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NZ Business Fined For Out-of-Date Website
Peter writes "A story reports that a restaurant in New Zealand has been fined NZ$3000 for failing to keep its website up to date. By having out-of-date menus and prices on its website, it has breached the Fair Trading Act, according to the New Zealand Commerce Commission."
Well I looked around the article but couldn't locate any information whether the site was hosted inside of New Zealand or outside, but I would imagine if it was hosted outside of New Zealand that they would have no right to go after the company for what their website contained, since it would not be on their soil.
I hope this does happen in the USA, but only to companies.
A) Too many companies leave false, misleading information.
B) Too many companies still believe a Web site is something you can build and leave alone, or revisit only once a year.
C) It'll keep large companies from hiring part-time Webmasters, and encourage more full time hires to conduct regular Web site updates.
Hmmm... okay, 2 out of 3 wouldn't be bad...
"Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important." (Lisa Hoffman)
I think the state board of licensure fined him something around $50,000? Absolutely rediculous.
Actually, it's not that uncommon. Most states' engineering license board will go to extreme lengths to protect the "engineer" name (and collect the fines) if the individual or company is not a licensed engineer (typically, a civil engineer).
The state of Texas wanted individuals who are software engineers to be licensed professional engineers or stop using the word "engineer" entirely. A brief summary is here. It's both a snobbery thing (e.g., my engineering degree is better than yours) and a revenue enchancement thing (e.g., state got to get the money somehow). Either way, you're screwed if you're in the middle.
There is a difference between reserving the rights to change (including increase) prices, etc and making a change but still actively telling people old, inaccurate information.
It isn't like they got a paper ad and one changed the prices, and the ad is out of date.
The website keeps serving pages that are inaccurate. That would be like one continuing to print paper ads that have old information, even after one made the change that rendered the info on the site inaccurate and in this case, where they were informed of the discrepency. ("knew or had reason to know")
That is just plain wrong.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Yes but perhaps there were two engineers at one stage. Or perhaps it was a simple typo. There needs to be room for people to make honest mistakes and give them a chance to correct the mistake, and then there has to be the chance to punish those that act unethically.
If the company had the mistake brought to their attention and they refused to fix it, the fine would be justified. But to just whip out a massive fine for an honest mistake, that's ridiculous (in my opinion).
We aren't machines. We make mistakes. I think there should be room for us to make honest mistakes. A simple "How many engineers do you have?" "1" "But your site says engineers as in plural" "oh thankyou for pointing out that mistake, we'll fix it immediately" *it's fixed that week*. And it's nothing like the situation described in the article.
Maybe the company was less "caring" about what it posted on the net... maybe it considered the internet to be a "lesser" form of advertising? Some bozo in a previous post called it government interfering with business...
This country's shifting a large part of the business advertising paradigm to the internet - flights are booked online, we shop online more and more; maybe most pertinently our phonebooks are online: consequently websites are popping up in response. Thus I'm glad the laws here are responding, and can respond to the issues at hand.
The consumer is well-protected by law in NZ, I suspect it's because consumers here are stupider than elsewhere!!!
Couldn't stand the weather
I went to a local Vancouver camera shop's web site, and looked into pricing for a Sigma SD10. Found that they had a great deal on for the camera body, 2 lenses (wide angle and zoom), case, and really nice flash.
I went down and tried to buy the camera, but was quoted a HUGELY different price for it. I asked the guy to go to their website and tell me what it says, after which the clerk said someone made a mistake on the data input... turns out the price was only for the base, not including the 2 lenses and the flash.
As a result, the clerk called the owner/boss, who asked them if the lower price was actually on the site, and had a detailed description of what was included in that price, and when it was validated, he said "well, give that stuff to him at that price... and CHANGE THE WEBSITE. " The site was changed while I was still in the store paying for my camera.
So, at the end of the day, I saved over $1,500 due to their screwup. I kind of felt bad about it, and ended up buying more stuff than I would have (huge amounts of ram, rechargeable batteries, tripod, etc), but it was nice to see the guy live up to his on-line marketing.
$0.02 (CDN)
I see no difference between false advertising (i.e. fraud) and theft. Libertarians hate theft, so why are they willing to let some forms of fraud slide? Fraud undermines the competition of the market yet any efforts by the government to reduce fraud are seen as unneccessary intrusion into the market.
How is it desireable to allow companies to succeed through lying?
In larger markets, WalMart has their in-store pricing match their online pricing because they're undercutting local stores online and b&m. However, in rural areas where there's no Best Buy, CC or whatever to compete with, they charge the regular price in-store. If you ask the customer service people, they refuse to price match their own website advertised prices. You can go online to order it, but you can't get it in the store.
Example: Recently, some new DVD came out that would normally run at least $19.99. Best Buy and others were selling it at $15.99 to bring in customers. Walmart was selling it for $14.88 online and in stores near Best Buy. In Walmarts in the middle of nowhere, the price was the full $19.99. No price matching. I skipped going to Best Buy to pick it up because walmart.com said I could get it at Walmart for $14.88. By the time I was near a Best Buy again, the sale was over.
It's not even a case of old or mistyped pricing. They're actively selling at the price, just not in certain areas where they can get away with jamming up the customer. Most other places that charge less online will at least give you the lower price in the store if you ask.
Once you have the site's URI, you could contractually hire someone else to track down how to gain access to it and to alter/remove part of it. Or, at worst, persuade the virtual site's owner to delete it. Really, all the virtual site's owner would need to do is verify your address and/or phone number (surely your web-site thing has these!), social engineering notwithstanding.
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
Would an old 1973 catalogue also be false advertizing? See, the law *does* have to specify whether a webpage can be just like a printed catalogue, accurate only at the time of publication.
This reminds me of the stories about ridiculous lawsuits (i.e., people suing toaster manufacturers for millions, and winning, because their toaster didn't have a sticker warning them not to use it in the bath), many of which are said to be planted by lobby groups pushing for product-liability laws to be pulled back, making it harder for consumers to sue.
Similarly, I wonder whether the distortion in this story (turning false advertising into outrageous government interference in personal web publishing) has an agenda behind it. Perhaps someone wants to weaken New Zealand's truth-in-advertising laws?
Unlike other advertising, web pages can be updated instantly along with the menus. How often do the menu prices change anyway? Is it completely unreasonable to expect that the information on a companies website be atleast somewhat accurate?
With print, yes, a 6 month old magazine in a doctor's office might contain outdated info. A website should not, ever, contain outdated info. Especially realted to pricing. It is inexcusable under any circumstances. People expect that a websites prices are in fact the real prices.
I have to say that having a commercial website with out of date prices is dangerously close to bait and switch. I sure don't want to see websites all over the net suddently doing things like advertising the latest nvidia graphics card for $49 with a tiny disclaimer at the bottom saying "prices may not be accurate".
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!