Retail

Wal-Mart accidentally slashes prices, blames glitch

AP With CNBC.com
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Source: Walmart.com

Treadmills for $33? Computer monitors for $9? The deals were even too good to be true — even at Wal-Mart Stores.

The megaretailer said a "technical error" caused certain products to be priced absurdly low or high on its website earlier Wednesday morning.

By Wednesday evening, the discounter had fixed the glitch and decided to cancel the orders of customers who were able to snag the items at steep discounts.

"Given the wide discrepancy in pricing, we are notifying customers who ordered these items that their orders have been canceled and that they'll be refunded in full," said Ravi Jariwala, a spokesman for Wal-Mart's online operations. "In addition, we will send these customers a $10 e-gift card that can be used towards future purchases at Walmart stores and Walmart.com. We apologize again for any inconvenience this may have caused our customers."

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"We apologize for any convenience to our customers," he added.

Earlier Wednesday, shoppers took to Twitter to cite ridiculously low prices like treadmills for $33.16 and Hewlett Packard LCD monitors for $8.85.

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Heading into the crucial holiday shopping season, Wal-Mart has doubled the number of items it has on its website from last year to 5 million.

That's expected to help fuel a 30 percent growth in online sales to $10 billion for its current fiscal year, which ends in late January. That's still just a sliver of the $486 billion in annual sales Wal-Mart did last year.

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Wal-Mart is based in Bentonville, Ark.

—AP and CNBC.com

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