Garden Rooms Great Offer

DenBen

Being devil's advocate here, is it not possible that B&Q could argue that the loss of upwards of £750,000 would constitute serious grounds?

I appreciate that people do feel that they have a case against cancellation of this order. I don't have sufficient legal expertise to agree or disagree. There do seem to be points for both sides. I definitely think that B&Q have handled the whole thing extremely badly - as I said earlier, they should have jumped in as soon as they realised what was happening, and not allowed expectations to rise. They also should get their legal team to have a proper look at their terms and conditions, because they are so woolly, and by the looks of it not even legal.

Former_MSE_Wendy

Hi all,

A few people have contacted Martin to ask that we look into the B&Q garden shed issue and he has asked me to reply on his behalf.

After scanning the thread it looks like a mistake in price that B&Q do not have to honour. MoneySavers had a go - nothing ventured nothing gained, but it's a balance. No one genuinely thought the price was real, so this needs to be 'take it with a smile' case. As explained in our Consumer Rights article, online orders need to be delivered for the contract to be concluded and mis-prices need to be intentional for Trading Standards to investigate, neither of which looks to have happened in this case.

Regards,

Wendy

Haylhoo

I havent had a chance to keep up with whats going on over the weekend. However i've just seen (on another forum, maybe going on here too) about a mis-price with a Bouncy Castle on Focus website - 70p instead of £70. From what i can gather from my quick read through, they have refused to supply the item. However someone has posted saying that they can refuse to supply, but they must remove the item from their website and not re-advertise it for min 24hrs. Focus did readvertise in that time, and so on....

Anyway I know this isnt really the same because there is a big price difference, but there are similarities. BUT if this 24hr thing is right, then didnt B&Q then commit an offence by re-advertising the item on the Sunday morning (as some have reported and say they ordered at that time), even though it was again at the reduced price, within 24hrs of withdrawing it on the Saturday??

They just seem to be digging themselves big holes all over the place. There are plenty of grouds to be seeking compensation from what I see! Obviously TS, CD & WD will all know much more about these things, but they can only act on it if they have been informed of all the facts. I hope all of this info is getting through to them.

Haylhoo

MSE_Wendy wrote: »

Hi all,

A few people have contacted Martin to ask that we look into the B&Q garden shed issue and he has asked me to reply on his behalf.

After scanning the thread it looks like a mistake in price that B&Q do not have to honour. MoneySavers had a go - nothing ventured nothing gained, but it's a balance. No one genuinely thought the price was real, so I think this needs to be 'take it with a smile' case. As I explain in my Consumer Rights article, online orders need to be delivered for the contract to be concluded and mis-prices need to be intentional for Trading Standards to investigate, neither of which looks to have happened in this case.

Many thanks for this response. But im just wondering, is there any take from your point of view with regards to B&Q's customer service in this case? You are obviously aware of all the points that have been made. Could you comment on that?

Also, I said in my very first post here that I initially thought it was a mis-price because of what I had read. However when I went to order the item and saw they had 2 different colours, separately listed items, for the same price in their sale, I honestly did think that they must be selling them to clear. It seemed to big a mistake to make on two items. So I honestly do not believe it was such an 'obvious' mistake as is being made out. I am not a naieve person, but this did look as though it could be genunine. Cemented even more for me when I heard that the items had come back onto sale again on the Sunday morning, for the same price, and people had been able to order.

Thank you again for your reply, im sure all members will be very grateful for your (and Martin's) input.
Hayley. :T

Silk

Haylhoo wrote: »

However when I went to order the item and saw they had 2 different colours, separately listed items, for the same price in their sale, I honestly did think that they must be selling them to clear. It seemed to big a mistake to make on two items. So I honestly do not believe it was such an 'obvious' mistake as is being made out. I am not a naieve person, but this did look as though it could be genunine. Cemented even more for me when I heard that the items had come back onto sale again on the Sunday morning, for the same price, and people had been able to order.

Hayley. :T

Just to clarify a couple of points quickly because of lack of time at the moment.
Yes its true there were two different items put on sale both sperately listed on Saturday which were then removed at some point in the afternoon.
It was in fact Monday when the items were again put on offer.
It would be quite reasonable for the average consumer to assume that the items had sold out on Saturday and that on Monday the had managed to get hold of more stock.
The fact that an item could be compared to a similar item and the price confirmed as being the same along with the fact that it was not a misprice of a decimal point in the wrong place along with the declaration of savings that would be made by the purchase of the item rather leaves them at the bottom of a deep hole at the moment.
Needless to say their problem is further compounded by the fact that not only did they put the offer back up on Monday but they also took orders on it that day too. Which is strange if we are to understand from what they have told us that orders were cancelled on Saturday when they realised the supposed "mistake"

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DenBen wrote: »

Being devil's advocate here, is it not possible that B&Q could argue that the loss of upwards of £750,000 would constitute serious grounds?

I believe 'serious default' covers items such as where there is a danger to health etc. etc. And as Showman has previously pointed out... "no one got killed it was a shed". :rolleyes:

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MSE_Wendy wrote: »

Hi all,

A few people have contacted Martin to ask that we look into the B&Q garden shed issue and he has asked me to reply on his behalf.

After scanning the thread it looks like a mistake in price that B&Q do not have to honour. MoneySavers had a go - nothing ventured nothing gained, but it's a balance. No one genuinely thought the price was real, so I think this needs to be 'take it with a smile' case. As I explain in my Consumer Rights article, online orders need to be delivered for the contract to be concluded and mis-prices need to be intentional for Trading Standards to investigate, neither of which looks to have happened in this case.

Regards,

Wendy

Thanks for taking the time to comment, Wendy.

One thing you don't mention is regarding the orders purchased in stores and by telephone as these have different Terms and Conditions to the online orders. It is believed that B&Q are trying to cancel these also using a T&C that doesn't exist.

Also, is the OFT 'Unfair cancellation terms' document relevant or not as it seems to cover pretty much an identical example of a supplier cancelling and refunding monies for their own financial advantage/trivial reasons?

I hope you don't think we are dragging out this case, but it does lend itself to be used very well to illustrate a number of pertinent points to do with contracts and customer care.

Thanks again for your views.

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Haylhoo wrote: »

I havent had a chance to keep up with whats going on over the weekend. However i've just seen (on another forum, maybe going on here too) about a mis-price with a Bouncy Castle on Focus website - 70p instead of £70. From what i can gather from my quick read through, they have refused to supply the item.

I never thought I'd say that Focus were better than B&Q, but let's compare their T&C's with B&Q's to see how they have covered themselves where B&Q have left themselves vulberable...

Focus T&C extracts...

Contract Formation
After placing an order through the Website you will receive an email from Us acknowledging that We have received your order. Please note that this does not mean that your order has been accepted. Your order constitutes an offer to Us to buy a product. All orders are subject to acceptance by Us.
We will confirm acceptance of your order by sending you by email an order preparation confirmation. The contract between you and Us will only be formed when we send you the order preparation confirmation.
The contract created by sending to you by email an order preparation confirmation will relate only to products whose dispatch we have confirmed in the order preparation confirmation. We will not be obliged to supply any other products which may have been part of your order until the dispatch of such products has been confirmed in a separate order preparation confirmation.
...
All prices for products will be as displayed on this Website from time to time except in the case of obvious error and are inclusive of VAT.
...
Our Website contains a large number of products and it is always possible that, despite our best efforts, some of the products listed on the Website may be incorrectly priced. We will normally verify prices as part of our dispatch procedures prior to acceptance of an order so that, where a product's correct price is less than our stated price, We will charge the lower amount when dispatching the product to you. If a product's correct price is higher than the price stated on our Website We may at our discretion reject your order without liability to you and notify you of such rejection
We are under no obligation to supply products to you at an incorrect (lower) price, even after we have sent you an order preparation confirmation, if the pricing error is obvious and unmistakeable and could reasonably have been recognised by you as a mis-pricing.

Now THAT's how you write Terms and Conditions! :T

Silk

DenBen wrote: »

Being devil's advocate here, is it not possible that B&Q could argue that the loss of upwards of £750,000 would constitute serious grounds?

This would only be applicable in a collective case. If it was heard as individual cases and each one tried on its own merit it would be difficult for B&Q or Kingfisher to claim hardship on individual cases. It would also be taken into account the actual cost to B&Q ie if as we are to understand the item was on sale at the start of this year for a figure of £1600 we can assume as we know the vast mark-up on items such as these (kitchens conservatories etc) the buy in price could be considerd to be in the region of £1000 deduct from that the £350 from the consumer would mean the loss to B&Q would be estimated at around £650 which could hardly be considerd to cause a company the size of B&Q any hardship.
This is only speculation however and would depend on knowing the true figures

prettypennies

I would have to say that when I orginally ordered, I didn't think it was a mis-price. I didn't really take much notice of the orginal selling price. I though it looked a good bargain for a summerhouse and maybe they were just clearing a few end of lines or something.

Having purchased a number of garden products from B&Q and heavily reduced prices I genuinely didn't think it was out of the ordinary.

I had googled the garden room to try and find a better piccy and when it popped up on various price checker sites also a £357.11 I just presumed that was the real price.

It was only when I started reading other peoples comments that I started questioning the nature of the offer, particularly when so many people were saying their order had been accepted.