Subject:
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Re: e-commerce (was Technic shuttle etc)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.loc.uk
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Date:
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Mon, 29 Nov 1999 23:42:57 GMT
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Viewed:
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850 times
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In lugnet.loc.uk, Alan Kershaw writes:
> The law on this form of commerce has not been tested in the UK as yet. Some of
> you may remember the news splash a few weeks ago when an electrical
> manufacturer put £300.00 TV's up for £3.00.
> Normally when you try to purchase something in a shop you make "an offer to
> treat" which the shopkeeper then accepts and you have a contract.
> In this case the retailers defence was twofold :
>
> That an automatic e-mail acceptance of your order was not an acceptance of
> your offer to treat. (very dodgy legal ground apparently)
>
> That it was 'obvious' that a mistake had been made and to try to proceed with
> a purchase was to try to defraud.
>
> The bottom line was that despite all the bad publicity no one got their TV's
> for £3.00 (even the guy who had ordered 5000)
I am sympathetic to the "it should be obvious that a mistake was
made and to try to proceed with a purchase was to try to defraud,
so we don't owe you anything" argument.
In the US, you occasionally here of the government issuing too large
a check, or a company mailing someone a rebate check of some
form with way too many zeros.
When the recipient cashes the check and it goes to court, the rulings
always favor the "you have to give it back" side, not the "it was
their mistake and you can keep it" defendant's side.
But the price delta should be pretty extreme for them to make
that claim. Extreme enough that one could reasonably claim "you
should know it was a mistake." Mismarking a digit - a £399 TV set [1]
for £299 - how could you possibly know it was an error? The company
should ship the item at that cost and eat the loss, in my opinion,
although I don't know if I'd go as far as to say that that the
company should be legally bound to sell the item at the
offered price. They should, however, be penalizied very
roughly if they take your order and debit the credit card
for more than they advertised. Cancelling the order on account
of a mistake is more tolerable. It would still be bad business,
but tolerable.
Now, if it can be demonstrated that a company regularly misprices
things too low in an attempt to bring in customers - ie the mistake
was on purpose and the business makes a habit of it - they can get
in trouble. But nobody would intentionally do that (I hope - that'd
be insaane. The chain store Sears got in trouble in the US for
repeatedly running advertisements advertising (I believe) tires
that they did not have in stock.
I know that stores will sometimes misplace a decimal point
on LEGO sets. If the cashier went ahead and honored the
£3.00 cost of a £30.00 item, that's their prerogative, but
I wouldn't sue them if they didn't. I'd feel bad about
even trying it. At the least I'd point out that it was
a mistake, and see if the cashier cared.
This reminds me of the bad flack that Apple Computer got
when they cancelled orders for their G4 line and made
people reorder at higher prices. They wound up doing the
right thing and allowing customers who had already ordered
to get their items at the specified price. I'm amazed they
even considered just cancelling the orders (much less considering
it and actually doing it, although later rectifying the decision).
--
jthompson@esker.com "Float on a river, forever and ever, Emily"
--
[1] Ha, watch as I use the £ symbol rather than $ in an effort
to blend.
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: e-commerce (was Technic shuttle etc)
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| On Mon, 29 Nov 1999, Nephilim (<FLzGJL.CJv@lugnet.com>) wrote at 23:42:57 (...) You know, the funny thing is: I realised it was an American writing, and actually read it as a $. I had to go back and check :-) (25 years ago, 30-Nov-99, to lugnet.loc.uk)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | e-commerce (was Technic shuttle etc)
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| The law on this form of commerce has not been tested in the UK as yet. Some of you may remember the news splash a few weeks ago when an electrical manufacturer put £300.00 TV's up for £3.00. Normally when you try to purchase something in a shop you (...) (25 years ago, 29-Nov-99, to lugnet.loc.uk)
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