A small business owner in the UK claimed that an AI chatbot gave customers a huge 80% discount without their permission. In a post highlighting the potential pitfalls of relying on AI instead of human employees, the small business owner said he would have suffered significant losses if he had accepted the discount offered by the AI agent.
AI creates and offers discounts
The man sought legal advice on Reddit and created a post titled: “AI chat assist created and delivered an 80% off offer to a customer. Customer has now placed an order over £8,000.”
In the post, the business owner explained that a customer had placed an order for £8,000 (or £8,000). INR$980,000 after the AI agent offered an 80% discount).
Management claimed that the customer was able to “persuade” the AI to offer this deep discount.
““The customer was able to convince the AI to give him a 25% discount during a chat, and then negotiated with the AI up to an 80% discount,” he wrote.
Customer refuses to cancel order
The business owner said that if he had actually sold the product at 80% off, he would have lost thousands of pounds. He wrote to the customer to explain what happened and to cancel the order, but the customer refused to cancel.
Instead, the customer threatened to drag the owner to court if he canceled the order. (Also read: Claude AI deletes 15 years of family memories — ‘I almost had a heart attack,’ says VC)
“You’ll be losing thousands of dollars in materials alone,” one Reddit user wrote.
“I wrote to the customer asking him to cancel, but he responded that if he didn’t comply with the order, he would take him to small claims court. You have three days to respond,” he added, asking Reddit users for legal advice.
The Internet says, “Hire people”
The post received little sympathy online at a time when ordinary people fear losing their jobs to AI.
“I’m totally on the side of the customer. This is exactly the kind of punishment any business owner who replaces humans with AI deserves. Some people only learn lessons that cost money,” wrote a person at X, whose post was reposted.
“This is why we don’t let automated systems handle these negotiations completely,” said another official. “It’s his own fault for being lazy. I don’t think he has so many orders that he absolutely needs a chatbot to handle this kind of customer service.”
“Minimum wage for chat customer support/sales people doesn’t seem that high now,” a user added.
Several advised business owners to simply cancel orders, saying customers had no legal basis to do so.
