Iomega 1TB External HDD £19.95

zappster1966

I've had a look online and am satisfied that a contract has been entered into. But it might not be a valid contract because the price of the hard drive was wrong.

However the contract will be held as valid if we (the buyer) didn't know the price was wrong and weren't seeking to take advantage of an obvious error *cough*

By not sending out emails confirming orders, monies paid etc Apple might too be in breach of the distance selling regulations and some European Directive on E-commerce.

Still researching .... and my order has now been kebabbed too.

ianonline

I can't believe that people are getting so chewed up over YET ANOTHER mis-price debacle, and threatening legal involvement / Trading Standards etc. There's no doubting that Apple's handling of the situation has been rather appauling to say the least, but the fact that Apple have taken people's money is pretty much standard practice, I'd imagine, in this age of automated systems, and is no different to many other mis-prices in the past (and in fact, Apple appear to be fairly unique in that their ordering system does not send out automated emails to confirm your order - presumably this fact would act in their favour in the event of them having to defend a mis-price).

The fact that there are so many precedents for this sort of mis-price should make people realise that they're not going to get anywhere by throwing up a fuss. What would be interesting to see would be a table listing previous mis-prices, the value of the mis-price, whether orders were honoured at the lower price, and if not whether they took people's money before cancelling and refunding.

I know people like to quote from contract law and the whole "offer and acceptance" situation, which is all well and good for "over-the-counter" sales where the position is fairly clear. Now I'm no legal expert, but I'd imagine for internet sales it would be common practice for companies to include in their terms of sale that when they confirm your order (and possibly take your money) they are not "accepting" your offer in the legal sense until they actually despatch your order.

As far as I'm aware, there haven't been any "large scale" / "large-value" internet misprices in the past which have been honoured (although I stand to be corrected). If you go into a shop and something is mis-priced, they may well honour the lower price as a gesture of goodwill for the sake of a few pounds, as it's just a one-off and they will correct their mistake straight away. But where you've got automated systems accepting web orders "out-of-hours" then there's much more scope for companies to lose lots of money if they were to honour every mis-price.

Maybe there should be a new board opened just for mis-prices so that it would be easier to monitor earlier precedents. :idea: Clearly the important issue here is that it was an OBVIOUS mis-price and people were placing orders in full knowledge that it was a mis-price. The wikipedia article quoted above sums it up under the heading "moden relevance":

This 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.

Ian :cool:

reehsetin

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Apple know they are wrong, hence the whole description change. They know they have broken the law, hence the description change. Change it tom something that they are not going to be out of pocket on should something happen.

You can back them up all you like, but no one has come up with an explanation whos backing them up as to why the description has been changed to a few labels.

I don't at this point care whether I get a hard drive or not. However, being in business myself, I find this fascinating. The amount I could get away with in this case, is amazing!

I could break contractual laws, sales of goods laws, warranty laws, all by saying 'sorry, made a mistake, wasn't sposed to say that. Oh well eh!'

I could speed through a camera tommorow, say my speedo wasnt working and say 'sorry, made a mistake, too bad eh' and the law which says you have to have a working speedo would go out the window! Mistake! But I have intent to fix it...

apple are flaming idiots and i cant stand them, wouldnt back them on anything fight it please if it means ill get my drive,
all im saying is people go ranting about the law when they dont know it make sure people ahve got all the facts and a proper legal standpoint to argue with
if people go to apple and say there is a contract because it was a misprice and i got it they just arent going to get very far, just want to save people some time and energy
you have brought up some good points try it, like i said i hope you win if i get my drive

Alfie_E

ruthybabs wrote: »

…and not
DYMO LABELWRITER LARGE ADDRESS LABEL-ZML

as per the order details now.

[snip]

Really cross now and want to get them somehow-any ideas?

I didn’t bother making my own copies of the order pages, as I imagined all that would happen would be an apologetic email and the order cancelled. I could never have imagined they would appear to have deliberately falsified their records.

Apple’s behaviour is clearly in breach of the Irish Data Protection Act 1998. I think those unhappy with their behaviour should contact Apple, and ask them to correct the inaccuracy. If they refuse to correct it, you could take the matter to the Irish Data Protection Commissioner.

Would you buy from a company that either falsifies their records over a trivial matter where there is no need to do so or is so incompetent that they can’t keep their records straight? I suppose this shouldn’t come as such of a shock. Apple is well known for showing contempt towards its customers, when a problem arises.

zappster1966

That's fair enough Ian. I'm just playing devils advocate here.

Say we took it to the small claims court. Pay your £30+ and sue the Apple Corp. First off, they wouldnt show up. Second, even if they did show the costs to them of paying for legal representation will way exceed the cost of the hard drive and they cant recover their costs from us anyway.

And in the somewhat tenuous assumption we didn't know it was a misprice, how could the court find against us ... ?

Most peeps know a TV for your living room is over £200 and wouldnt be £2.99 .... but most peeps arent that techy minded when it comes to external hard drives. And you can buy an external hard drive as cheap as £25 .... a pretty crappy one right enough.

I can see the robed, wigged & bespectacled judge in my head already
"Pray tell .... what is .... a .... computer ?"

Combine that with no communication from them whatsoever, their dipping into our bank accounts, their failure to adhere to the distance selling regs & I think we've got them by the balls.

veggie4life

I think you guys should persue this as far as you can these fat cats think they are a law onto themselves its about time we the citizens who make their organisation what it is knocked em down a peg or two. Fight this all the way guys so what if it comes out of the bosses million pound bonuses!

Ghirl

I have emailed the Trading Standards people with a full explanation, wonder what reply I'll get. :eek:

Alfie_E

Alfie_E wrote: »

If they refuse to correct it, you could take the matter to the Irish Data Protection Commissioner.

I have thought about it some more. While we’re dealing with Apple Sales International, Ireland, their T&Cs choose England and Wales as the Governing Law. I believe this also entitles us to complain to our usual Information Commissioner’s Office.

ianonline

Ghirl wrote: »

I have emailed the Trading Standards people with a full explanation, wonder what reply I'll get. :eek:

Did you admit to them that you placed your order IN FULL KNOWLEDGE that it was a mis-price? :think:

mindware

ianonline wrote: »

but the fact that Apple have taken people's money is pretty much standard practice, I'd imagine, in this age of automated systems,

Many modern E-Commerce systems often "pre authorize" the transaction. What this does is reserve the funds in the consumers account for transfer to the merchant - but does not process the funds transfer. This basically ensures the consumer has sufficiant funds on the supplied payment details.

The merchant can then manually authroize the transaction and choose to weither complete or not the transfer of funds. This is common practise paticularly for fraud checking purposes and possibliy stock checking etc. It also saves alot of time for back-office operations as any pending orders already have valid payment details waiting to be authorized for full payment, the possiblity of it declining at that point is minimal, unless the card becomes cancelled for whatever reason. Saves merchants time calling customers up regarding insufficiant funds on the payment details they provided...

Since preauth does not actually iniate the funds transfer, apple havnt actually taken the funds from you. They have just reserved the funds with a defferd option to accept or reject later on.

Many banks (and often the case with debit cards) indicate the preauth as a completed transaction on your statement, which is then reveresed as a credit later on when the merchant chooses to stop the transfer of the funds, or a timeout response period from the merchant has been reached. I think some credit card issuers dont indicate a pre-auth on the statement, in anticipation that it may be rejected at a later stage(?)

So in essence, no funds would have actually been transfered to apple, as suggested by some posts on the forum.

That is based on the assumption that Apple pre-authorize there transactions during the checkout process. Such a method would be expectable of a sophisticated e-commerce system such as Apple's (allow them to run any fraud/stock checks, and in this case, the vadility of the order). If they opt to fully authorize the transaction at that point, then i'd assume its a different story?...