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UK Retailer Mistakenly Sends PS Vitas, Threatens Legal Action To Get Them Back
New submitter Retron writes "The BBC brings news that British retailer Zavvi mistakenly sent out PlayStation Vitas to people who had preordered a game called Tearaway. The company is now threatening legal action against those who have kept theirs despite a request to return them. It's unclear whether the Distance Selling Act protects consumers who have mistakenly been sent an expensive item, and forums such as Eurogamer seem divided on the issue."
I'd keep it.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
In the United States getting stuff in the mail unsolicited is considered a gift and is not required to be returned...for the exact reason you specified; I can mail everyone on my block an Ubuntu cd and then claim they owe me $10 for accepting it.
I don't know if a shipping error counts as being unsolicited, but I don't think the company would have any recourse. IANAL.
If you'd read the law, you'd see that this isn't the case. From the relevant law, which is linked to in TFA:
24.—(1) Paragraphs (2) and (3) apply if—
(a) unsolicited goods are sent to a person (“the recipient”) with a view to his acquiring them;
(b) the recipient has no reasonable cause to believe that they were sent with a view to their being acquired for the purposes of a business; and
(c) the recipient has neither agreed to acquire nor agreed to return them.
(2) The recipient may, as between himself and the sender, use, deal with or dispose of the goods as if they were an unconditional gift to him.
(3) The rights of the sender to the goods are extinguished.
Mistakes happen. They weren't expecting them so it shouldn't be too heartbreaking to return them. I'll probably get flamed for this, but you have to be one self-entitled little twerp to expect to be able to keep it. As long as Zawi pays for shipping they have every right to want them back. If you mistakenly shipped something expensive to the wrong address, would you be miffed if they refused to return it? Who wouldn't?
If the situation was reserved, say the customers received £19.99 Tearaway after ordering a £169.99 PS Vita, they would be fighting to return it.
The customers received an item that was worth more than what they paid, and are simply being greedy.
As a general rule you are not the owner of property sent to you in error.
If someone _deliberately_ sends unsolicited property to you, then the usual rule is this is presumptively a gift.
If someone _accidentally_ sends property to you then the usual rule is that ownership is not transferred automatically.
However if you reasonably assumed it was a gift then you might have lost it or sold it thinking it was your own, and since the error was not yours, you would not be liable. On the other hand, it is unreasonable to think a store would send you a video game system for no reason. And a reasonable person who orders something from a store, and recieves the wrong product would first suspect an error on the stores part. If you contact the store and they say "nope it is a gift!" then you can keep it.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
Thing is these, things were not "unsolicited". The person ordered one thing (a game called Tearaway) and through an obvious database mistake received something of higher value (a PS Vita Tearaway bundle). It's not like the consoles just turned up out of the blue. I expect the retailer is well within their rights to demand the item to be returned even if they are responsible for paying the postage to have them returned.
The best thing for Zawi to do is probably just call it a loss. They have done the chest thumping and legal threats and probably have gotten most units back. Going to court would probably cost more time and money than the value of the PS. Offer anyone that did send their units back a gift card to reward honesty for a decent amount so no one would think that they would have been better off keeping the PS. The next step is getting your shit together so that it doesn't happen again.
Well, gosh, that'd just make me feel like an idiot if I was one of those that hadn't returned the items. At this point, I think they're past the point of no return - best course would have been to silent about the missing units, show due diligence in re-acquiring product, and move on, but now that they've complained about it won't people wonder what happened?
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UK law is clear in that ownership has not transferred to the recipients and that the items should be returned.
I think in this type of situation, it's a reasonable expectation that the recipient should return the PS Vita too. They paid £19.99 and got sent a completely different item; it isn't as if the PS Vita was priced at £19.99 in error and the company mistakenly fulfilled the order.
Sadly, I see similar situations happen all the time. Companies make a mistake with their pricing online and don't fulfil the order and the people who thought they were getting a 40" TV for £50 start talking about their "right" to buy it for that price.
It's an obvious mistake by the retailer and if their customers are being uncooperative then they have every right to pursue the legal avenue. Let's turn it around a bit: if the customers had asked to return the game they bought and accidentally sent a PS Vita to the company, would the customers be arguing that their mistake represented an "unsolicited gift"?
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
Anything you didn't ask for is unsolicited by definition.
dumb ass.
This is literally why I come to Slashdot. Nothing warms my heart like an unsolicited insult. I'm all smiling inside.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It sounds to me like the retailer would not only be out of luck on the consoles, but would still owe people their games.
If I received a Vita in the mail from a retailer, this being the Holiday season, my first assumption would be that someone gave me a Vita, not that the retailer sent it to me accidentally. At that point, I'd probably buy some games for it and start using it. If the retailer then demanded it back, not only have I spent money buying games for it, I now have to spend the extra time packaging it to return it (and possibly the money, too). I don't owe them that inconvenience just because they sent me the wrong thing, and furthermore, they still owe me a game.
Customer ordered one thing, company sent another thing and is now threatening them with legal action and fines... sounds scummy to me.
The company should just admit they made a mistake and politely request a return... however, if the customer doesn't want to return it, they don't have to. Company made a mistake and is now acting scummy. Company made a mistake and it will cost them... consequences.
People are always saying the consumers need to be responsible and suffer consequences... this should apply to companies also.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Q. What should I do if the unordered merchandise I received was the result of an honest shipping error?
A. Write the seller and offer to return the merchandise, provided the seller pays for postage and handling. Give the seller a specific and reasonable amount of time (say 30 days) to pick up the merchandise or arrange to have it returned at no expense to you. Tell the seller that you reserve the right to keep the merchandise or dispose of it after the specified time has passed.
Keeping something you know belongs to someone else is theft.
Back around the dot-com boom, lots of really good deals (re: obvious mistakes, like a 17" monitor for $50) would show up on e-commerce sites. These deals would get passed around, orders would skyrocket, the company would void the orders, and people would whine and moan about the company not holding up their end of the bargain. Eventually, terms of use began including this reserved right to void orders due to pricing mistakes, even if that right needn't be explicitly reserved.
Now a company has made a mistake further into the interaction with their customer--a mistake in delivery. I wonder if we will start to see terms of use/purchase including an obligation to return erroneous deliveries.
I genuinely think that the demarcation of responsibility should be after the item is shipped. You shouldn't place an onus, however small, on a customer to correct your mistake. In a more perfect world, people would be willing to take on such a slight burden as shipping an item back. However, the world is an imperfect place. Screws fall out all the time. We don't always treat others as we would like to be treated, whether due to laziness or greed.
"Anything you didn't ask for is unsolicited by definition.
dumb ass."
Nope. Wrong. DrXym's comment is correct.
There is a difference between "unsolicited merchandise", and a mistake on a legitimate order. Unsolicited merchandise (regardless of the literal meaning of "unsolicited") is something that was sent to you out of the blue, i.e., you had no contact with the sender and weren't expecting anything at all.
Mistakes on legitimate merchandise orders are something entirely different. You DID order something. You DID expect something to be delivered. It was just the wrong thing.
Here in the US, in order to be considered an "unconditional gift", the shipment must be unsolicited, not just incorrect. An solicited, but incorrect shipment can be recovered by the sender in the US.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The company should just admit they made a mistake and politely request a return...
They did try that first. The customer (singular, that we know of, so far) failed to respond.
[Games blog Dark Zero] published a "final notice" letter sent to one [emphasis mine] Zavvi customer who had originally ordered a copy of the platform game Tearaway.
"As you are aware, as a result of a technical error, you were not sent Tearaway (priced at approximately £19.99) and instead were sent a PS Vita (priced at approximately £169.99). This was an error on our part and we apologise for any inconvenience this has caused you," it said.
Tearaway Affected customers had only expected to receive the game Tearaway
"We have tried to contact you on numerous occasions [emphasis mine] to give you the opportunity to return this item to us (at our cost and no inconvenience to yourself), but to date you have refused to do so.
At this point I'd say the company are reasonable in assuming this guy just wants to keep the Vita despite having no claim to it.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Now how about (a) and (b) which would also have to be true since the word used is "and".
Sigh
Oh how horrible for you.
First, this is not "unsolicited merchandise", because you did order something. So it's not a "gift" (as it would be if it were truly "unsolicited").
Is this so clear-cut? The law says it is: "merchandise mailed without the prior expressed request or consent of the recipient." It does not seem to differentiate mistakes. That is, none of these people ordered a Vita bundle--they ordered something different. Therefore the merchandise of a Vita bundle was mailed without prior request or consent. What was requested was a particular game.
Unless there is prior case law, I don't think anyone can really say whether the particular order (or an identical one taking place in the US) would qualify as "mailed without prior expressed request."
I'm referencing http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2011-title39/html/USCODE-2011-title39-partIV-chap30-sec3009.htm which doesn't have any obligation to the recipient--and expressly says so: "Any merchandise mailed in violation of subsection (a) of this section, or within the exceptions contained therein, may be treated as a gift by the recipient, who shall have the right to retain, use, discard, or dispose of it in any manner he sees fit without any obligation whatsoever to the sender"
Nothing in this code indicates that you can charge for storage should you return the item, either.
Is there a different law I'm unfamiliar with that you're referring to?
Of course it is considered as an unasked for gift. If it wasn't, the mail order scam of sending out unrequested product would never have gone away. The companies that forced the law into existence would have just switched to offering some low value product at cost and shipping some other product with ridiculous markup. Thus, completely skirting the law.
I'm sorry Mr. Smith, we mistakenly sent you the $99.99 WHITE cheddar cheese log by mistake instead of the $6.99 YELLOW cheddar cheese log. Please return it immediately. Oh, it was eaten at your Christmas party? Just give us your credit card number and we can charge the extra $93.00 to your card.