Shoppers rushed to buy laptop computers worth £500 for the knockdown price of £40 after an online blunder by John Lewis.
The mix-up happened after prices and pictures of software equipment appeared alongside descriptions of laptops.
But bosses have refused to honour the deal instead they have promised to credit their accounts with £25 as a “goodwill gesture”.
The mix up happened after prices and pictures of software equipment appeared alongside descriptions of laptops and tablets.
The error followed a similar glitch at Amazon last month when bargain-hunters were able to snap up thousands of items for just 1p each when they were wrongly priced– but in that case they were allowed to keep them.
One angry John Lewis shopper was a 72-year-old woman from Maidstone, Kent, who paid £79.90 for two Hewlett Packard Pavilion laptops.
She did not want to be named, but said: “Amazon made a similar mistake and honoured the sale. I would have expected a company with the reputation of John Lewis to do the same.”
A spokesman for the company – whose famous slogan is Never Knowingly Undersold – said: “This was a genuine mistake and we have written to all customers affected and provided a full refund along with a £25 gesture of goodwill for the inconvenience caused.”
In a letter to customers, John Lewis said: “Unfortunately, there was an error on our website and some of the information displayed led to a misunderstanding of exactly what were offering under the product description.
“While the main part of the page displayed the software items that you have ordered, there was also some description of a computer/laptop/tablet.
“Unfortunately, this information was incorrect and, understandably, caused some confusion.”
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Source: Mirror UK