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Tesco e-commerce accident results in £50 iPad 3

Friday, March 16, 2012 - 09:49 by David Aiken

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Apple launched its third iPad tablet this month and it has already announced that the pre-order allocation of the device has sold out ahead of its official release.

UK supermarket giant, Tesco, wowed iPad fans this week, after it apparently put the 65GB edition of the high end tablet up for sale via safe shopping online for a low price of £49.99.

This was of course an enormous and unintentional error, as the retail price is around ten times this amount. However, it did not stop thousands of people attempting to buy the bargain basement iPad 3, with traffic levels to the Tesco e-commerce site increasing so much that it temporarily crashed under the strain.

Once Tesco was made aware of the error it corrected the price and confirmed that anyone who had made the purchase at £49.99 would be getting all of their money back, although they would be unable to honour any of the transactions.

There are often stories about bodged prices offering people a deal which is too good to be true via safe shopping online. In certain instances, such as a 3D TV kerfuffle involving Marks & Spencer, the buyers who got in when the bargain was available, eventually ended up with the product they had paid for, even if its price was an error.

There will, doubtlessly, be many people across the UK who are hoping for Tesco to go back on its initial commitment to cancel all orders and instead carry them out in full, once the iPad 3 is actually on sale.

Arguably, the iPad 3 will sell, regardless of its price point because it seems that people in the UK and elsewhere are obsessed with this slimline tablet computer developed in the US by Apple.