Legal advice needed

spaceman5

have they said they are not going to supply goods at said price

davey4444

Is this for the Quatro video card which lots of people tried to order this week? I know that Dell have occasionally made pricing mistakes and have cancelled orders and I've never seen anyone bothering to appeal this.

zenseeker

No chance, as stated by a previous poster:

Quote:
Hartog v Colin & Shields [1939] 3 All ER 566 is an important English contract law case regarding unilateral mistake. It holds that when it is obvious that someone has made a mistake in the terms of an offer, one may not simply "snap up" the offer and be able to enforce the agreement.

Quote:
Modern relevance

his case has become a highly relevant precedent in the modern context of e-shopping on the Internet, when online retailers sometimes get the published price wrong and receive hundreds of online orders (automatically accepted) before they discover their error - e.g. advertising a £299 television on the website for £2.99. Retailers can avoid having to supply at the mistakenly low price if the court finds that the would-be purchasers must have known that the advertised price was clearly a mistake.

spaceman5

i don`t think he has any chance of getting it as well, but i do find it strange that dell have not incorporated wording like amazon, play, tesco`s etc into there terms and conditions, Dave

4fxtwin

spaceman5 wrote: »

i must say, i am quite surprised that there certainly does not seem to be any wording in ther terms and conditions, like the amazon one above, no where does it state that they can cancel the order if is a mis price, also it does say that once you have recieved order confirmation from dell, that the contract is binding, so you may have a small chance, Dave

That's what I thought.

Perhaps the T&Cs have been imported from the US and not adequately strengthened in regard to UK legislation, or maybe they were simply loose to begin with.

I'm definitely going to proceed with this and let you know how I get on.

zenseeker

spaceman5 wrote: »

i don`t think he has any chance of getting it as well, but i do find it strange that dell have not incorporated wording like amazon, play, tesco`s etc into there terms and conditions, Dave

They don't really need to if they are covered by a basic English law.

Miss_Marple_2

I might be being naive here, but doesn't section 2.3 of the t&cs you quoted above say that it's not binding until it is delivered ?

4fxtwin

spaceman5 wrote: »

have they said they are not going to supply goods at said price

I just received an email containing the following:

Due to a system error which led to incorrect product pricing appearing in the Dell store pages for a short period, we were unable to process your request to purchase a PNY NVIDIA Quadro FX 4600 SDI - Graphics adapter. We will be cancelling your order request

Can they do this based on their T&Cs or are they just trying to scare me off?

I read a little about the Hartog case and it seems to be quite arbitrary in its application. Perhaps they won't invoke it unless there are a large number of appeals.

Masquerade_2

How are you planning to try and enforce this contract?

My opinion is that there is no contract to be enforced anyway due to the doctrine of mistake. I am a lawyer but haven't looked at contract law since my studying days! However I am aware that where one party is mistaken as to the nature of the contract and the other party is aware of the mistake, or the circumstances are such that he may be taken to be aware of it, the contract is void.

4fxtwin

Miss_Marple wrote: »

I might be being naive here, but doesn't section 2.3 of the t&cs you quoted above say that it's not binding until it is delivered ?

2.3 Dell accepts Customer’s offer to purchase under this Agreement & makes a binding Agreement by issuing an Order Confirmation or delivering the relevant
Products &/or Services. It is recommended that Customer review the Order Confirmation & notify Dell within a reasonable period of time of any discrepancies that are
noticed.

Hard to say, it's very vague, but I'd have to assume whichever arrived first.

I should point out that the T&Cs which I quoted earlier on and in this post differ from the link I posted. These were sent to me as a PDF attachment to the order confirmation email. I'm not sure which to believe now.

If anyone is interested I can send them the PDF.