False advertising at John Lewis

indy2005

John Lewis do not allow preordering of Xbox One. The website said for the XBox One..."available to order at 12:00 am". To speed things up I preloaded £430 of vouchers onto my account. I pressed refresh constantly waiting for add to basket to appear at midnight.

At exactly midnight, it went straight from "available to buy" to "out of stock". They never had any launch day stock. No-one could have placed an order in 1 second before me. I am now left with 430 pounds worth of void vouchers locked into John Lewis...and won't see an Xbox One this side of Xmas.

Other people, reading Twitter, did the same as me and are livid. This to me is false advertising, and I want to know where I stand. Obviously I made a bad choice to preload the vouchers, but now my money is locked into John Lewis and I feel absolutely duped.

Why advertise a product they obviously had no stock for. I could understand if they had preorders to fill, or we're selling hand over fist at a midnight launch...neither of these are the case.

They misleadingly advertised stock they didn't hold. Had it said "no stock" before midnight. I wouldn't be in this position.

Son is going to be gutted...

Regards

I

mije1983

I'm sure I read somewhere that they were taking orders from 11pm yesterday (21st) so by midnight it is possible they were actually sold out.


Edit: Hmm, strangly the google cache version of the page says it's available from 11pm on the 22nd. Imagine that was incorrect though as it's an odd time to start taking orders!

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iUFcLXTwC04J:www.johnlewis.com/electricals/gaming/xbox-one/c6000580247+&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

charlie3090

showing as more than 10 in stock for me,maybe they were a bit behind in their timing,
I hope you get it sorted op,
Charlie

Fosterdog

Maybe they didn't want the website getting overloaded and crashing the servers so put the stock available on batches to ease the load on purchases. OP I don't see why you or anyone else are "livid" you took a risk and it didn't pay off. What if 300 people pre loaded vouchers but they only had 100 to sell? That would still leave 200 people with a load of vouchers and no console.

fluffnutter

Explain the problem. Ask for the vouchers to be reimbursed. Buy xbox from elsewhere. Or how about.. wait a few days for it. Or is that too simple?

I can't really get this obsession with launch dates and getting the latest stuff the minute it's realised and queuing up all night and constantly refreshing a webpage blah blah. It's just stuff at the end of the day. Being 'livid' is an over-reaction. It's probably a good lesson in delaying gratification for the son - sometimes you can't have everything you want the moment you want it. That's life.

DCFC79

fluffnutter wrote: »

I can't really get this obsession with launch dates and getting the latest stuff the minute it's realised and queuing up all night and constantly refreshing a webpage blah blah. It's just stuff at the end of the day. Being 'livid' is an over-reaction. It's probably a good lesson in delaying gratification for the son - sometimes you can't have everything you want the moment you want it. That's life.

No I dont get it either, id be pi55ed off if it happened to me. The OP's son will be fine, after all its not the end of the world.

ThumbRemote

fluffnutter wrote: »

Explain the problem. Ask for the vouchers to be reimbursed. Buy xbox from elsewhere. Or how about.. wait a few days for it. Or is that too simple?

I can't really get this obsession with launch dates and getting the latest stuff the minute it's realised and queuing up all night and constantly refreshing a webpage blah blah. It's just stuff at the end of the day. Being 'livid' is an over-reaction. It's probably a good lesson in delaying gratification for the son - sometimes you can't have everything you want the moment you want it. That's life.

What a load of sanctimonious twaddle.

Scrootum

ThumbRemote wrote: »

What a load of sanctimonious twaddle.

No it's not. Just pointing out how idiotic and shallow people are to fall for a load of marketing hype to the extent that it matters whether you get what is basically a toy, this week or next week.

You would think it was drugs for a life threatening disease.

Talk about first world problems.

Find it rather depressing myself.

Hintza

ThumbRemote wrote: »

What a load of sanctimonious twaddle.

What fluffnutter was alluding to is the absurdity of it all.

BatemanLDN

You may well get one this side of Xmas from John Lewis - Their head office states that they are expecting delivery of stock on the 9th Dec Not that long to wait
They would have known this a long time ago though so should have adjusted their wording on the XBox One page on their website.

earthstorm

Hintza wrote: »

What fluffnutter was alluding to is the absurdity of it all.

Yes its totally absurd.

I remember 2 years ago when a large retailer opened in our town, they were giving away £1000 mountain bikes for £150, but only had 10 of these, but their were about 300 people in the queue, some had camped out 3 days. so 290 were never going to get one of these bikes, but they still queued. Plain absurd.