News so fresh it may cause nosebleeds – the internet doesn’t work. Not now, not then, not ever! Over the weekend, an opinion piece printed 15 years ago by Newsweek has been circulating. We normally wouldn’t cover a story published so recently, but we wanted to let you know why you’re wasting your time by reading this – and not just because you typed Bitterwallet.com in the address bar.

Yes, it’s easy to look back with hindsight afforded by the online advances of the past decade and a half, but it’s interesting to note quite how wrong one man could be:

Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

We’re promised instant catalog shopping–just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet–which there isn’t–the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

That’s it – show’s over, folks. Nothing to see here. You’ve got to admire the guy – he makes interesting points in the piece about how mentors and teachers can effectively shape the lives of their pupils, but it’s not enough to stop there. Here has to rubbish everything.

And what of the author, Clifford Stoll? Where is he now? Selling stuff on the internet, that’s where! Oh.

Decimal points are the bane of the e-retailer’s existence.

All they have to do is jump over by a digit or two and all hell breaks loose.

Here are five “too good to be true” pricing errors, most of them due to truant decimal points.

1. £119 return flights for 2 to NYC: When US company Hoover set a special sales promotion from its South Wales HQ in 1993, they underestimated consumers. They offered 2 free return tickets to NYC or a European destination, for purchases of any Hoover product of over £100. The idea was that the small print should put off consumers applying, which involved various hurdles to get the flights. These include mail-in receipts, application forms to be returned with 14 days, time consuming airport procedures, and limited airport availability. They were wrong. Over 100,000 saavy consumers applied for free tickets after purchasing the cheapest hoover available, which cost £119. After Trading Standard investigations and over 300 complaints received from customers who were refused tickets, the company had to pull out its own money from its £20m first quarter profits to honour over 20,000 extra tickets from BA. What about the hundreds of thousands of brand new in the box Hoovers flooding the market? Well, eBay first launched in 1995, so they could have helped establish the marketplace!  Who knows. Lesson: Never underestimate consumers. We’re smarter than you think.

2. Amazon 29p albums: When you’re as enormous as Amazon, you’re bound to misplace a decimal now and again. Six years ago they listed iPaq PDAs for less than £10, there was a virtual stampede, and the firm that made them had to batten down their virtual hatches to undo the mistake. Last month, the online behemoth was selling some albums for 29p each (just shortly after a loophole HUKDers found on free amazon album downloads) The artists involved (Calvin Harris, James Morrison, the Yeah Yeah Yeas, and MGMT) saw sales skyrocket. Amazon pulled the price error the next day.

3. Sony VAIO laptops for £70: In 2002, e-commerce retailer Foris either mismatched prices with merchandise or flung a decimal without aiming first. They offered Sony VAIO laptop computers for £70 and Compaq monitors for £36.31. They had to turn off their checkout system. They did not honour the prices.

4. Nicam Digital TV for £2.99: A decade ago, Argos listed a Nicam digital television for £2.99 instead of £299 (slippery decimal again), then in 2003 they did the same thing with Bush televisions, pricing them at £0.49. A customer tried to order 100 of them, but was not successful. Nobody actually got the items at the mistaken price.

5. 3.1 megapixel camera for £100 only (really!): In 2002, Kodak mispriced its 3.1 megapixel camera for what was then the low, low price of £100. A couple thousand people pounced, and guess what? Kodak honoured the price! Well done, Kodak. At least it came with a whooping 32 MB MMC card…

Are there any other major pricing errors and gaffes that you have come across? Or hot deals that were honoured / not honoured that are worth mentioning? We would love to know, so please share them with us in the comments below!

George Takei is currently faring pretty well in the I’m A Celebrity jungle, especially when you consider that he’s 71 and from outer space.

Here’s an American ad that George starred in a couple of years ago. Be warned – it looks like it’s a trailer for an incredible movie, but it isn’t. It really isn’t – in fact it’s probably got the most disappointing end to an advert ever. Oh well… at least David Van Day isn’t in it.