John Lewis Refusing a price match after purchased

Manxman_in_exile

DoaM said:

The relevance being that the £279 price was not a clear and obvious error ... it is entirely feasible for a camera that normally retails at £1000 to be on offer at £279. It probably cost the retailer £200 max. They wouldn't normally have such low margins on retail products, but it's not unheard of. The Dell examples merely show that retail vs sale prices can vary wildly.

Correct.  (Not that I think JL have made any "error" here).

Manxman_in_exile

OP approaches JL:  "I want to buy that camera you are selling for £1000.  But Jessops are advertising it at £279.  If you price match it I'll buy it."   That's the OP's offer to JL.

JL neither reject OP's offer and nor do they make a counter-offer.  Instead they say:  "OK - we've checked with Jessops and we'll price-match them at £279.  You can even buy ten at that price if you want.  All you have to do to take advantage of this is... "

The OP follows the instructions given by JL in their acceptance of his offer.

Yes - JL have made a mistake but it's not a pricing error and it's not an inadvertant mistake such that allows them to back out of their previously given committment and to void the contract.  The mistake they've made is that they haven't properly checked the price advertised by Jessops even though they've been given ample opportunity to do so.  You could even argue they've been put on notice that the price needs checking because it's only 28% of their retail price.   But no - they go with it.  Their mistake lay not in pricing the item incorrectly, but in deliberately choosing not to verify the price with Jessops before notifying the OP that they'd accept his offer to buy at a matched price.

At some point you have to draw a line under when you decide a price you are going to match is genuine or not.  I think that line is drawn after you've had more than ample opportunity to check the validity of the price and before you tell the consumer that you'll match it - not at some unspecified point up to six years later (which is what I think unholyangel is suggesting may be the alternative which is clearly unacceptable to anyone - retailer and consumer).

unholyangel

DoaM said:

The relevance being that the £279 price was not a clear and obvious error ... it is entirely feasible for a camera that normally retails at £1000 to be on offer at £279. It probably cost the retailer £200 max. They wouldn't normally have such low margins on retail products, but it's not unheard of. The Dell examples merely show that retail vs sale prices can vary wildly.

It's not relevant because JL are not Dell and a camera is not a computer. Dell are both manufacturer & retailer remember. But they're still not JL. Otherwise you'd have a scenario of a retailer being bound to a misprice of £25 instead of £175 all because there are retailers who sell stuff for £19.99 while claiming RRPs of £100. 

But again, there was no intent to be legally bound by the price match conversation. So no contract formed by it. OP didn't order at that point/wasn't bound to order anything and didn't have to cancel anything if they changed their mind. Therefore even if you can prove the price match was an offer (which at best would be conditional given the link to their policy - and the price match doesn't meet the conditions), the order at full price amounts to a counter offer which destroys the original offer (meaning it cannot then be accepted - you would have to negotiate to vary the terms by express agreement).