Peter: "Oh! Well, this is not a mundane detail, Michael!"
Michael: "Hey, quit getting pissed at me. Alright? This was all your idea, ---hole!"
Peter: "Alright, okay, alright, let's try not to get pissed off at each other. Alright? Let's just calm down, let's try to figure this thing out together."
Same with rm -Rf /foo/bar. There's a moment when pressing enter will do the wrong thing. I usually use relative paths to avoid this, but I have had to repair the damage for someone who actually managed to rm -Rf / by accident due to this.
It's hard to imagine how that would end up repricing items though. Without a total blanking out moment in the programmer's head, anyway, which I'm sure we've all been guilty of.
def build_query()
"UPDATE prices SET price=4995 #{where_clause}"
end
def where_clause() # only set prices on products in our group of stuff to sell
return "oops, I'm accidentally an empty string"
end
Also it's not fair to judge it by major media exposure because:
1. The people who got those deals will generate word of mouth
2. If they hadn't honored it it would have generated negative word of mouth
Gotta factor those two in.
Considering they could have had to pay $1.6m + class action legal fees means they saved a lot of money by simply taking the loss.
What they probably can't do is ship you your stuff for $50, find the mistake a month later, and then silently charge your credit card the $500 difference. And they probably can't ask you to send the stuff back.
"TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS
In the event a product is listed at an incorrect price or with incorrect information due to typographical error or error in pricing or product information received from our suppliers, we shall have the right to refuse or cancel any orders placed for product listed at the incorrect price. We shall have the right to refuse or cancel any such orders whether or not the order has been confirmed and your credit card charged. If your credit card has already been charged for the purchase and your order is canceled, we shall immediately issue a credit to your credit card account in the amount of the charge."
http://www.6pm.com/terms-of-use
If you are going to talk like a lawyer you should act like a lawyer and read the fine print.
If I remember my law class in the UK, there is no legal reason to ship the goods in this situation. The price online is only one that is offered. The buyer giving money to the retailer is considered an acceptance of the offer, but the contract is not binding unless the retailer then displays that they still wish to go ahead with the transaction on those terms. My lecturer always referred to it as the courts wanting to see "a meeting of minds."
This leaves online retailers (and brick and mortar that sticker an item wrong) the time to change anything before the item is placed in the buyer's hands, and the court will look particularly down on a transaction where the buyer could not have reasonably expected the transaction to be valid (like buying a TV for 1 GBP).
My understanding was that much of contract law in the US was based on UK law, but I am by no means a lawyer in either jurisdiction :)
(certainly prior to taking the money then they are able to simply cancel the order at any time. After that I suppose it depends on the country/contract law involved)
Until today I had not ever heard about 6pm.com.
Due solely to their mistake, this post, and their honor, I'll be sure and check them out for future purchases.
In 10 years of shopping, it's never happened.
The difference: what Zappos noticed in the course of six hours, Nalgene didn't notice from about Saturday afternoon 'till Monday morning.