Amazon glitch led to unlimited free MP3 downloads

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 11 Mar 2009 at 15:56

Amazon has revealed that a glitch in a promotion for its MP3 shop led to hundreds of users gaining access to unlimited free downloads over Christmas.

The mistake came to light as part of a complaint made to the Advertising Standards Authority by two members of the public.

They alleged that an emailed special offer from Amazon, which granted them £3 off MP3 tracks bought on Christmas and Boxing Day with a special code, was misleading because when they tried to enter the code on Boxing Day it had expired.

Responding to the complaint, Amazon revealed that on the first day of the offer a member of staff "noticed forum threads which indicated that a system glitch permitted some customers to use the code repeatedly on the same account, giving them unlimited free downloads."

Amazon claims that by the time it got around to rectifying the problem, "many customers had redeemed the discount code repeatedly, some more than 100 times, and news of the system bug had spread to a number of online forums."

In order to fix the bug Amazon retired the code and instead promised to refund £3 from the full purchase price no later than 9 January 2009 - a solution it posted across its site.

Amazon denied that it had attempted to mislead customers, claiming that emailing the 2.8 million people who received the original promotion to inform them of the change would have been "impractical" as it would have taken at least 24 hours for everyone to receive the update.

The ASA sided with Amazon noting that "a large number of customers had taken advantage of the offer both before and after the mechanic changed and considered that Amazon had taken appropriate action to deal with the problem and to ensure customers were not disappointed."