Retailer refused to sell goods because they wanted them for other customers

dktreesea

Say you go into a supermarket and load up the trolley with 20 jars of coffee, or 100 packs of soft drinks, simply because the item is a good price. If the retailer doesn't advertise any restrictions, can they refuse to sell to you once you reach the till on the basis that they want to keep the items in question for their other customers?

Is that discrimination, or is the retailer within his or her rights to impose any restriction they choose, and maybe only targeted at you and not others, even if they haven't advertised any such restriction?

torbrex

As far as I know, any retailer is within their rights to refuse to sell goods to a person and does not even need to give a reason.

dktreesea

So at what point does it become discrimination? In our case we took our items up to the till and the manager told us he didn't want to sell to us because he wanted to "keep the goods for other customers". All apart from the humiliation of being treated like that in front of the other people who were in the store at the time, no restrictions on the quantity that could be bought were advertised in the store.

Techhead_2

The manager didn't mean that the goods were being kept for specific customers; just that there is a limit to how many you can buy. In my opinion there is no discrimination.

dktreesea

Techhead wrote: »

The manager didn't mean that the goods were being kept for specific customers; just that there is a limit to how many you can buy. In my opinion there is no discrimination.

If indeed that was usually the case. But we have bought these particular items from this retailer over a number of years and not always from the same store, and there has never been any restrictions on the quantity we could by. Quite the contrary; the more the merrier is their usual modus operandi, and I note we recently bought a large quantity of a similar item from them on line, far larger than we were attempting to buy from the store.

If the manager didn't mean the goods were being kept for other customers, then why say that he wanted to keep the goods for other customers?

Going back to the limit, if no limit is advertised, then on what basis can a shopkeeper arbritrarily apply a limit? And surely to apply it to some customers but not others is discriminatory.

arcon5

They don't have to provide a reason to reject your offer to purchase goods.

They can't refuse on te basis you are black, white, gay etc... But that's not what happened here.... They refused to allow other customers to take advantage of the offer as well as you. Hence the fact he wanted to keep stock for other customers.
Based on your logic though a reservation system would be discriminatory .

timbo58

Amazingly a retailer can refuse to sell anything to anybody if they so wish.

A shop offering goods whether in the store, window or an advert is 'offering to treat' as long as both parties (the potential buyer and the shopkeeper) agree what form the exchange will be.
If either don't agree there is no sale.

What this means is you cannot force a retailer to sell you anything anymore than they can force you to buy anything.

As long as it isn't obvious discrimination there's nothing you can do, apart from the obvious: refuse to shop there again.

sithmaster

agreed a retailer can refuse sale. example some sales in supermarkets will say max 6 per customer so if you had more than six they can refuse and only sell the 6.
until an item is purchased the item belongs to the company and they may do what they wish with it

ellies_angel

my local costcutter will let you have as many as you want of a special offer. You just tell them and they bring it out of the back (so you aren't clearing the shelves).

Nilrem

As has been said, retailers can refuse to sell anything to anyone for almost any reason (the only time they can't is basically if it's due to discrimination etc).

Most retailers doing an offer will have some sort of limit on how many they will sell to a single customer in a single transaction, although what that limit is isin't always displayed (I think it can be up to the managers discretion).
IIRC with the likes of Tesco it's often something like 10, as that means that they don't get the shelves cleared of a good offer by a single customer, or indeed by some of the smaller stores who might find buying a load at the offer price at a supermarket can be cheaper than what they themselves pay wholesale (I remember when my local Aldi first opened and you'd see someone coming out with a trolly full of beans*, and another full of one or two types of other items and load it up into a takeaway delivery van).

ellies angel, aren't costcutter a "wholesale" outlet/:)


*IIRC 8p a tin at the time, when pretty much everywhere else was at least 12p+ for value beans that were not as nice.

JethroUK

dktreesea wrote: »

So at what point does it become discrimination? I.

at the point they say " I ain't selling you this because you are a man, or because you are too old, wrong religion, wrong colour " or object to anyone of your legally protected characteristics - otherwise they don't have to enter into contract to sell anymore than you have to buy