Amazon's suspension of MP3 promotion to fix discount glitch was justified, says ASA

The ASA regulates sales promotions and though it found that members of the public had been unable to take advantage of an advertised offer from Amazon, the company had acted reasonably in the light of problems that it faced.

Amazon advertised a promotion which offered £3 off downloaded music files on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. When two users attempted to redeem their codes on Boxing Day to take advantage of the promotion, though, they were told by Amazon's system that the codes had expired.

They complained to the ASA that the promotion was misleading.

Amazon said that once the promotion was live it had run into problems.

The Amazon staff member monitoring sales and the effect of the promotion on Christmas Day saw on web forums that the system was reported as having a glitch that allowed people to use the promotional codes limitless times, giving them access to unlimited free music. The terms and conditions of the offer stated that it was limited to one £3 offer per user.

"Amazon said in order to prevent customers from continuing to exploit the system bug to get multiple downloads, which contravened the promotion terms and conditions, they decided that they needed either to correct the bug or reconfigure the promotion to eliminate the code aspect all together," said the ASA's ruling. "They believed the fact the bug was detected on Christmas Day meant that the chance of rectifying the system issue quickly enough was slim, so they decided to change the mechanics of the promotion and remove the code element."

The online retailer changed the offer so that users had to pay full price for the music but would be reimbursed the £3 discount by 9 January 2009. Amazon said that it prominently displayed the new information about the operation of the competition on the MP3 home page and the page to which the original promotional email linked.

Amazon said that it was impractical to send out an email about the change because it had already taken two days to send out the original 2.8 million emails advertising the promotion and that many users would have received the notice after the promotion had finished.

Amazon said that it had seen news of the glitch spread quickly online, and that some users had used the promotional code as many as 100 times.

The ASA investigated the complaints under its rules relating to truthfulness and sales promotions, but found that the retailer had acted reasonably in difficult circumstances.

"We considered that Amazon had had justifiable reasons for changing the promotion and had taken reasonable steps to ensure that customers were made aware of that change, by making a statement on the webpage to which the e-mail was linked," said the ruling.

"We noted a large number of customers had taken advantage of the offer both before and after the mechanic changed and considered that Amazon had taken appropriate action to deal with the problem and to ensure customers were not disappointed; we concluded that the promotion did not breach the Code," it said.