Wal-Mart blames technical glitch for price errors on website

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Treadmills for $33? Computer monitors for $9? The deals are too good to be true — even at Wal-Mart.

It turns out they’re not.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. says a “technical error” caused certain products to be priced absurdly low or high on its website earlier Wednesday morning.

The company said it’s working to resolve the issue and that the site may have intermittent problems with availability until then.

“We apologize for any inconvenience to our customers,” said Ravi Jariwala, a spokesman for Wal-Mart’s online operations.

Earlier Wednesday, shoppers took to Twitter to cite ridiculously low prices like treadmills for $33.16 and Hewlett Packard LCD monitors for $8.85. Jariwala declined to comment on whether the retailer would honour bargains that customers scooped up and said it was still working through the details.

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 per cent 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.

Wal-Mart is based in Bentonville, Ark.

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