Hundreds, if not thousands, of books were wrongly priced on the afternoon of December 23, 2009, due to a “system error”, and products worth thousands of yuan were priced at  only 25 yuan. Online buyers rushed to place their orders, but Amazon later claimed that all orders were invalid. Allegations against Amazon filled China’s online chat-rooms.

A public relations official with Amazon said that it is absolutely legal for Amazon to declare the orders invalid. According to Amazon’s own policies, the agreement does not come into effect when a buyer clicks on an order or when a letter of order confirmation is received. The agreement comes into effect only when a client signs the receipt. The system error is regarded as an accident and Amazon has the right to cancel orders caused by system failure. Lawyers also said that Amazon has the right to cancel the orders. In order to buy items from Amazon website, a client has to become an Amazon member and to accept all the pre-set rules, including the right to cancel theie orders.

Amazon’s external communication did not function properly because the company had changed its public relations firm at the end of 2009, and the incident brought new challenges to Amazon’s image in China. Sources said that Amazon in China may have a big brand change this year by renaming itself as Amazon China officially. Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon.com may come to China to participate in the event.