Alza Accidentally Sold Items With Discounts of Up to 80% — Orders Cancelled, Pickup Boxes Locked

During its Alza Dny sale, Czech online retailer Alza mistakenly slashed prices on a range of products, including electronics, by up to 80% — pushing some items below cost price. As soon as the company spotted the glitch, it cancelled the orders and locked customers out of the pickup boxes, even for those who had already paid.

According to the website Svět Android, which was the first to report the unusually low prices on Monday after the sale began, the Rapture Phantom wireless mouse dropped to 220 crowns from its usual 1,099 crowns after the 80% discount. The outlet noted that this brand typically offers discounts of no more than 20–30%.

What Alza says

Plenty of shoppers took advantage of the discount, and some even managed to collect their orders. But anyone who wasn't quick enough is now out of luck — the access codes for the pickup boxes have been deactivated.

"For orders that have already been paid for, we will immediately issue a full refund using the original payment method. Some orders had already been delivered to customers by the time we discovered the error, and we have not retroactively cancelled those. We are currently reviewing what happened internally and taking steps to prevent similar mistakes from happening again," said Eliška Čeřovská, Alza's press manager for business communications.

Similar glitches have happened before

Technical errors of this kind occasionally crop up at other retailers too. Last year, customers of sportswear brand Reebok's online store were able to buy items priced in crowns instead of euros — for example, running shoes listed at 50 crowns instead of 50 euros, and a T-shirt at 30 crowns instead of 30 euros. However, buyers never actually received the goods, as the retailer cancelled all the orders.

"Unfortunately, technical glitches that lead to this kind of trouble still happen even today. That said, it's an absolute exception," said Jan Vetyška, executive director of the Czech E-commerce Association.

Around Prague, based on reporting by seznamzpravy.cz