"Manipulating an error" and handling stolen merchandise are nowhere near the same thing and one is clearly illegal while the other clearly is not.

Get over yourself mate.

I can tell you that Diamond Comics was offering a selection of trades at huge discounts to retailers, I am assuming because they were wanting to clear their backstock (possibly to make way for new printings?) -- so when I was told about the unbelievable discounts on some of the Omnibuses on Amazon, I wondered if it was related to the other discounts.

Unless people knew that they were taking advantage of a glitch, I don't think there is anything wring with buying books at any discounted price. I have literally thousands of back issues I sell at my shop for one dollar each, and many are valued at many times that in their present conditions. It's not unethical to take advantage of discounts when the seller purposefully discounted the merchandise. And in those instances where a retailer makes a mistake, I don't think the buyer is being unethical if he or she was not aware the discounted price was in error. I say this as a retailer, it's not the buyers duty to verify that there was some sort of mistake in pricing just because the sale price is really good.

If I made the mistake personally (a customer did not switch prices themself, or something like that), more often than not I will eat the price for making the error. Clearly, there can be times when the mistake is too huge, say if a book worth $100 is inadvertently priced at $10, that I would have to take the unpopular stance of not honoring the price due to the mistake. So, I can see Amazon going either way with trying to solve how to handle this matter. I don't think that buyers should hold them to a mistaken price listing, though.

James wrote: ...Manipulating an error or handling stolen merchandise would both be unethical...

James, do you think that everyone that ordered these books from Amazon thought or were aware that the prices were a mistake? Yes, the prices were a huge discount, but even though such large discounts are rare, they do happen from time to time.

I don't think that everyone who ordered these books recently did so with the knowledge that the prices were in error. So, I can't see that it's appropriate to condemn all of them as being unethical.

same logic people use when they file bogus insurance claims... they aren't taking a loss... they have the money

Chris you are absolutely right. I really don't know why this irritates me so much.

It just does. On the other board, the people salivating over getting these on ebay was ridiculous.

Its probably time for me to mosey on. The fanboy nation draws nothing but my contempt anymore.