Wal-Mart Blames Price Errors on Technical Glitch

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 was working to resolve the issue, and that the site had intermittent problems with availability throughout the morning.

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

Earlier Wednesday, shoppers took to social media 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 honor bargains that customers scooped up, and said it was still working through the details.

Heading into the crucial year-end 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.

Wal-Mart is based in Bentonville, Ark.