Company Pricing/Discounting Behaviour

BVPrudent

I would be interested in this forums take on the behaviour of a company that confirmed verbally over the phone that a particular promotion/sale would be available until the stock ran out but then pulled the offer suddenly. When contacting the company they said they had to end the promotion due to rising costs. Unfortunately I was delaying my intended purchase due to home improvements which meant I could not take delivery yet until the works were completed. The original phone assistant said it would be fine to wait as the promotion would last util the stock ran out. Now the company are not interested in standing by their original direction and they say it was a miscommunication! Any thoughts on the matter. Can I ask them to hold to their original verbal commitment?

[Deleted User]

No. They have the right to change pricing at any point.

Aylesbury_Duck

BVPrudent said:

I would be interested in this forums take on the behaviour of a company that confirmed verbally over the phone that a particular promotion/sale would be available until the stock ran out but then pulled the offer suddenly. When contacting the company they said they had to end the promotion due to rising costs. Unfortunately I was delaying my intended purchase due to home improvements which meant I could not take delivery yet until the works were completed. The original phone assistant said it would be fine to wait as the promotion would last util the stock ran out. Now the company are not interested in standing by their original direction and they say it was a miscommunication! Any thoughts on the matter. Can I ask them to hold to their original verbal commitment?

Yes you can ask them to hold to it, but they're under no obligation to do so.  It's bad luck I'm afraid.  They have no obligation to honour a verbal offer, because you didn't enter into a contract with them.  Had you paid a deposit or signed some sort of pre-purchase agreement for example, it would be different.

Sandtree

Your not under contract and so they are free to change the price up and down. Ideally you dont say things on the phone and dont follow through but there are few laws around poor service and often it can either be rouge agents who are going beyond their authority or circumstances change.

Personally would have had a conversation about buying now but them holding off on the delivery for a bit

BVPrudent

Thanks for your guidance everyone. I guess I knew this would be the case but wanted to share in case there was some aspect I had not considered.

Money_Grabber13579

I guess it was always going to be a risky option because you’d never have known when the stock was going to run out. There also seems to be some confusion as to what is meant by “whilst stocks last” - I suspect most people would view this as until there are physically none left in stock but it doesn’t seem unusual for only a certain number of the in stock items to be allocated to the promotion and once those have gone, then they’ll sell the rest at the normal price (so what they really mean is “until we’ve sold a certain number of items and we’re not telling you what that number is”).

So, moral is, if you see an offer that you wish to avail of, don’t delay because you never know when it might end (unless it’s DFS, in which case it won’t).

Sandtree

Money_Grabber13579 said:
unless it’s DFS, in which case it won’t

Thats unfair... even DFS will stop it for one day in one store just so they can continue to show what the normal selling price is