Amazon uk refusing to dispatch "In stock" item

yannies82

Spadoosh thank you for your reply but there is no reason to be sarcastic to me. Of course, I am not suggesting that Amazon is trying to scam me, personally. This has probably happened to other people who have ordered this laptop. Or other goods for this matter. This is the first time something like this has happened to me and I just wanted the opinion of people more knowledgeable than me on these matters. To be honest, I am surprised that Amazon's representatives were so reluctant to work out a solution for this issue and tried to put the blame on me. It's half a trillion company, after all as you mention. They didn't suggest anything. I asked if I could pay a price difference and get the other model of this laptop which they had in stock and they said this could not be done. I assume that an issue arose with the supplier and they were able to fulfill some of the orders, but not all. In the product reviews a person states that his delivery is still pending too.

BoGoF

Move on, it's not as if Amazon even took payment - at least with them they don't charge until the goods have been dispatched.

BoGoF

What model was it?

[Deleted User]

yannies82 wrote: »

Therefore, if I were a seller it would be perfectly legitimate for me to put a great, promotional price on an item, gather many orders and visits to my site and then just claim that the product is out of stock and never fulfil these orders. Is that how e-commerce works?

What would be the point of that? They don't take the money till dispatch so they would have gone to all that effort for no reason at all.

If they don't have a physical product to send you, what do you expect them to do? You aren't out of pocket, laptops go on sale all the time so move on and get one from somewhere else.

societys_child

I believe amazon state, no contract is formed until the goods are dispatched.

yannies82

I am not allowed to post links but it was the Fx503vd-dm080t model.

It is the same model for which a pricing error occurred yesterday (the GTX 1060 version was priced at 130 pounds). I stumbled upon the pricing error and placed an order. Of course it is understandable that Amazon cancelled these orders and I have no complaints about that. My concern is for the order which I placed a week ago.

yannies82

Camelot1971, this may not apply to Amazon because they are such a large company, but some benefits of this practice that I can think of are:

1) Increased eshop traffic, buyers may also buy other goods. Generate buzz.

2) Sabotage a competitors good price for an item which is actually In stock.

In my country there is a company which did this as a common practice AND charged the consumer, without ever sending the goods. They faced several lawsuits of course. I repeat, this remark does not apply to Amazon specifically but to how e-commerce works in general.

[Deleted User]

You aren't talking about other companies though. Your "problem" is with Amazon. What country are you in?

You said it was a promotional price and now say it was a pricing error? Camelcamelcamel doesn't show that laptop on Amazon UK lower than £799 at any point.

Edited to add it was on hotdeals and quite clearly a pricing error. It also wasn't up for a few days at that price. Nice of you to try and take advantage of a mistake. You must be very proud of yourself.

BoGoF

yannies82 wrote: »

In my country there is a company which did this as a common practice AND charged the consumer, without ever sending the goods. They faced several lawsuits of course. I repeat, this remark does not apply to Amazon specifically but to how e-commerce works in general.

This relies on people falling for 'scam' websites and dont know what the phrase "if it seems too good to be true....." means. Granted, there are plenty of them but most savvy people wouldn'tbe near these websites.

[Deleted User]

yannies82 wrote: »

On Nov 21st I placed an order on amazon co uk for an ASUS laptop. The laptop was on promotion and the price was really good. The product page mentioned the product to be "In stock". As far as I can tell, it remained in stock for at least 2 days after I had placed the order. After placing the order I received an email from Amazon stating that they need a little more time to estimate the delivery date. One week later, I still do not have an estimated delivery date for this order. The product has not been dispatched yet and I have not been charged for it.
Yesterday, I had a chat with Amazon's customer support. They refused to help in any way, stating that when I ordered the product it was out of stock. One representative told me that the product is not expected to be sourced again from the supplier and that the order is very unlikely to be fulfilled. Another one mentioned that there seemed to be a problem with this laptop and they pulled it from their website.
Therefore, I am left with a placed order for a laptop which may or may not be fulfilled. I would have cancelled this order and move on but it was a really good promotional price for this laptop and waiting on it I missed on all of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals.

Am I wrong to think that this borders on false advertizing on Amazon's part? Do I, as a consumer have any rights in this case?

Quoted in case of deletion.