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Website Checkout Glitches: Two Very Different Corporate Responses
Freshly Exhumed writes "On the morning of December 26th, 2013, an error on the website of Delta Air Lines' produced impossibly low fare discounts of as much as 90% for about 2 hours before the problem was corrected. Delta, to their PR benefit, have swallowed the losses, and the lucky customers have shared their delight via social media. Unfortunately for many buyers of goods from The Brick furniture retailer, no such consumer warmth is forthcoming. The Brick's website checkout had awarded them an additional 50% off, over and above all other costs, but the official corporate response has been to demand the money be returned. Affected customers are now lashing The Brick with social media opprobrium and drawing direct comparisons with Delta's response. So, given that these are not small, mom-and-pop companies, have we reached a point at which online retailers are expected to just swallow such costs for PR purposes, as part of doing web business?"
The Brick is a large Canadian store, mostly for furniture, mattresses, and appliances. The submitter may not even be aware that it's only Canadian. They are infamous for advertising that you can purchase their shit for a very long deferred payment (as they put it, for $0 down, $0 payments, 0% interest for 2 years, back when interest rates were high). These adds have gone on for over 20 years, perhaps much longer.
They got dinged recently for actually requiring down payments despite their advertising, because you pay tax up front, and "administrative fees", and delivery, etc. etc., so they kind of have a reputation for welching on their advertised prices already.
The Brick is known in Canada for deceptive business practices, so the consumer protection agencies have taken to the media to inform that customers do NOT have to give the money back.
The retailer advertised those prices, and tries to trick the customer into cancelling the sale to wiggle out of the sales. That's a tactic known as bait-and-switch, and it's illegal.
You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
Similarly IF THE WEBSITE advertises $1000, but when you got to checkout, your total shows $100.
The customer should expect the store won't honor the $100 price; if their online shopping cart disagrees with the advertised price.
The store should call the customer and inform them of the error --- give them the option to pay the expected price, or cancel the transaction.
If the online store goes ahead with the sale, then they have accepted the error. Once they ship the goods, it is now too late for them to back out of the deal, and escape without causing the customer undue harm.
False. They need not ship the goods for them to be too late to back out of the deal. This is basic contract law. A contract was written up (offer), it was accepted (check out), and at least one way consideration was made (payment). What you have now is a fully legally binding contract that says one person exchanged x dollars for y goods. Failing to deliver on the y goods is grounds for legal challenge.
Now if the error was caught before the credit card actually got billed, i.e. the checkout process then went through a sanity check where someone caught the error then no consideration has been paid and thus we don't have a legally binding contract and either party can back out. Offer and acceptance isn't normally enough to form a contract which is why when I sign a contract to purchase a house I must put down a few hundred $ purely to satisfy the legal requirements of a binding contract, money I get back if any part of the contract falls through and I don't buy the house.
*Note: My knowledge of contract law is based on the laws of a few countries, but maybe not yours.