Price Error Conspiracy - Amazon & Play.com

Rakesh.Chauhan_2

Issue:

Recently Play.com, Amazon & other major companies have made "price errors" where prices of items are riduclously small. Customers buy it before a few days later, the companies cancel their orders. Play have not honoured the Bluetooth dongle (rrp £30 where as on their site it was £3.99). Amazon did the mahabharat for £17.99 when it should have been £54.99 & a monitor for £27.99 when it should have been £199.99. None of these were honoured.

Why do the companies do this?

-A reason is that these companies want to drive customers into their site - causing them to be placed highly on search engines (i.e. Google).

-This is the best reason These so called "big companies" hope that consumers will fight back (using courts) - which in turn will introduce a Law for online purchases (i.e. If price error occurs, online shops HAVE TO honour the deal.

Now Amazon and Play.com can afford for this occurance to happen. However, can a small online company afford it? No is the answer - in which case they will go bankrupt.

rsykes2000

You are reading too much into it. I'm not sure exactly how many items Amazon sell, but it must be in the tens of thousands and errors do ocasionally get made. They don't promote these errors, but are spotted by poeople in the full knowledge they are misprices and posted places like here so thousands of people see them. Why should amazon or play lose money to obvious misprices like the monitor for 28 pounds ? Occasionally they do honour incorrect pricing, but they don't legally have to.

sharon59

after seeing a post on mse last week of a mis price on HMV for spiderman 2-was£2.99 l ordered and its been honoured-wasnt on site long and went to£29.99 so think it was a genuine error.

mcwarre

Ever heard of Errors & Omissions Excepted? The prices are all entered on their database by humans. Humans make mistakes....

devild_2

Do you think there was a second gunman on the grassy mound?

1882

With the probably exception of the monitor error mentioned above I don't think those are obvious mispricings. As a seasoned online shopper with 10 years experience those sort of reductions do happen!

wisper

I was under the impression that if the money was taken from your bank for the item then you've entered into a contract and they have to honour it.

If th emoney isn't taken then they don't.

I would be interested to know if that's the truth?

1882

I took advice on a misprice a while back and was told it is binding unless it's an obvious misprice (which the one I enquired about was really).

lewt

why aint it the same as shop's if its priced as that i has to be sold as that?

dangeroussports

They are probably assesing customer 'word of mouth' speed of advertising tactics.

Also, collecting names and addresses and the like from cancelled orders.

Suckers!

reehsetin

lewt wrote: »

why aint it the same as shop's if its priced as that i has to be sold as that?

in a shop it doesnt have to be sold, common misconception
the contract isnt formed until the retailer accepts your payment, the retailer does not have to accept your payment and form the contract
way it works
Shop displays an item (an invitation to treat)
you pick it up (you are offering to buy the product for x)
the shop keeper takes payment (they accept your offer to buy for x price, they can refuse if they want to)

Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain v. Boots Cash Chemists (Southern) Ltd.

They held that the display of goods was not an offer. Rather, by placing the goods into the basket, it was the customer that made the offer to buy the goods. This offer could be either accepted or rejected by the pharmacist at the cash desk.

In the case of an ordinary shop, although goods are displayed and it is intended that customers should go ahead and choose what they want, the contract is not completed until, the customer having indicated the articles which he needs, the shopkeeper, or someone on his behalf, accepts that offer. Then the contract is completed.

The moment of the completion of contract was at the cash desk, in the presence of the supervising pharmacist. Therefore, there was no violation of the Act.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_Society_of_Great_Britain_v._Boots_Cash_Chemists_%28Southern%29_Ltd.