The BBC reported in September 2005 that a well known UK retailer was caught out when a technical error led to customers attempting to buy televisions from its website for £0.49 (less than a US$1.00 then).
Why is this an IQ Trainwreck?
Why is this a trainwreck?—The store was able to repudiate the transactions because of the huge discrepancy between the offer price and the actual price. It was too good to be true. However, the reputational loss was significant. Argos was the butt of jokes for weeks and customers’ trust in their pricing was badly affected. It is easy to conceive that a simple piece of validation could have prevented the problem. “If the offer_price is less than 50% of actual_price then query value”
Is it the experience of readers that many IQ Trainwrecks can be traced back to relatively simple root causes (such as missing validation or a failure to share or make available key information)?