Online-only discount electrical goods retailer Kogan says it will honour “hundreds” of orders placed online when a “bug” on its site led to set top boxes being sold for just $9.

But what really happened?

Kogan’s public relations agency sent a press release out at 11.22am explaining the glitch but pointing out it was fixed at 10.39am.

Either the PR agency is the world’s fastest responder (can one assume Kogan was charged less than an hour’s time for the task?) or this was yet another publicity stunt by high profile founder Ruslan Kogan.

According to the media statement, “shoppers were able to incorrectly use several promotions in conjunction, with a $30 voucher being combined with today’s storewide free shipping resulting in over 500 orders of the Kogan Set Top Box and Personal Video Recorder for only $9 delivered, in addition to hundreds of other items”.

Kogan said the loophole “went viral” after being posted on OzBargain at 9.15am: http://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/50569

Ruslan Kogan either turned a bad day into a positive branding exercise by honouring the deal (most retailers caught by such bugs, like Dick Smith was several weeks ago, don’t honour them) or the entire event was contrived and funded from his marketing budget.

He said in a statement: “This was a bug that we were unable to plug until 10:39am, resulting in hundreds of Kogan products being sold at well below cost price.

“We know we could hide behind our terms and conditions to get out of having to honour these transactions. Indeed, this is what many of our competitors have done in the past.

“But, we believe the bug in our website was entirely our responsibility and as a result will be honouring every single purchase made this morning at a significiant cost to our business.”

The statement said Kogan was “not available for further comment”.