Internet Shopping Rights?

rotormotor

Not sure if this is the right forum for this but I'll give it a go:

On the 5th December I purchased a 300gb hard drive (£75) for my PC from a well known PC retailer website. Apart from the fact that the product was only shipped yesterday & they have had my money for a month I have had a dispatch email this morning stating that they are sending a 160gb model.

I have just been on the phone to them & it seems that they mistakenly advertised the 300gb drive at the 160gb price & are trying to fob me off with this lesser model. The 300 is now on their site at £120.

My original order confirmation email confirms I paid (by credit card) for the 300gb & includes the manufacturers model number to back up this. In addition I took screen shots of their web page at the moment of purchase in case of any problems.

My phone call today ended with them saying that they would have to see where they stand legally & will call me back.

The 160gb is apparently going to arrive today. Should I refuse it & send the courier away or accept the package.

I thought that if a product is displayed with a price ticket then it has to be sold at that amount?

Where do I stand on this please?

Thanks.

Regards,
Jules

derrick

It does not have to be sold at the advertised price as it could be a genuine mistake and the contract is not made until you have paid and recived.
If you do not want the product, simply return it under Distance Selling Regulations,as they have not supplied the requested product, under these crcumstances they cannot charge you postage for delivery or return.

See THIS PAGE, use the links on the r/h side.

Also THIS PAGE.

rotormotor

Hi again,

A result! They have concluded that they must give me the 300GB at the 160GB price as advertised on December the 5th. Perhaps the fact that I have been waiting so long may have played a part too.

All he best,
Jules.

GeoThermal

derrick wrote:

It does not have to be sold at the advertised price as it could be a genuine mistake and the contract is not made until you have paid and recived.

The contract is formed at the point the money is taken as payment.

SuperNashwan

If we're being picky about it, the contract is formed when agreement is sufficiently clear and final. No payment needs to be taken if there is a clear offer and acceptance, although taking payment obviously stands as very good evidence that there has been acceptance; it's hard to imagine how a retailer can successfully claim there's no contract once they've requested the money off your card.
Last time I looked legal academics seemed to be of the opinion that those terms stating no contract existed until payment was taken could well be meaningless under English contract law, although that was a few years ago and things might've moved on.

Bossyboots

GeoThermal wrote:

The contract is formed at the point the money is taken as payment.

My understanding is that the contract is formed when the goods are despatched. This was the overriding issue in the Argos debacle where people claimed they should get whatever it was (a tv for 49p or something) because the money had been taken from their accounts but it was established that for internet purchases the contract was formed when the goods were sent.

derrick

GeoThermal wrote:

The contract is formed at the point the money is taken as payment.

No it isn,t, there is case law to support this, see #6 above as an example.

GeoThermal

It isn't as simple as that. Look at consumer sites. They will tell you the contract is formed when payment is accepted. Remember the Kodak camera? They didn't even take the money but decided to supply the items as it was suggested their confirmation email formed the contract. If memory serves the Argos situation was different in that it was "clearly" a pricing error and people knew that at the point of ordering. So yes there can be exceptions but the basic law is that once payment is accepted that is the point a contract to supply is formed.