Can a company cancel a digital sale a week after you bought the item?

km1500

"It also works both ways; if the buyer mistakenly agreed to pay £67 for goods costing 67p then according to you once the goods have been received the buyer cannot void the contract which is clearly ludicrous (and simply wrong)."

I will remember that next time I buy a second hand car, get it home, keep it for a week and then go back to the garage saying the car is worth less and that I want to rescind the contract and get my money back on the grounds of mistake.

Manxman_in_exile

km1500 said:

"It also works both ways; if the buyer mistakenly agreed to pay £67 for goods costing 67p then according to you once the goods have been received the buyer cannot void the contract which is clearly ludicrous (and simply wrong)."

I will remember that next time I buy a second hand car, get it home, keep it for a week and then go back to the garage saying the car is worth less and that I want to rescind the contract and get my money back on the grounds of mistake.

But there is no unilateral mistake there.

Let's say the car is advertised at £5000 but is only worth £500.  When you offer to buy it for £5000 you don't at the same time mistakenly think you are buying it for only £500.  You are simply paying £4500 more than it's worth, but you've agreed to pay £5000 for it and nobody is under any mistake about that.

The difference between that and the OP's case is that when a retailer mistakenly advertises something at 67p when they intended to advertise it at £67, they have no intention of selling it for 67p and therefore there can be no contract between them and the buyer to buy it for 67p.

In the case of the second-hand car, both you and the dealer know and intend the price to be £5000.  Therefore a valid contrcat exists.  In the case of 67p versus £67 there is no contract because the seller does not actually intend to sell for just 67p.

JetpackVelociraptor

The law won't force a retailer to supply goods worth £67 for 67p, and it will allow them to cancel after the fact. There has been other posts on here regarding mistakes in physical orders, I seem to recall a chap who ordered a bathtub for 10p or something like that and the company dispatched and then arranged for someone to pick up afterwards.

If you paid £5,000 for a car that was supposed to have been priced at £500 you absolutely would have the right to the same ie a full refund on return of the car. It's an obvious mistake.

MobileSaver

km1500 said:

I suppose an example in the real world would be you order, pay for and receive an air fryer from Amazon and 7 days later Amazon email you saying they made a mistake in the pricing and ask you to return the fryer for a refund.

On purely legal grounds, are either of them entitled to do that?

The answer is absolutely yes if the mistake is so obvious (as in the case with the OP) that the buyer takes advantage of it knowingly.

So if the Amazon air fryer should have been £99 but Amazon priced it at £69 then, no, they would probably not be entitled to claim unilateral mistake and take back the item. However if the air fryer had been mistakenly priced at 99p then yes they would be able to claim it back 7 days later.

km1500 said:

I think what we are discussing is what rights does a seller have against the buyer once the good have passed into the possession of the buyer (ignoring things like fraud etc) ie does the doctrine of unilaieral mistake in contracr law still apply.

Yes, absolutely, unilateral mistake still applies. As someone else hinted at, there are practicalities about whether a seller would enforce such a thing given the costs involved in recovering items but they certainly have the legal right to take back the goods if they so wish. E.g. a £10 item mistakenly sold for 10p probably wouldn't be worth their time.

Of course in the OP's case of a digital item it's just a button press to claim back the goods so they're much more likely to enforce their rights under law.

MobileSaver

km1500 said:

I will remember that next time I buy a second hand car, get it home, keep it for a week and then go back to the garage saying the car is worth less and that I want to rescind the contract and get my money back on the grounds of mistake.

If you agreed to pay £1000 for the car but the garage mistakenly charged you £10,000 then yes absolutely you could do that. However you can't just say it's worth less and get a refund as that is not a mistake in the contract.

razord

Regardless of the sales contract law side of things here, there's also the xbox EULA for ongoing account usage.

Microsoft can remove any content they like from your account, or even ban you entirely, and you have no rights to maintain access to the digital products you "bought"

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/usage-rules-for-digital-goods-rules-83812b1f-1ecd-9a46-d3a7-ad1eadce49d1

Microsoft may stop distributing any Digital Good, or add to or reduce the capabilities for any Digital Good, at any time.

outtatune

km1500 said:

 What I also said is that the contract cannot be voided once the goods have been shipped and received (or digitally delivered).   This should be blindingly obvious otherwise you will have farcical situations where people receive goods and then the seller tries to reclaim them back.

A contract absolutely can be voided once the goods have been shipped and received.

With physical goods it's usually impracticable to reverse the delivery which is why it's rarely done, but I bet if you ordered a toy model Ferrari F40 for £10 and a real one got delivered by mistake, the seller would be voiding the contract and be heading off to court to get an order for its return.