Anyone need any bottles?

[Chuck]

To answer a few questions:

-I spoke to Household Products originally to inform them of the mistake at around 1pm yesterday.

-I did not pay for expedited delivery, though it did arrive on a 24 hour DPD service.

-I've spoken to the manager again this morning. He has confirmed the error is between Amazon and Household Products systems (two Household Products SKUs mapping to one Amazon ASIN). The issue here is that Household Products cannot differentiate the problem orders from genuine orders - The orders at £5.95 come through to Household Products systems as an order for a single bottle - which is what they expect for £5.95 hence they did not spot it.

The remedy here is:
-People who receive a single bottle expecting 40 will be given a full refund and can keep the bottle. This will be confirmed by email to all affected within the next few hours, giving instructions on how to process the refund. Additionally, those affected will be offered a good will gesture/offer in the same email. I've not been told what this offer is (the MD is currently working out the details). Clearly this will not be 40 bottles for £5.95 but I've been told it should be an 'attractive' offer.

For anybody that wants to confirm this or ask further questions Household Products can be contacted directly on 01924 764002.

To confirm: After speaking to Household Products about this for quite some time I am certain this is a genuine mistake and one that appears to me to very much in Amazon's hands. Despite this the company are going to the ones taking the hit (indeed it is causing a bit of a storm over there; the manager has cancelled his holiday to rectify this, etc.). I'd hope that given the nature of this nobody leaves 'negative' feedback which could unfairly damage the company’s reputation when they are clearly trying to do everything they can to resolve the problem.

Remember: If an offer seems too good to be true it probably is. And in this case it was. But none of us will be out of pocket and should have a little something to sweeten the deal. I'm not sure what more people could hope for!

Well said. I don't know why people get so wound up by these things. As you say no-one will be out of pocket - except Household Products, who by the sounds of it made a genuine mistake, or even worse did nothing wrong and have lost out due to Amazon's error. As homebrewers we're all well aware that mistakes do happen and how easily they can be made.

Most marketplace sellers are small businesses trying to make an honest living and pay a large comission to Amazon. Damaging the reputation of such a company for a simple error that won't leave you out of pocket, just because you don't get the bargain you were hoping for is not fair.

[Coops.]

Perfectly calm here,

I'd agree, it's a bit off ruining someone's reputation for a mistake, however, there's evidence on the previous page to suggest at least three orders being dispatched after the vendor was made aware of the issue. That's not a mistake at all, that's not checking having been appraised of a potential issue, which is as simple as sending an email to the buyer and checking prior to dispatch.

So, where does that leave those who purchased in good faith and are about to receive significantly less than they have made a contract to be supplied with? Because that's exactly what it is....a contract. Once payment is taken and the order dispatched, the buyer has every right to expect to receive what they've paid for.

[NobbyIPA]

Perfectly calm here,


So, where does that leave those who purchased in good faith and are about to receive significantly less than they have made a contract to be supplied with? Because that's exactly

yup if only 1 arrives i am down near on 8 quid in grolsch caps i bought seconds after buying the bottles
THIS IS QUITE OBVIOUSLY A SCAM they knew the mistake and still tried to con us by sending only 1 bottle
mine has not arrived yet and armed with their phone number i am ready for a fight
and i will be charging them for the flip tops that i bought as they do not sell the flip tops which is suspect

[Mr. Dripping]

Perfectly calm here,

.... however, there's evidence on the previous page to suggest at least three orders being dispatched after the vendor was made aware of the issue....

This is the bit that I'm not happy about. If it was a genuine mistake, then pending orders should have been pulled and the buyer notified of the error. The real villain here is probably Amazon.....

[TempTest]

Perfectly calm here,

I'd agree, it's a bit off ruining someone's reputation for a mistake, however, there's evidence on the previous page to suggest at least three orders being dispatched after the vendor was made aware of the issue. That's not a mistake at all, that's not checking having been appraised of a potential issue, which is as simple as sending an email to the buyer and checking prior to dispatch.

So, where does that leave those who purchased in good faith and are about to receive significantly less than they have made a contract to be supplied with? Because that's exactly what it is....a contract. Once payment is taken and the order dispatched, the buyer has every right to expect to receive what they've paid for.

As you will see when the bottle arrives the paperwork that Household Products receive has no mention of 40 bottles and until I called yesterday they were unaware this is what they had 'committed' to. Only when logging into the Amazon system did they see the mention of 40 bottles.

They have an internal reference number (SKU) for the single bottle, 321777, for £5.95. They have another SKU for 40 bottles, 321777_40, for £75.99. When you place the order on the Amazon site it appears on Household Products system as 321777 (and you paid £5.95) hence nothing appears incorrect and they despatch a single bottle. The issue is that Amazon should never list both SKUs under the same Amazon reference number (ASIN).

I'm not a lawyer so I cannot comment on what constitutes a contract and what they're obliged to honour however being rational I think that given these appear to sell for £3+p&p (ish) per bottle elsewhere it was always unlikely that we'd get 40 for less than £6! We could have done a bit of due diligence and contacted them to seek assurance first but did anybody? No because they hoped it'd 'slip through the net'. We cannot, therefore, feel too hard done by when a harmless mistake is made. So legally correct or not, I think their response has been more than acceptable.

It takes three weeks before Amazon pay Household Products (minus a commission) so at the moment Household Products are many bottles down, have not received (and will not receive) any money for these bottles, have paid for the shipping costs and at the same time are trying to work out a deal in the way of a gesture of goodwill. I don't think we should expect they'll sell us £76 worth of bottles for £6.

[TempTest]

I don't think they did know of the mistake until I informed them. The bottles that were despatched after I had informed them were already 'through' the system - There was no way for them to stop... Imagine a warehouse of goods packed for collection... Which ones are bottles and which are not?

As soon as they were informed they took the Amazon listing down. I'm not sure why everybody expects anything more than to keep the bottles they've been sent? Sure you've bought some flip tops (for example) but that was at your own risk given that you had done so when not even sure the order would be fulfilled.

Would you have felt better had they simply not fulfilled the order than fulfil it and then let you keep the bottle? Either way, you'd have the caps...

And, to confirm, Household Products do not have *any* of your money. Amazon holds it for several weeks and they will release it back to you once the instructions on how to claim the money back are received. There is *no way* Household Products have benefited from this in *any way* so I'm not sure what the incentive for them to 'scam' anybody is...

[TempTest]

And another point - which I forgot to mention previously - apparently given the orders that they received if they honoured each mistaken order of 40 that was placed they would require 3000 bottles. They physically do not have that amount of stock. I assume this means 75 orders of at £5.95 were placed. Given that they list a 40 quantity for £75.99 they cannot sell almost £5700 worth of bottles for less than £450.

[TempTest]

Just done a bit of research on Amazon and I think this sort of thing is covered under the Amazon 'A-to-z Guarantee':

Customers who pay for purchases from an Amazon seller via the Amazon.co.uk website are eligible to receive up to £2,500 of the purchase price, including delivery charges.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/custome ... =201460270

If there are evident differences between the product you receive and the Seller's description, you must contact the Seller within 14 days to return the product.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/custome ... =201460300

So if my understanding is correct then as far as Amazon are concerned all that is required when the item received does not match the description is a full refund (after returning the product). We're not even being asked to return the product in this instance.

[TempTest]

I've just received the email for refund info etc. Check your inboxes!

Copied for reference:

Hi

Thanks for your recent order with us through Amazon. Unfortunately there has been a significant technical issue with this product listing which effects your order with us.

We created and listed two different product offerings on Amazon. One was the single Kilner 500 ml bottle at £5.25 under our SKU 321777. We then created a pack of 40 x 500ml of these bottles at £76 under the SKU 321777_40. These listings were sent to Amazon in the usual way using our third party and fully Amazon integrated Amazon listing software system in exactly the same we have sent several thousand other products to Amazon previously.

For some reason, not yet fully explained to us by Amazon, their system has put these two products on the same listing, resulting in some customers seeing 40 pack offers at £5.25 and others at £76. Essentially customers were seeing variations of the two product options entwined as one.

This was brought to our attention yesterday (we weren’t aware of this previously because the orders came into our system as being single bottle orders - screenshots are available if required for verification) and we immediately contacted Amazon who have opened several cases, across both technical and customer services teams to investigate and assist us in resolving this issue for you.
Amazon’s system should and always has detected and prevented any second product SKU being added to an ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) with an existing product SKU attached to it, but for some reason at Amazon’s end this has not happened on these products.

As a consequence the listing changed from offering a single bottle at £5.25 to offering 40 bottles at £5.25 to then offering £40 for £76.
These products are now marked as being unavailable whilst this issue is fully resolved.
Given we listed this item with only 37 single bottles as being in stock it is impossible to be able to honour the current orders we have received.

As a gesture for the inconvenience suffered I have agreed to offer all customers a full refund for their entire purchase, whilst at the same time allowing you to keep the bottles you have received from us. That number is based on what our system shows you are owed you. In most cases this will be one free bottle for every 40 you believe you ordered. May I also add that this offer (ad the discount offer made below) are being made by and paid for by my company Household Products Ltd, and not by Amazon.

In order for the free bottle and refund to be implemented it is important that you request a cancellation of your order through the Amazon order cancellation system using this link here::

<LINK REMOVED IN CASE IT IS INDIVIDUAL TO EACH AMAZON ACCOUNT>

I would also like to offer you something else for this issue so once the listing problem is resolved we are prepared to offer a one off discount of 20% on the 40 bottle pack at the normal price to all effected customers.

However given this saga so far, we would request that if you are interested in taking us up on this offer could you please let us know by return email how many bottles you require so that we can ensure Kilner have the stock in place necessary to fulfil any new orders carrying this discount without further issue or inconvenience to yourself.

We can only apologise for this issue and should you require any further information please do not hesitate to contact my team, or indeed Amazon themselves.

Regards

K Ashley
Managing Director

EDIT: So it seems we'll be given the option to order the 40 bottles for ~£60. At £1.50/bottle not sure I'll take it up but I'll give it some thought I guess (and see how the price compares to that elsewhere).

[Mr. Dripping]

I have the email. Bit of a saga really......but I won't be taking them up on the offer for 40 bottles.
I think I will save my single bottle for a competition entry

[TempTest]

With a very quick search the cheapest I found worked out at £2.08 a bottle http://www.drinkstuff.com/products/prod ... -tvkmMXO0A

So £1.50 does seem reasonable if you were intending to buy them at full price but I'm not sure the offer will attract anybody who was interested at the £6 price point...

[Gradie]

Perfectly reasonable resolution to what seems a genuine error. I wont take them up on the offer as my normal bottles cost a similar amount, but come filled with beer .

That said, if the error was made by Amazon then maybe Amazon should be fulfilling our original orders - they can certainly afford it!

[bluezephyr]

Perfectly calm here,


So, where does that leave those who purchased in good faith and are about to receive significantly less than they have made a contract to be supplied with? Because that's exactly

yup if only 1 arrives i am down near on 8 quid in grolsch caps i bought seconds after buying the bottles
THIS IS QUITE OBVIOUSLY A SCAM they knew the mistake and still tried to con us by sending only 1 bottle
mine has not arrived yet and armed with their phone number i am ready for a fight
and i will be charging them for the flip tops that i bought as they do not sell the flip tops which is suspect

We all took a punt and it didn't work out. You jumped the gun unfortunately

[Wekslap]

Hi all. Just come across these. Any good for home brew? Are these cheap?
http://www.homebargains.co.uk/products/ ... of-12.aspx

[TempTest]

Hi all. Just come across these. Any good for home brew? Are these cheap?
http://www.homebargains.co.uk/products/ ... of-12.aspx

They're clear to you've got to be careful of light strike... Price looks pretty reasonable though! I'd certainly give it a whirl if they were brown but I'd give clear a miss.

EDIT: Not sure they'll take the pressure anyway actually - It seems they're for juice so probably a sure fire way to get a bottle bomb!