Buyers create fake Amazon pages to bring prices down

Large US stores promise prices no higher than Amazon ones than enterprising citizens took advantage of.

After Thanksgiving Day, there is a custom in the USA and several other countries to arrange big sales. The tradition dates back to the XIX century, and the actual term “Black Friday” in its current meaning appeared already in the 1970s.

This year, Black Friday will take place on November 28th, and Amazon began its sales even a week earlier.

Black Friday's big stores open very early: at six in the morning and even earlier. Since 2012, those Walmart stores that do not work around the clock open at 8 pm on the day before the sale.
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On November 13, Walmart announced a pricing policy at the time of sales prices of some online sites. This is a common practice ; many other stores do the same. On Black Friday, some retailers hold prices at Amazon, and for the rest of the year their price tags correspond to Best Buy and Target.

The policy says literally that if a customer finds a product cheaper in one of the online stores from the list, then Walmart will sell the product at the same price. This was taken advantage of by some enterprising buyers.

The fact is that Amazon is not just an online store, it is a B2C (business to customer) marketplace. This means that different companies can register their products after registration, and their products will be displayed in search and product pages.

To bring down the price you need only the seller’s account. On the site placed the necessary goods at an unreasonably low price. “Amazon” is quickly restoring order, but there is enough time to make some screenshots for presentation at the checkout. It is unclear whether only screenshots were actually checked, or workers were still looking for goods on the site.


An example of a listing for deceiving Walmart. Note the merchant account name AmzonElectronics.

Several buyers have already had time to buy and boast in microblogs and Reddite Playstation 4 consoles, bought for $ 90. The normal cost of these devices is $ 399, more than four times as much.

This misstep has already been fixed. There was a formal announcement from the Walmart management, and the pricing policy was amended. More prices from third parties on online sites and auctions will not be counted. In addition, the product, the price of which is compared, should be ready for sale: if it has “out of stock” status, the price will be ignored.

How many such lovers of freebies were found, the representative of the chain of stores did not say , but hinted that there were enough of them to notice the wrong and quickly make corrections. Also, nothing is reported about the legal prosecution of these essentially fraudulent actions.