cancellations, but 18/30 orders have shipped.
Financial Loss: £17,700+ at stake, threatening my small business and family (newborn twins).*
Actions Taken:
Immediate price correction.
Refunded Payment Complete orders (no guarantee of cancellation).
Escalated to Seller Support, Account Manager, and the Jeff email which is apparently a line to executives.
Amazon’s Contradiction:
Account Manager: “Orders will be cancelled” (see screenshot).
Reality: Shipments continue, support unresponsive.*
Questions for the Community:
Has anyone successfully cancelled orders after a pricing error? How?
How do I escalate this when Amazon’s systems keep failing?
Are bots exploiting pricing errors a known issue?*
Screenshots Attached:
Account manager’s cancellation promise.
Shipment confirmations post-assurance.*
This is a systemic failure. If Amazon won’t protect sellers from bot exploitation, what’s next? Please share your insights or similar experiences. #PricingError #AmazonFail
Bots Exploit 1-Minute Pricing Error – Amazon Support Fails to Cancel Orders
Fellow Sellers,
I’m facing a critical situation and urgently need your advice - support.
What Happened:
Pricing Error: Listed my £599 product at £10 for 1 minute (in order to see difference in amazon fees).
Bot Exploitation: 30 units bought instantly, likely by bots.
Support Failure: Account manager promised cancellations, but 18/30 orders have shipped.
Financial Loss: £17,700+ at stake, threatening my small business and family (newborn twins).*
Actions Taken:
Immediate price correction.
Refunded Payment Complete orders (no guarantee of cancellation).
Escalated to Seller Support, Account Manager, and the Jeff email which is apparently a line to executives.
Amazon’s Contradiction:
Account Manager: “Orders will be cancelled” (see screenshot).
Reality: Shipments continue, support unresponsive.*
Questions for the Community:
Has anyone successfully cancelled orders after a pricing error? How?
How do I escalate this when Amazon’s systems keep failing?
Are bots exploiting pricing errors a known issue?*
Screenshots Attached:
Account manager’s cancellation promise.
Shipment confirmations post-assurance.*
This is a systemic failure. If Amazon won’t protect sellers from bot exploitation, what’s next? Please share your insights or similar experiences. #PricingError #AmazonFail
8 replies
8 replies
Seller_9eJuqiyWVgZn5
I do sympathise, but fundamentally this is a user error and not an Amazon-caused pricing error which is a different kettle of fish (eg when their repricing algo went a bit crazy last year and dropped a lot of prices).
There are many tables for calculating fees of all kinds, or the offer could have been closed before changing to such a low price-point.
Pedantic, but the root cause is not an Amazon problem. Nor can we really cry foul about bots buying the inventory, that's a hard thing to prove as there are entire communities of humans who monitor the site 24/7 looking for bargains and quickly posting when they find prices below usual sellings (eg look at HUKD / Pepper - 2.6m users and 2.8m 'deals' shared, 2m followers on socials). Even if it could be proven that bots were scraping pages for pricing errors, Amazon are not going to take action as a sale is a sale in their eyes.
If there was an assurance Support would cancel the orders, that's something to take them up on. Sounds like that part has failed which is a pity.
Seller_7pTs15IYXmTOB
This is an unfortunate incident and I empathise with you.
However, as others have articulated very well, for a change, this is not Amazon fault at all.
Many sellers are employing tactics to draw attention to their page, pitifully failing. I am not suggesting that you did it. However, I have had a seller beg me to cancel an order, which I did. It was clear that he priced it low to bring in footfall into his store. In your case, you were doing a test. These are not bot purchases or exploitation. Amazon is a platform where there are millions browsing every second. Footfall increases if price decreases. It is a clever mechanism and the buyer needs it, we sellers want it for our businesses. We sellers must tread very carefully when manipulating pricing.
However, amazon is not obliged to cancel. The seller support must have agreed to avoid seller wrath and earn a quickie positive feedback. They don't mean what they say, they know it, many of us have learnt it from experience, just that you didn't see it.
As someone said, a sale is a sale. It would affect amazon portfolio to cancel sales. I have had miss-pricing purchases from the great store, selfridges. They randomly have miss-pricing errors. They have always upheld the sale. It is a hallmark of a good store that trades with integrity. Wouldn't you be disappointed if a store cancels your purchases?
This is the way I would suggest coping with it. "Financial Loss: £17,700+ at stake" @Seller_m5CFZOyYOWL8C The figure is not your "actual loss". It is your "perceived loss".
Your loss is the purchase amount, which I am sure should have been substantial considering you sell it for £500 and the purchases were £10.
I am sorry it happened but you may feel free of a sense of huge loss, if you just see the "actual loss".
If I were you, I would just detach from this unfortunate loss purely to be free of that sense of loss and battle on issues that I can cope with.
Channelise your energies to devise a clever plan to compensate for this loss like bringing in unit with more margin and more target audience. Good Luck.
Seller_Uo7DjOjHQDtfz
Amazon systems can take over an hour to update, meaning your one-minute change might remain active longer than expected.
It looks like a very expensive way to calculate Amazon fees!
Also, why are you calling people who see a £599 product for £10 bots?
If people had this item in their baskets, or saved items, they would get notifications of this huge price drop... You'd be a bot not to buy it!
Seller_HJ3Y1oyHnOeit
You literally have calculators for all your fees on the manage inventory page.
In what world is it a good idea to set a live in stock listing valued at £600 to £10 for any amount of time.
I think you need to start looking inward instead of asking why Amazons systems are failing. Take some accountability, can't really sympathize with you when your looking at the perspective of "its everyone elses fault"
Seller_ptdawyUOAQA1G
Firstly, I do sympathise, but I still have no clue why you would ever risk changing the price just to check on the fees.
Secondly, it takes a good 15-30 minutes for the fee change to show on your account, giving plenty of time for people to buy all the stock if permitted. So this didn't happen all in 1 minute.
Thirdly, every time I have ever made a pricing error, (usally by adding a comma instead of a full stop to make my product 599.00 instead of 5.99) Amazon immediately supress the listing and email me of the 'potential pricing error'.
If this didn't happen then I would suggest this to be an Amazon issue and their fault.
Fourthly, I can never understand why anyone would happily give Amazon control of any stock worth that much. I understand it's not much to some businesses but personally I'd never give them control of any stock worth more than 5-10K. This is exactly what can happen and you have absolutely zero control over it. They will now send your 17K stock to their wonderful customers for £10.
Also, id like to know, is this 17k retail or purchase price? If that's your purchase price, I'd be crying too.
Spencer_Amazon
Hello @Seller_m5CFZOyYOWL8C,
This thread is a duplicate of URGENT: Bots Exploit 1-Minute Pricing Error – Amazon Support Fails to Cancel Orders
Please continue to post there. I am closing this thread as a duplicate.
Regards, Spencer
Seller_9eJuqiyWVgZn5
I do sympathise, but fundamentally this is a user error and not an Amazon-caused pricing error which is a different kettle of fish (eg when their repricing algo went a bit crazy last year and dropped a lot of prices).
There are many tables for calculating fees of all kinds, or the offer could have been closed before changing to such a low price-point.
Pedantic, but the root cause is not an Amazon problem. Nor can we really cry foul about bots buying the inventory, that's a hard thing to prove as there are entire communities of humans who monitor the site 24/7 looking for bargains and quickly posting when they find prices below usual sellings (eg look at HUKD / Pepper - 2.6m users and 2.8m 'deals' shared, 2m followers on socials). Even if it could be proven that bots were scraping pages for pricing errors, Amazon are not going to take action as a sale is a sale in their eyes.
If there was an assurance Support would cancel the orders, that's something to take them up on. Sounds like that part has failed which is a pity.
Seller_9eJuqiyWVgZn5
I do sympathise, but fundamentally this is a user error and not an Amazon-caused pricing error which is a different kettle of fish (eg when their repricing algo went a bit crazy last year and dropped a lot of prices).
There are many tables for calculating fees of all kinds, or the offer could have been closed before changing to such a low price-point.
Pedantic, but the root cause is not an Amazon problem. Nor can we really cry foul about bots buying the inventory, that's a hard thing to prove as there are entire communities of humans who monitor the site 24/7 looking for bargains and quickly posting when they find prices below usual sellings (eg look at HUKD / Pepper - 2.6m users and 2.8m 'deals' shared, 2m followers on socials). Even if it could be proven that bots were scraping pages for pricing errors, Amazon are not going to take action as a sale is a sale in their eyes.
If there was an assurance Support would cancel the orders, that's something to take them up on. Sounds like that part has failed which is a pity.
Seller_7pTs15IYXmTOB
This is an unfortunate incident and I empathise with you.
However, as others have articulated very well, for a change, this is not Amazon fault at all.
Many sellers are employing tactics to draw attention to their page, pitifully failing. I am not suggesting that you did it. However, I have had a seller beg me to cancel an order, which I did. It was clear that he priced it low to bring in footfall into his store. In your case, you were doing a test. These are not bot purchases or exploitation. Amazon is a platform where there are millions browsing every second. Footfall increases if price decreases. It is a clever mechanism and the buyer needs it, we sellers want it for our businesses. We sellers must tread very carefully when manipulating pricing.
However, amazon is not obliged to cancel. The seller support must have agreed to avoid seller wrath and earn a quickie positive feedback. They don't mean what they say, they know it, many of us have learnt it from experience, just that you didn't see it.
As someone said, a sale is a sale. It would affect amazon portfolio to cancel sales. I have had miss-pricing purchases from the great store, selfridges. They randomly have miss-pricing errors. They have always upheld the sale. It is a hallmark of a good store that trades with integrity. Wouldn't you be disappointed if a store cancels your purchases?
This is the way I would suggest coping with it. "Financial Loss: £17,700+ at stake" @Seller_m5CFZOyYOWL8C The figure is not your "actual loss". It is your "perceived loss".
Your loss is the purchase amount, which I am sure should have been substantial considering you sell it for £500 and the purchases were £10.
I am sorry it happened but you may feel free of a sense of huge loss, if you just see the "actual loss".
If I were you, I would just detach from this unfortunate loss purely to be free of that sense of loss and battle on issues that I can cope with.
Channelise your energies to devise a clever plan to compensate for this loss like bringing in unit with more margin and more target audience. Good Luck.
Seller_7pTs15IYXmTOB
This is an unfortunate incident and I empathise with you.
However, as others have articulated very well, for a change, this is not Amazon fault at all.
Many sellers are employing tactics to draw attention to their page, pitifully failing. I am not suggesting that you did it. However, I have had a seller beg me to cancel an order, which I did. It was clear that he priced it low to bring in footfall into his store. In your case, you were doing a test. These are not bot purchases or exploitation. Amazon is a platform where there are millions browsing every second. Footfall increases if price decreases. It is a clever mechanism and the buyer needs it, we sellers want it for our businesses. We sellers must tread very carefully when manipulating pricing.
However, amazon is not obliged to cancel. The seller support must have agreed to avoid seller wrath and earn a quickie positive feedback. They don't mean what they say, they know it, many of us have learnt it from experience, just that you didn't see it.
As someone said, a sale is a sale. It would affect amazon portfolio to cancel sales. I have had miss-pricing purchases from the great store, selfridges. They randomly have miss-pricing errors. They have always upheld the sale. It is a hallmark of a good store that trades with integrity. Wouldn't you be disappointed if a store cancels your purchases?
This is the way I would suggest coping with it. "Financial Loss: £17,700+ at stake" @Seller_m5CFZOyYOWL8C The figure is not your "actual loss". It is your "perceived loss".
Your loss is the purchase amount, which I am sure should have been substantial considering you sell it for £500 and the purchases were £10.
I am sorry it happened but you may feel free of a sense of huge loss, if you just see the "actual loss".
If I were you, I would just detach from this unfortunate loss purely to be free of that sense of loss and battle on issues that I can cope with.
Channelise your energies to devise a clever plan to compensate for this loss like bringing in unit with more margin and more target audience. Good Luck.
Seller_Uo7DjOjHQDtfz
Amazon systems can take over an hour to update, meaning your one-minute change might remain active longer than expected.
It looks like a very expensive way to calculate Amazon fees!
Also, why are you calling people who see a £599 product for £10 bots?
If people had this item in their baskets, or saved items, they would get notifications of this huge price drop... You'd be a bot not to buy it!
Seller_Uo7DjOjHQDtfz
Amazon systems can take over an hour to update, meaning your one-minute change might remain active longer than expected.
It looks like a very expensive way to calculate Amazon fees!
Also, why are you calling people who see a £599 product for £10 bots?
If people had this item in their baskets, or saved items, they would get notifications of this huge price drop... You'd be a bot not to buy it!
Seller_HJ3Y1oyHnOeit
You literally have calculators for all your fees on the manage inventory page.
In what world is it a good idea to set a live in stock listing valued at £600 to £10 for any amount of time.
I think you need to start looking inward instead of asking why Amazons systems are failing. Take some accountability, can't really sympathize with you when your looking at the perspective of "its everyone elses fault"
Seller_HJ3Y1oyHnOeit
You literally have calculators for all your fees on the manage inventory page.
In what world is it a good idea to set a live in stock listing valued at £600 to £10 for any amount of time.
I think you need to start looking inward instead of asking why Amazons systems are failing. Take some accountability, can't really sympathize with you when your looking at the perspective of "its everyone elses fault"
Seller_ptdawyUOAQA1G
Firstly, I do sympathise, but I still have no clue why you would ever risk changing the price just to check on the fees.
Secondly, it takes a good 15-30 minutes for the fee change to show on your account, giving plenty of time for people to buy all the stock if permitted. So this didn't happen all in 1 minute.
Thirdly, every time I have ever made a pricing error, (usally by adding a comma instead of a full stop to make my product 599.00 instead of 5.99) Amazon immediately supress the listing and email me of the 'potential pricing error'.
If this didn't happen then I would suggest this to be an Amazon issue and their fault.
Fourthly, I can never understand why anyone would happily give Amazon control of any stock worth that much. I understand it's not much to some businesses but personally I'd never give them control of any stock worth more than 5-10K. This is exactly what can happen and you have absolutely zero control over it. They will now send your 17K stock to their wonderful customers for £10.
Also, id like to know, is this 17k retail or purchase price? If that's your purchase price, I'd be crying too.
Seller_ptdawyUOAQA1G
Firstly, I do sympathise, but I still have no clue why you would ever risk changing the price just to check on the fees.
Secondly, it takes a good 15-30 minutes for the fee change to show on your account, giving plenty of time for people to buy all the stock if permitted. So this didn't happen all in 1 minute.
Thirdly, every time I have ever made a pricing error, (usally by adding a comma instead of a full stop to make my product 599.00 instead of 5.99) Amazon immediately supress the listing and email me of the 'potential pricing error'.
If this didn't happen then I would suggest this to be an Amazon issue and their fault.
Fourthly, I can never understand why anyone would happily give Amazon control of any stock worth that much. I understand it's not much to some businesses but personally I'd never give them control of any stock worth more than 5-10K. This is exactly what can happen and you have absolutely zero control over it. They will now send your 17K stock to their wonderful customers for £10.
Also, id like to know, is this 17k retail or purchase price? If that's your purchase price, I'd be crying too.
Spencer_Amazon
Hello @Seller_m5CFZOyYOWL8C,
This thread is a duplicate of URGENT: Bots Exploit 1-Minute Pricing Error – Amazon Support Fails to Cancel Orders
Please continue to post there. I am closing this thread as a duplicate.
Regards, Spencer
Spencer_Amazon
Hello @Seller_m5CFZOyYOWL8C,
This thread is a duplicate of URGENT: Bots Exploit 1-Minute Pricing Error – Amazon Support Fails to Cancel Orders
Please continue to post there. I am closing this thread as a duplicate.
Regards, Spencer
