Is this retail outlet within its rights?

laddie123

This is a weird one. Purchased a shirt at Fraser at Rushden Lakes today, clearly priced at £70. A minute after paying at checkout I clocked the receipt at £80. Queried this with the sales assistant, who checked and confirmed £80. I decided against purchase and asked for a refund. Declined. Instead, Fraser was prepared to offer a credit note, valid for two years. This cannot be right, surely? TIA for any advice.

Ditzy_Mitzy

This would count as a change of mind, on the basis that there is nothing wrong with the shirt.  The shop don't have to offer a refund in this case, therefore.  

TELLIT01

If you had noticed before making the payment you could obviously have declined the purchase.  Not paying attention to the price charged is really your fault.  That said, I think it's pretty poor customer service.

elsien

Clearly marked on the shirt or clearly marked on the shelf? 

mark_cycling00

I remember my law course at university saying that prices in shops are just initial offers and not contractual. You're welcome to counter offer but people rarely do.

Chances are it was a mistake rather than a secret tactic 

In fashion the big risk is with the buyers rather than the pricing which they kinda know in advance 

tightauldgit

The law seems to be slightly confused on this - as others have said there's no contractual obligation to sell you the item at the marked price but at the same time Trading Standards say it's a criminal offence to charge customers a different price from one clearly marked on the item. 

I would have expected them to offer you a full refund but we are talking about Ashley here so good customer service is out the window. 

Probably the best approach would be to talk to the store manager and see if they are willing to offer you a refund under threat of going to Trading Standards to complain if they aren't. 

user1977

tightauldgit said:

The law seems to be slightly confused on this - as others have said there's no contractual obligation to sell you the item at the marked price but at the same time Trading Standards say it's a criminal offence to charge customers a different price from one clearly marked on the item. 

I think to prosecute they'd have to demonstrate it was a deliberate practice - obviously the occasional c0ck-up doesn't constitute a crime. But as you say, it doesn't directly help any customers who have been charged the wrong price.

elsien

Except the OP hasn’t yet clarified whether the shirt itself was marked with the price or not

laddie123

To be clear: the item was clearly tagged at £70. Identical items (apart from size) were tagged at £80 - not something I noticed at the time because I was only concerned with finding my size; I wasn’t chasing a bargain. I’m not suggesting the outlet was in any way trying to deceive; only that a pricing error misled me on final cost. Oh, and no indication of the company’s returns policy at checkout or on till receipt. Emailed customer service, awaiting a response.

Jonboy_1984

The price shown is an “invitation to treat” and technically the starting point for negotiation, this means until the payment is tendered neither party have any obligation to complete the sale at this or any price. Tendering payment is concluding the negotiation so they have not done anything wrong under contract law.

If they were deliberately advertising incorrect prices to unfairly encourage people into the store then they may fall foul of advertising laws, and if doing it consistently Trading Standards might investigate.

They don’t need to have any returns policy at all beyond refund or replace faulty items under the consumer rights laws for in person sales. The fact most high street retailers do offer it is a sales and marketing tool rather than any legal requirement.

soolin

I suspect we will hear more and more about this as prices rise faster than things can be relabelled. A few months back Primark and a few other stores were in the local press for removing price labels from their items so that you couldn’t see the £8 item was now now £9. A few labels remained and caused all sorts of issues with people demanding they only paid the label price ‘as they knew their rights’ and strangely Primark were the only shop that routinely reduced the price to the one on the label without liability and only as a goodwill gesture. 

It is extremely irritating though to have it happen in a shop that didn’t offer change of mind returns.