Zappos.com's little sister loses $1.6m in pricing cockup

A sister website of online shoe retailer Zappos.com lost $1.6m on Friday morning when a pricing engine blunder mistakenly switched some of the company's product line to being available for no more than $49.95 a pop.

Over the weekend 6pm.com coughed to the embarrassing technical glitch, in which it confessed that customers had benefited to the tune of more than one and a half million dollars.

6pm.com is aimed at brand junkies who want to get their retail fix while not having to pay a premium for the product. The US site is known for offering steep discounts to customers.

"The mistake started at midnight and went until around 6:00am pst. When we figured out the mistake was happening, we had to shut down the site for a bit until we got the pricing problem fixed," wrote Zappos brand and biz development boss Aaron Magness in a blog post.

"While we’re sure this was a great deal for customers, it was inadvertent, and we took a big loss (over $1.6 million - ouch) selling so many items so far under cost."

Magness said the company would "honour all purchases" during 6pm.com's "mess up". He apologised to customers and urged them to "continue to Shop. Save. Smile. at 6pm.com."

We at Vulture Central are quite certain punters will indeed do all of the above, especially if 6pm.com's pricing engine goes haywire again.

In July last year, online retail mammoth Amazon bought Zappos for $49.95 $850m. ®