Panasonic UK’s retail store is up and corrected

For a few days after the the Panasonic UK online store was swamped by people trying to get their hands on 1p LCD TVs and Blu-Ray players, it looks like the site is up and running and is ready to take on those with cookies still on their PC with items in the basket for a penny.

I went back today to see if the site had re-opened, which it had. To my surprise, the basket status showed that I had 1 item worth £0.01 in there. Clicking through took me to the shopping basket where red text at the top of the page told me that the price “…has changed from 0.01 to 244.99.”

Panasonic Offers Electricals for 1p, Site Goes Down

Yesterday, someone had spotted items on Panasonic UK’s online store listed for a whopping 1 pence! These weren’t small clearance items such as fuses, cables or ancillaries, the items listed for £0.01 included TVs and Blu-Ray players. The observant shopper then posted the offer on HotUKDeals where the deal didn’t get as good a reception as a genuine deal, probably due to the blatant mis-price and the tendency of such mis-priced orders being cancelled.

According to one poster, the mis-price was publicised further, on the local news (unclear if this was radio or TV). By early evening, the 1p items began to show as out of stock and then later on the entire site was closed and replaced with a message saying the site was being upgraded.

 

Someone at the retailers office might get a shouting at on Monday morning, being the web, maybe today. This could have been a genuine/foolish error, or a good way of bumping up the numbers for anyone enquiring about the visitor figures this month.