John Lewis Refusing a price match after purchased

KatrinaWaves

Jessops made a mistake. OP tried it on with JL. JL failed to spot the mistake. I hardly think JL are the worst of the bunch here or should lose out £700 because Jessops messed up. Jessops would have been able to cancel the order so I see no reason that JL cannot.

Price matching to erroneous pricing would be far too easy to abuse and manipulate. 

As Jessops were never selling the camera for that price, only appearing to do so due to a mistake, JL do not have to honour that price. Their staff are not expected to be experts on every product they sell nor realise when something is a clear error. Sometimes things are heavily discounted and this could have been one of those cases. But it wasn’t. 

DoaM

So the JL staff doing the authorisation have no idea of their cost price for any product they're price matching? Really? Just because something normally retails for £1000 doesn't mean it costs the retailer anywhere near that.

To be fair though, around £1000+ seems to be the standard retail price for that item.

Sunkissed1

£9xx on amazon  even though £279 was cheap not unrealistic since the camera is 4 years old tech. I have a camera that's 5 years old paid just as much and I would be lucky to get £150 -200 for it being lightly used.

cymruchris

Sunkissed1 said:

£9xx on amazon  even though £279 was cheap not unrealistic 

So nobody sells this particular model for less than £9xx and you don’t think £279 was unrealistic? You know you were trying it on - and haven’t gotten away with it 😂

Spank

Sunkissed1 said:

£9xx on amazon  even though £279 was cheap not unrealistic since the camera is 4 years old tech. I have a camera that's 5 years old paid just as much and I would be lucky to get £150 -200 for it being lightly used.

It doesn't matter old the tech is, if everybody else is selling it for about a grand then a quarter of that is unrealistic.

visidigi

KatrinaWaves said:

Jessops made a mistake. OP tried it on with JL. JL failed to spot the mistake. I hardly think JL are the worst of the bunch here or should lose out £700 because Jessops messed up. Jessops would have been able to cancel the order so I see no reason that JL cannot.

Price matching to erroneous pricing would be far too easy to abuse and manipulate. 

As Jessops were never selling the camera for that price, only appearing to do so due to a mistake, JL do not have to honour that price. Their staff are not expected to be experts on every product they sell nor realise when something is a clear error. Sometimes things are heavily discounted and this could have been one of those cases. But it wasn’t. 

None of that is relevant.

The time for JL to dispute the price was prior to the agreement to match. The email clearly states buy it and we will match the price and they quoted it. This is not a error price on JL.

And I am not sure where Jessops have confirmed its a pricing error and they sold zero stock at that price (not that again that is any way applicable here, but I am curious where its come from?).

Again, JL can decline the price match for any reason they want. They didn't they told the OP to buy and they would refund. They cannot remove that after the manually verified, and specifically outlined email confirms they will match (as they could do this with every price offer otherwise).

In fact, not only did JL match, they event said the OP could buy 10 of them....

mattyprice4004

Second hand ones on eBay are selling for between £650 and £800 - 2 minutes would have shown this is obviously an error regardless of product age. 

Sorry, but this was obviously an error - and it didn't pay off this time. 

John_

Sunkissed1 said:

visidigi said:

Why do I think the OP has a point here.
The email says they WILL price match. They have stated they price matched in error, but that does not change the agreement. The error by JL is nothing to do with the error in the price on Jessops - the offer to price match forms a separate agreement (likewise if Jessops dropped the price further JL would only agree to price match at the point at which its assessed.

If JL had refused the price match the OP wouldn't even be here now and out the cost of the camera.
I personally think JL are on the hook here and would push the subject with JL.

My point is john Lewis don't want to take a loss but they are happy for me to take a loss on an agreement.
my main issues is john lewis say they do checks with the company they price match its not automated as I didn't get that email until the following day.
I have just now asked for a pick up collection and would need proof its been picked up with a receipt  as I am afraid they will use hermes.

You knew when you bought that the price was an error at Jessup’s, which is why you thought that you’d be clever and do what you did.
Mistakes happen, JL are not obliged to take a huge loss because one did.

Next time, don’t play silly buggers.

unholyangel

Manxman_in_exile said:

unholyangel said:

Manxman_in_exile said:

unholyangel said:

The issue is the price match promise doesn't constitute an offer or acceptance. I suspect JL will rely on their policy, stating that the item must be available for anyone to purchase at that price - if it was a mistake then the item wasn't available to purchase at that price. 

I get your point, but in that case JL shouldn't really be saying:  "We’ve checked with Jessops and have found that the Sony Cybershot RX10 Mk3 Digital Bridge Camera 82920102 is priced at £279, so we're happy to match this price[.[" which to the average consumer would imply that they actually have already checked it's availability.

I don't have a problem with JL ensuring that the prices they are matching against are genuine, but I do have a problem with them giving out a message apparently stating quite clearly that they have "checked with Jessops... so we're happy to match this price" and then changing their minds.  If they haven't really checked that the price is genuine and that the item is available at that price then they shouldn't be suggesting that they'll meet the price.

I presume that for the JL policy to work that they do actually have to check if the price match items are available at the lower price.  They should be checking that before saying they'll honour the lower price, not afterwards.

I don't think they didn't check. I think they did. But due to a third party error (outwith JL's control), it was assessed as a valid price match. Subsequently, they have found out the price match wasn't actually valid because the goods were never available for the general public to buy at that price. 

The actual offer that OP made to JL was to purchase the camera at full price - which they accepted. I'd see the complaint if JL were insiting OP honour that price but they're not. The OP basically escapes being no worse off for having entered the contract & JL cover any risk of depreciation, damage etc of the goods. 

Is that the offer made by the OP?  I think they'd disagree with you and say that they only offered to buy the camera on condition that JL would subsequently refund them £700, and not that the offer was based on paying the full price.  I think it's somewhat tortuous to suggest that the OP was in any real sense offering to pay full price. 

And that offer made by the OP was based on JL's freely given statement that they'd checked the Jessops price and would honour it.

I don't see that it matters that the root error was outside JL's control, because if they'd checked it properly (as they implied they had done to the OP) they would have found out it was an error.  And the pricing error at Jessops certainly can't have been a clear or obvious error otherwise JL surely would have noticed it themselves when "checking" it and before telling the OP they would match it.

I'm actually happy to accept that the OP has suffered no real loss here, but I do think JL are acting disingenuously if this is how they operate their price match.  I do think they should be better than this.  They can't sincerely say on the one hand "Yes - we've checked the price and we're happy to match it" and then rely on their small print to say afterwards "No we're not".  If they say "Yes - we'll match" I think it's incumbent on them to check the lower price beforehand - or are they so desperate for sales that they prefer to do it in this misleading way.

It also seems to have come as a surprise to the OP that the price match would not be honoured.  If I've understood it properly(?) he'd actually tried to claim the £700 back and didn't understand that they were telling him he'd paid the correct price at £1000 and there was no price match.  Surely they should have contacted him immediately they realised it wasn't a valid price match?  They wouldn't have waited until he tried to claim the refund to check if the match was valid, would they?  Oh - hang on - maybe they did do that.

I know the OP hasn't really lost out here but I think it's shoddy treatment by JL.  If they can't be bothered to validate price matches before saying they'll match then they should honour them.

Sorry to rant on about this but JL (and Waitrose) are not as good as they'd like to think they are and sometimes it shows.

Well no, because when OP placed the order, they were promising to pay the full price in exchange for the goods. 

Even if the previous conversation (about the price match) did amount to an offer, that was destroyed by the counter offer to pay the full price. 

How would you propose they validate a price is genuine before offering to price match? The only possible way to know, would be to buy it then wait 6 years and see if you receive a claim for unilateral mistake. 

neilmcl

Sunkissed1 said:

visidigi said:

Why do I think the OP has a point here.
The email says they WILL price match. They have stated they price matched in error, but that does not change the agreement. The error by JL is nothing to do with the error in the price on Jessops - the offer to price match forms a separate agreement (likewise if Jessops dropped the price further JL would only agree to price match at the point at which its assessed.

If JL had refused the price match the OP wouldn't even be here now and out the cost of the camera.
I personally think JL are on the hook here and would push the subject with JL.

My point is john Lewis don't want to take a loss but they are happy for me to take a loss on an agreement.
my main issues is john lewis say they do checks with the company they price match its not automated as I didn't get that email until the following day.
I have just now asked for a pick up collection and would need proof its been picked up with a receipt  as I am afraid they will use hermes.

The point is John Lewis call their price matching scheme "Never Knowingly Undersold" for a reason. In this case the camera was not actually going to be sold at that low price by Jessops so it's entirely reasonable to expect JL to backtrack on their original decision after further checks.