Does anyone know if websites are legally obliged to sell items at the advertised price even if the product in question should be sold for a lot more?
Ive recently placed an order (though it is pending and not processed) for an item at their stated price, but have since found out that the item in question should retail at a substantially higher price.
Again - As the guys above have said - It really depends on whether payment has been taken for the item or not (Ask the staff at thy bank to check incoming transactions on thy account) and at what point in the process a "sale" is deemed to have taken place (Check the website's terms & conditions)...Although if money has been
requested from thy bank at this stage, ye'd probabally have a much stronger case in consumer law for demanding that delivery be completed. 8)
AFAIK: Once the money's "gone", the item lawfully becomes yours immediateley (And is only
in their care until delivery is complete) and therefore ye could refuse any attempts by them to "refund" ye the cost of
thy property!
That said though, take a peek at
This article and
This one - Both referencing the pricing mistakes that Argos made a few years ago (Remember they were "selling" widescreeen tellys at £2.99 each?
) and I'm sure many of us will remember the Argos "
We're very sorry, but..." e-mail that did the rounds shortly afterwards.
That said; Though Argos have protected
themselves by adding a clause against wrong prices in their site T&Cs, if the site that ye've ordered from
hasn't got a similar clause in theirs, they probabally havn't a leg to stand on, legally speaking.
If I were ye, I'd
save a copy of the complete site T&Cs for future reference and presentation! (Preferably from thy web browser cache if ye can. That way, ye should have the original one that ye saw when ye first visited the site, with no last minute "additions" cunningly snuck in!
)
Sadly Im not the only one that knows about it, I know of at least 3 or 4 others that have also put in orders.
It was a super super long shot anyway as the difference in price is over £1000! hence me giving it a punt.
I'm not really bothered about getting whatever it is for myself, as I've already had my fill of bargains from Maplin and DSG Retail over the last week...But would ye mind me asking
what it is ye have on order? I'm curious!
(Though for the ease of the RailUK mods and to prevent bandwidth ganking; Please don't post a URL to the site that ye ordered it on...Insted, Google up the same product on a site that has the price right and post that insted. Ta! )
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Anyhow...Whilst we're on the subject of Internet hopping, I've got a question of my own that I'd like to pose:
Whilst playing around with the Asda website earlier on, I found that I was able to add any item from the stock database into my shopping basket - Including items marked as "
Out of stock" and "
No longer available". 8)
Now I didn't take my experimentations past the "view basket" page as I refuse to order
anything from sites that charge £5.00 for collecting items in person from the company's own stores...But what I'm curious about is:
If I had placed an order for several "Out of stock" items and handed the money over instantly via my debit card, what position in law would both parties be in? Would I be entitled to expect those items be sourced and delivered nonetheless, or would Asda have a legal safeguard that would allow them to force me to accept a refund? 
) things get a little different.
