superyooser's Journal: Greed

For all the talk about "greedy corporations," they are no more tight-fisted and selfish than the typical consumer. (If you've worked in retail, you know what I'm talking about.) Especially the Slashdot consumer. (story: Amazon Adjusts Prices After Sales Error; see the comments)

On the Amazon story: Legally, I think a legitimate case can be made either way, for charging or not, but IANAL. But morally, I think Amazon is in the right. The consumers knew they were getting a literal steal of a bargain. "Buy one, get one free" means you have to buy one. Doubling the deal means you have to buy more, not less. "Buy" obviously means that the price is above $0.00, else it would be called "free": "Get one free, get one free." The people who took advantage of the glitch were being greedy consumers.

Heck

[StalinsNotDead]

If you've worked in retail

You don't even have to have worked in retail. Just stand in line behind the wrong person who tries to haggle with the cashier (it was only $23 last week, not $35) about how much they paid for a carton of cigarettes just last week. Well that's not how much they cost now.

Re:

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Greed is almost as infectious of a sin as Lust is.

I'm usually against greedy corps

[Marxist Hacker 42]

But this story just doesn't strike me as one. Whoever programmed that portion of the website should be fired, and while the corp could have been a little more understanding (such as, maybe, "We've made an awful mistake with the two-for-one deal you took advantage of. Please return the excess merchandise *or* your card will be charged for the wholesale amount of the goods you've been given. We're offering this discount because the mistake was our fault. We appologize for the inconvience.") there is no re

Moo

[Chacham]

Yep.