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Microsoft Mistakenly Sold Fallout 4 For Free On Xbox (polygon.com)
On Thursday the $110 Deluxe Edition Bundle of Fallout 4 appeared in the Xbox store priced at $0.00. The Escapist reports that "The mistake went viral, and there's no telling how people were able to take advantage before the error was corrected..." An anonymous reader shares their report:
If you grabbed Fallout 4 for free on Xbox One, it will be disappearing from your account... Microsoft has confirmed that any copies obtained due to the error will have their license revoked, and the games will disappear from the user's Xbox One library.
Now Microsoft is telling affected users that "your free download will no longer work. For the inconvenience we will deposit $10 by the end of June in your Microsoft Account."
Now Microsoft is telling affected users that "your free download will no longer work. For the inconvenience we will deposit $10 by the end of June in your Microsoft Account."
Why are you comparing revoking a license to something that was never paid for in the first place to something that would represent a serious loss?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
In what way is it a consumer right to get something for free that was not meant to be free?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"Our offer of a free upgrade to Windows 10 was an error. Your license will be revoked and the OS will disappear from your PC. For the inconvenience we'll give you a $10 discount on the retail price of Windows 10."
The whole point is that they didn't pay for it.
In a more general sense. Contracts require an exchange of consideration. In this case that exchange didn't exist.
Please tell me where you get the idea that anyone who actually paid for their license would be affected by this?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Hem...When Origin did something similar a couple of years back, they said they let those who picked up games keep them and tha's it. It's how iI got my copy of DA2, an don't regret it. On top of that they made more money off of me.
Om, nomnomnom...
Only if you never had any evidence that it was ever their intention to give away the game in the first place.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
In what way is it a consumer right to get something for free that was not meant to be free?
If an online store offers something for sale at price X and I give them X dollars, then it belongs to me.
If Microsoft didn't want to make that deal ... wait for it ... they shouldn't have offered it.
That X happens to have been 0 is no concern to consumer protection laws.
What would happen if they sell a game for the wrong nonzero price? Can they later force you to "un-buy" that game and repurchase it at the correct price?
Here's a hypothetical situation.
Suppose Microsoft chooses two test subsets of customers and sells the game for two different prices: BasePrice and BasePrice+$5. They do this for a time, and it gives them a differential of games sold versus price.
If the differential reward is higher at the lower price, they stop selling at the higher price and list the lower price for all buyers from then on.
However, if the differential reward is higher, they un-purchase the games at the lower price with the excuse that "it was listed at the wrong price, you have to repurchase at the correct price".
Hmmmm... I think I've discovered a new way to increase market liquidity!
(Any economist should agree that increasing market liquidity is a good thing!)
Try that at a brick and mortar store. Rogue employee goes and says "all mobile phones free!" I'm pretty sure you can't get away with it, and the police will show up soon enough to make sure you don't insist on any right to steal.
It takes someone of low intelligence to assume that the $0 price was real and not just a mistake.
Don't an idiot. Are you saying you never make mistakes? Their is existing case law that clearly states that mistaken on-line prices are not legally binding.
That's bullshit.
I hope you are kidding. People are allowed to make mistakes. That is not at the same thing as giving something away on purpose.
It sounded like he was saying that no longer being able to use the software isn't a serious loss to the person who obtained it for free. The loss does go both ways though as if Microsoft let them continue to use it the opportunity to sell them it for the price they want to sell it at would be lost, legitimately or otherwise. It seems that some people don't think in terms of legitimate and illegitimate losses. Once you've sold something, the ability to sell that something again is generally considered to be legitimately lost to you.
No shit Sherlock you just now figure that out
True... but this world is not decent, and Microsoft does not actually owe people who took advantage of this error anything. You, as a customer, are entirely free to take your business elsewhere in protest.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
That's what's the courts are for, though they've been generally been too cost prohibitive for the common man to get justice there. Though, in this case, small claims court might work. Microsoft is betting that people won't take that avenue and it's a pretty safe bet.
"Try that at a brick and mortar store."
The store would get sued for false/deceptive advertising and lose. The court would find that the onus is on them to ensure accurate pricing AT ALL TIMES per consumer laws.
Source: I've worked tons of brick and mortar stores.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
A long, long time ago I had to install Windows 95 for a friend so I purchased a copy on floppies because at the time he had no CD reader. To keep the story short when installing the 15thof 25 disks the install would fail. I went back to the store and they replaced it. Again at the 15th disk it failed. I returned to the store and they tested another one of their sets on a system in the store. It failed at the 15th disk. Since it was software it was not refundable and I would have to wait until a new batch came in.
Another time at a different store I purchased Myst on a CD or DVD. The game failed after a couple of day at a specific place. The disc was in perfect condition and in was within the first week. I tried to get a replacement at the store and was told that since it was opened that there is nothing they could do.
On another occasion I bought a game for a console. The packaging was in English with one little note in fine print on the back of the bock that this was the French version. The store would not accept an exchange since the package was opened. I was standing behind a French client who bought an English version which he assumed contained the French language as well. I tried to explain that it was not clearly indicated on the packaging nor in the in-store advertising. I exchanged my copy with the other client and left.
I have other examples where it was my tough luck.
Now we have an "error" on the clients side and we are told that the license will be revoked? The clients paid the advertised price for their license it should be their license to keep. Was the free Windows 10 upgrade a mistake too? Will this be revoked?
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
If this happened in a physical store, the cashier would call a supervisor. The customer may get the product for free, but the issue would immediately be remedied so that it would not be exploited. In this case, the customer decided to call over other customers with the full realization that it was likely a mistake. A mistake that would only be noticed by the retailer through abnormal sales patterns or by someone reporting it, i.e. after the fact. Even though the customers were being dishonest, they were still rewarded.
Wait a second, do you think Microsoft doesn't have to pay Bethesda for every one of those copies "sold" for free? There's real money lost there, and it's more than $10 per download, as we can see already, probably significantly more.
There'd be no backsies if it were physical goods. An offer was presented and accepted, agreed payment exchanged (even if free) and goods delivered. The consumer did not cause the pricing error. Voiding it post-sale undermines the equivalency of physical vs. on-line transactions whether it is a game mistakenly sold for free or an unauthorized e-book edition of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four vs. a sale of two dozen eggs for -$0.02 after coupon. They're using the ongoing service relationship to renegotiate the price post-sale.
To maintain consumer confidence in the system, you swallow the loss and take steps to prevent it from happening again; something like preventing listing if the price is too low (say, under $10?), requiring special authorization for anything below some threshold, re-prompting for the price to be manually entered again twice (like we have to do for both concealed passwords and in-the-clear e-mail addresses), and never accepting a blank field for a price.
Another option: any free or discounted upgrades could require higher payment if the original sale was underpriced. Other app stores manage to track and enforce this (Apple).
That they are even giving a $10 store credit to purchasers is acknowledging it was their error, trying to limit their losses (total royalty payments per sale are more?), but that is not a negotiation. When they gave refunds to people who bought XBOX 360 HD DVD drives, they didn't require returns or documented destruction via firmware bricking of that hardware. (I have not tested whether they also removed support for HD DVD playback from the updated XBOX 360 UI.)
I have no dog in this hunt: I did not make the purchase at issue.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
, you might want to look into the consumer laws their. If they apply to online purchases..... you get the game & MS gets heavily fined if they changed the price w/o closing the store until the next business day (cali time zone). Yes California has really draconian laws on mismarking prices. I learned this in 2001 when a customer went through so many hoops to verify all prices are correct. When I inquired as to why they were paying so much for a complex system to verify prices, I was sent a copy of all the laws pertaining to penalties & procedures on mismarked items. Which answered my question about their procedures very nicely.
Not in all countries. In Canada (Quebec at least) and Australia, if something is marked at a certain price the seller is required to provide it at that price. And even at $0 it is a sell. What they could do, is charging for sell taxes. http://www.opc.gouv.qc.ca/en/c...
You have not "bought" something you haven't paid for. If you saw this game available for free and downloaded it that's not buying it. With that being said, this demonstrates the danger of using a platform where a vendor can revoke content and have it removed or otherwise rendered useless after you've downloaded it at any time afterward for any reason. If this weren't software, but instead, was a physical product that was given away in a store and you accepted the free product, took it home and then the merchant decided the giveaway was a mistake and broke into your home to take it back that would be theft on the merchant's part. This is why I refuse to "buy" digital content with DRM. If content has DRM you're not buying it. The vendor can remove the content you've paid for or change the terms of your fair use of that content anytime they want to after you've "bought" it. Any vendor offering up digital content that can be revoked or have the usage terms changed after the "purchase" should be prosecuted for fraud. You're aren't buying anything. In fact, you're not even renting it. At least with a rental the terms are agreed to up front by both parties. Instead you're handing over your hard earned cash under the guise of "buying" something while in fact all you're getting is something temporarily on loan under terms that can be changed anytime the seller feels like it. That's all well and good if the vendor is up front about what's taking place but if they try and portray it as a "purchase" or even a "rental" they are engaging in outright fraud and its long passed time that we started calling these companies out on it!
So, if you bought a $60 game with $100 note and only got back $20 in change and you did not notice that until you left the store, thats OK ?, or will you be saying the store ripped you off ? ----- The people I trust are the ones who do the right thing, even when it is not in their own best interests.
I was under the impression that all software already worked that way. No warranty, so you can use it until you can't.
Hence, I don't buy "online only" games and avoid DRM whenever possible. Indie games have been a godsend for my entertainment needs.
Regardless of whether it's a loss or not it would set a precedent that if MS sold something and decided later they wanted to charge more then they could theoretically get away with removing said software or billing you the difference between what you paid and how much more they think you should pay.
Any company could get away with it actually. There's no contractual information that says they can't come back to you for more money later.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Because the mistake was Microsoft's fault. It's not like someone hacked in and changed the price.
What next, they sell a game for $50 and the next week decide they want more, so bump the price to $100 and revoke the licenses from everyone who bought at $50?
Microsoft doesn't give a flying fuck what their customers think about them or their image. Always on internet connection with Kinect spying on you? They tried it and failed. Windows 10 install interrupting heart surgeries on medical equipment in order to push a spyware advertising platform disguised as an OS? They're doing it. Some video game that already sold record breaking numbers so only a tiny percentage left found an error and got it free? Screw those peasants, we're Microsoft after all.
Really, slippery slope argument for an obvious pricing mistake? Sigh.
No, because that was not the agreed-to price. Whether you gave a $50 bill for a $20 game or a $20 bill for a $50 game, the amount exchanged was not was represented as being the price.
When you have a person doing the checkout for the vendor, you have the safety of that checker to call a manager to question and verify the price before the sale is completed and final. When the vendor abdicates having such a gatekeeper on the sale, the vendor assumes the risk.
When servers trusted the client to accurately report back the price on a web form rather than checking the server's own database, that could be seen as the buyer making a counter-offer which the vendor's agent blindly accepted. Any consumer is empowered to attempt to barter for a lower price than the marking and the vendor is free to disallow it and enforce their fixed price before the sale is finalized. Nowadays, that's considered exploiting a weakness and considered fraud as the consumer is expected to know that a stupid automated process isn't empowered to barter. But if the vendor set the price and allowed it to go through, the purchaser has clean hands. Mitigating that would be if that vendor does not have a recognized pattern of giving similar product away for free (e.g. the twice-monthly Free With Gold offers or free games in response to service outages).
Have you ever seen a site or individual being sued for spreading information about "pricing errors" as such rather than as "surprise sales"? There should be some lawyers salivating over establishing that in case law on behalf of some big company like Microsoft. Or do some companies like too much the idea of driving other sales by having a deliberate temporary "pricing error"?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Hah, WORKING at a store it pretty much the worst qualification for claiming to know consumer law I have hear (well, maybe besides "I have bought lots of stuff!")
The court would almost definitely find for the store in any lawsuit - because they HAVE. Pricing errors are NOT bait and switch. Like many legal definitions, bait and switch requires INTENT.
GO look it up. Even Consumerist doesn't think it's bait and switch: https://consumerist.com/2014/0...
There'd be no backsies if it were physical goods.
There are multiple instances of physical goods with pricing errors online that have been cancelled. In addition, if you were in a physical store, do you really believe that the cashier wouldn't check the pricing of something that rang up at $0? I do agree that If you have the physical goods in hand (i.e. they shipped it to you or you made it out of the store) then it would be near impossible for them to request you to return it.
Practically anything you download (music, video, games, etc.) are all "licensed". You do not own them like you would with physical media. It's one of the reasons why I still buy physical media for video games, movies, and music. Eventually, the physical media will disappear and everything will be licensed and you'll lose access to the content that you paid for when you change vendors.
Regarding the warranty; there is a difference between it breaking and intentionally breaking it. Buying a car 'as-is no warranty' does not mean the dealership can come in the middle of the night and snip a brake line because they don't like the selling price.
A tangible asset mismarked on the shelves at a physical store would except if a few conditions be required to be sold at the lower of the 2 prices. Not sure how that applies to virtual assets sold in an online market place.
Quoting California B&P Code, 12024.2.
(a) It is unlawful for any person, at the time of sale of a commodity, to do any of the following:
(1) Charge an amount greater than the price, or to compute an amount greater than a true extension of a price per unit, that is then advertised, posted, marked, displayed, or quoted for that commodity.
(2) Charge an amount greater than the lowest price posted on the commodity itself or on a shelf tag that corresponds to the commodity, notwithstanding any limitation of the time period for which the posted price is in effect.
(b) A violation of this section is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of not less than twenty-five dollars ($25) nor more than one thousand dollars ($1,000), by imprisonment in the county jail for a period not exceeding one year, or by both, if the violation is willful or grossly negligent, or when the overcharge is more than one dollar ($1).
(c) A violation of this section is an infraction punishable by a fine of not more than one hundred dollars ($100) when the overcharge is one dollar ($1) or less.
(d) As used in subdivisions (b) and (c), "overcharge" means the amount by which the charge for a commodity exceeds a price that is advertised, posted, marked, displayed, or quoted to that consumer for that commodity at the time of sale.
(e) Except as provided in subdivision (f), for purposes of this section, when more than one price for the same commodity is advertised, posted, marked, displayed, or quoted, the person offering the commodity for sale shall charge the lowest of those prices.
(f) Pricing may be subject to a condition of sale, such as membership in a retailer-sponsored club, the purchase of a minimum quantity, or the purchase of multiples of the same item, provided that the condition is conspicuously posted in the same location as the price.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I often laugh at the logic as well. I've never paid a penny towards buying music (nor do I pirate it) but the idea that if I downloaded a song the music industry somehow suffered a loss is laughable at best. Hollywood style math I guess. Sort of like hooker math.
I've also have never spent a penny on music -the Pepsi bottle top free music downloads of many years ago, I gave the "winners" to others; and have never pirated a single song/album.
Yet have quite the collection.
Purchased a used hard drive at a place similar to Goodwill, checking to see if it contained anything; found just about any song title you can think of covering cRap, rock, country, and the rest. Damn!
And the pr0n, gigabytes of videos featuring women with big (huge) rear ends, nothing else. I lol'd and then deleted them.
Have I harmed the music industry? I sure hope so, this DRM is getting out of hand.
I think there's a clause somewhere saying for the contract of transaction to be valid at least 0.01 has to be exchanged (or is it $1?).
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
This sometimes happens, but it depends on the size of the mistake. Regardless, there is no expectation, legal or otherwise, that anyone would honor a mistake of that magnitude.
Microsoft is providing a $10 credit to their accounts, after all. It's more than I'm getting (simply because I didn't take advantage of an obvious mistake).
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Pricing errors are NOT bait and switch.
Correct. Pricing errors are not bait and switch.
In a brick and mortar environment; the store can cancel the purchase or dishonor the advertised price Up to and until the customer completes the transaction.
After the customer has left with the item, the store cannot come back and decide they want to change the price, Or the price displayed on the shelf and the register was a mistake, and the customer needs to pay the difference.
The store would definitely lose that one. The store is liable if their employees priced an item incorrectly.
The only way the customer is liable to pay more or return is if the error that was made was in the processing of the payment ---- the correct price was advertised, or the customer agreed to a higher price than they paid, and the cashier told the customer the correct price, but they made the check out for a lower amount, etc.
Customer is not responsible if the store made a bad deal with them, only if there was a bonafide mistake in the handling of their transaction where they paid less than the agreed upon price.
Now.... Microsoft's store is a little different, because they have technical control of the product even after you leave the store
Well, yes, but how are we to tell? Win 10 is being pushed aggressively as a free upgrade, so there's an argument there - "Microsoft have advertised widely that this is a free upgrade", fair enough. I suppose it would come down to the court's interpretation of the "Price - $0.00" on the website. If it wasn't accompanied by words like "free for a limited time", then you could argue strongly that it was a mistake. OTOH, an advertised price is an invitation to trade. They offer, you accept, they allow you to download the game, sale's finished. This sounds more like MS taking advantage of their 'right' to revoke the licence at any time.
Or will all those people who took the "free" Win 10 upgrade suddenly be presented with an inactive OS, and a demand for money?
"Sorry, it was only 'free' for the year we offered it as a free upgrade. Now you have to pay. Pity your Win 7/8 serial won't activate any more."
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
This has happened before with Amazon, etc., etc., and the vendor has to eat it.
There are free games and apps. $0 is often a legitimate price.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Try that at a brick and mortar store.
Whereby I would get to keep the goods that I purchased for $0. I always keep my receipts so the loss is entirely on the store.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Any company could get away with it actually.
Most sane countries have laws against that.
Contract law , to some extent, recognizes a difference between "free" and a price. If the license was free, its not clear there was any agreement that could be enforcable by the user. However if the user had paid $50, then there is absolutely an agreement that can be enforced in court.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Eventually, the physical media will disappear and everything will be licensed and you'll lose access to the content that you paid for when you change vendors.
Only if you're stupid enough to keep the items in the seller's library (cloud, account, whatever).
A normal person will download the movies/song/book, deDRM it and keep his copy in a convenient location. You know, NOT in the cloud?
I would be that in Germany they would still have to honor the purchase, because license that you get "forever" may not as easily be withdrawn unilaterally from you.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
You have to be able to afford your civil case in order to prove it first.
Then pursue them in civil court yet again to force them to pay.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
I never said "exception". I said "expectation".
And this software is being licensed as on a non-permanent basis. Just like they can one day turn off the servers, they can revoke your ability to play. If there were a significant reason to suspect that free play were granted, under intent, for a long duration then maybe the consumer has a case. I don't believe that to be the case for a mistaken transaction.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Their mistake; their loss.
This is straight-up false advertising.
In a brick and mortar environment; the store can cancel the purchase or dishonor the advertised price Up to and until the customer completes the transaction.
If you mean the monetary transaction, this is wrong in many EU countries. Here the advertised price is considered a binding contractual offer and the contract is considered sealed the moment the buyer informs the seller of his intention of buying (not the moment of actually paying). From that moment changing the price would be breach of contract, as it would be breach of contract refusing the sale.
Said that, there is an exception when the wrong price could be recognised as an error: this is because contracts must follow the "good faith" principle and if you had the reasonable suspect that there was an error in the displayed price you were not in good faith.
Nope there just has to be offer,consideration and acceptance for a contract to be valid. Microsoft offered the product for $0.00, you put made the purchase and it had value to you so consideration is there, and Microsoft accepted by allowing you to download. We have a legally binding contract folks.
Now usually consideration is considered to be exchange of money, but actually it just needs to be something of "value" to you which is far more nebulous.
However in this case the the cost of downloading it because even if you have unlimited internet connection it still costs in electricity to keep your computer running while the download occurs is more than enough for consideration and Microsoft have broken the contract. At least that's the common law approach to contracts.
In addition there are a lot legal jurisdictions where there is specific consumer law that makes it illegal for Microsoft to reverse the sale.
One strongly suspects in the coming days Microsoft will be backing down on this one after legal inform them that a shit storm is coming their way. I a lot of jurisdictions it is a small claim and a few thousands of those will be an expensive nightmare for Microsoft. Certainly more expensive than swallowing the cost.
You can be your bottom dollar that whoever announced that they will be revoking the sales never bothered to consult legal, which is generally par for the course in these things.
Then it becomes an interesting question whether a sale actually took place when no money was paid.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
No you don't. Many sane countries also have consumer advocacy groups with legal teeth.
I have been through this before. I bought a 30GB HDD for $30 (fat fingered on the website down from $300). When the company cancelled my order and refunded me saying they had a database error and thus cancelled my sale, all I did was fill out a form. A few weeks later "they decided" they will show me "good will" and ship my order, curiously at the same time as my complaint with the fair trade commission was marked as resolved.
Not every country lets corporations bend over the little guys.
Yes. Of their time and effort that otherwise would be spent on servicing paying customer.
they would still delete it from your accounted and pointed out some clause in TOS that gives them right to do whatever they damn please with your game collection.
Nope. I live in a country with much much stronger consumer protection laws than the US, and MS could have done what they did without issue. Obvious errors are errors. You don't need to honor an obvious honest mistake. You do need to honor a dishonest mistake, and honor an honest mistake that isn't obvious, but an obvious mistake doesn't need to be honored.
Learn to love Alaska
After the customer has left with the item, the store cannot come back and decide they want to change the price,
Correct, and when all you buy is a license, you never leave the store with it.
The store is liable if their employees priced an item incorrectly.
Nope. If the price at the register isn't the same as on the shelf, the price is the one the store lets you pay for it. That most stores will honor the shelf price doesn't make it a legal requirement (unless it could be construed as a separate violation, like bait and switch).
Learn to love Alaska
For all your law talk, you missed that contracts must be entered into in "good faith". A computer error violates that.
Learn to love Alaska
Personally I like the idea that consumers are intelligent, moral beings. Taking advantage of an obvious error isn't moral no matter how you slice it, expecting to get what you pay for when it isn't an obvious error is completely different.
How do you sell something for free?
Except it wasn't an obvious error. How were people to know that it wasn't some kind of promotion?
I better watch out with those games that gog.com offer for "free", because they are OBVIOUSLY errors.
I believe microsofts response is the start of a class action lawsuit. If I went to Walmart and bought a bag of chips for 99 cents and then days later they claimed that they cost 10 dollars you couldn't come into my home and take my chips.
Then it becomes an interesting question whether a sale actually took place when no money was paid.
I guess it would depend if a valid contract was made via Offer : I will sell you this at $0.00 Acceptance: Here's my click to buy Consideration: Here's your game, and I get access to your data since it runs on my server...
While I can understand MS made a mistake here and most ads include disclaimers about typos and MS probably has such a disclaimer somewhere in its TOS; I think there are two interesting factors at play:
1. In many online sales clicking Buy is merely an offer to purchase that the store still must accept and allows them to cancel erroneous purchases prior to shipping. In such cases no contract exits between the two since ether never was acceptance.
2. Digital downloads offer instant shipping of the product and you could argue this is acceptance of the offer to purchase since you delivered the consideration.
While the new Fallout would probably not be offered for free; companies often give away their software for periods off time for various reasons; so it would not be all that far fetched for someone to think MS has decided to run a limited time or limited quantity promotion. That gets to the idea of Mutuality; was there a meeting of the minds on the terms of the contract. I would guess MS would argue no there was no mutual agreement of the terms since the price was a mistake.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
This is a straight up price mistake - and an honest one at that - which was taken advantage of though quick action and social networking.
Honestly - it happens all the time - the decimal in the wrong place, keying error, a product page that is used for testing goes live before it's supposed to - it happens. Some places will honor their mistakes up to a point ("the first 100 people" or "one per order") but it's up to the merchant. I have no doubt that there is language in the EULA that allows them to correct mistakes.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Walmart does this all the time online. Price mistake = product never ships. Since this is a license/virtual good, they're simply revoking the license and refunding your money 100%. That's what you "we should sue" idiots are missing that will fall flat as a pancake in court: They've caught an error and are giving you a full refund *plus* a store credit for your trouble. The judge would be laughing though his 2pm martini break.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I'm sure Fallout double-dips on in-game advertising, so maybe it is in fact a sale...
I like the idea that people are intelligent, moral beings.
However they aren't. They are more than happy to take advantage of even the slightest error. No matter how you slice it.
Fixed it for you.
"Hah, WORKING at a store it pretty much the worst qualification for claiming to know consumer law I have hear (well, maybe besides "I have bought lots of stuff!")
The court would almost definitely find for the store in any lawsuit - because they HAVE. Pricing errors are NOT bait and switch."
Try again when you're the store owner, and have had to face lawsuits for stuff like this.
Also, I said NOTHING about bait and switch, so I don't know what the fuck you're on about, there. I said misleading/deceptive, and for such a thing INTENT is not necessarily required (I suggest you learn all the elements of the crime before running off at the mouth) and negligence can serve just fine in its place.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
" If the price at the register isn't the same as on the shelf, the price is the one the store lets you pay for it."
Try that in California. You either get the lower advertised price or you get to sue the store. Consumer Protection Laws.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Even it the mistake is is *obviously* a mistake?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
This might be true if there was a human cashier, but at a self-checkout, things can become a bit more dodgy, particularly if the fact that it was a mistake is somehow self-evident and the customer had every reasonable expectation to have known it was a mistake *before* making the purchase.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
A normal person will download the movies/song/book, deDRM it
Not in a country like the USA, which has the DMCA, or Canada, which has the digital locks provision of the Copyright Modernization Act (C-11).
They refuse the sale of the object, and correct the error, then reoffer the item at the correct price.
Anonymous Coward appears to claim in another comment that the reoffer cannot occur until the next business day. Thus any cashier correcting an error under that loophole must continue to refuse sale of that product for the remainder of the business day.
You don't need to honor an obvious honest mistake.
You most definitely do. Honest mistakes in a contract for sale still form a contract in most of the world. Just that some parts of the world the contract is only upheld if it favours the side with the most money.
Yes, same in Australia. Actually the same applies in most countries where sales laws flow on from contract law. I have first hand experience at forcing a company to hand over a $300 harddisk for the $30 I paid for it on their website.
It's the reason that reason a rich person on ebay had to part with high nice and super expensive yacht for $2000, because sales contracts are final. The only room left to argue at all in many cases is if a contract actually exists. That may be Microsoft's only exit clause because the games was $0.00 it wasn't possible to for one party to provide money and thus they may argue it wasn't a valid contract.
The law is very black and white when prices are wrong, but I'm not certain about when a price is zero.
I haven't seen any store having a self-checkout in quite a while..... A few local grocery stores tried them, but there was rampant shoplifting on the self-checkouts, and probably the stores didn't save any money, because they still needed employees to monitor them as a result, Either way, they got rid of them.... the experiment with having self-checkout lanes obviously did not work out.......
Self checkout is no different from a vending machine.... If you see the pricetag for the item, and it matches the amount you put into the machine, then as soon as you complete dispensing and take the item from the machine, it is a done deal.
The only way you can be due more or to reverse the transaction; is if there was a defect in the machine and you put less money than the advertised price and still got the item.
The way Bethesda cut so much content out of Fallout 4 before it went on sale, and ruined the ending scenes in the process? I would never recommend anyone spend $110 for a "deluxe edition" of the game!
I had many, many hours of game-play sunk into Fallout 4 and the story got pretty in depth as I went on. That's what made the build-up to the poor excuse for a climax SO frustrating. The DLC Bethesda has been selling for the game since then does zilch to address any of this. Play a bunch of new side missions for Valentine's detective agency on some new maps? Hell no! I'm still angry I was promised I'd become the new director of the Institute, only to discover I still had no power to change anything about its relations with the other factions. (A bunch of their scientists still expected me to take orders from them, running around to do synth recovery missions and what-not. Huh?!)
Too many bugs left in the game too.... Like the mission where I was supposed to select McCreedy as my companion to go get a serum out of a medical center to save his son. Last I was with him, I sent him to the Castle settlement. But every time I went back there to get him, he was nowhere to be found. Sometimes I'd hear his voice, speaking some random comment, but I'd run all over the place looking for him and he wasn't there! I wound up having to "cheat" - using a console command to force his character to appear where I was (only possible because I had the Windows version). And on the weird mission with the U.S. Constitution (ship on top of the Savings and Loan, run by robots) - I completed the whole thing except we didn't successfully defend it against some raiders as it was getting ready to blast off. So I reloaded my previous save game to try again. When I completed the raider defense successfully that time? It said I had to talk to the captain as the last step, but he refused to speak to me. When I left and returned, it just said I completed everything. Never got to see the ship blast off. (I got mad and just started killing all the robots and plundered the ship.)
GoG doesn't just have random titles on for 0.00. It kind of makes a big deal out of "this title free to anyone who clicks on it today".
A contract requires two parties. If a person is buying something via wholly automated or self checkout, there is no second party representing the seller for the contract to the sale.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
You're starting to sound like someone who's made the same mistake as Microsoft, and failed to learn anything at all from it.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Say it happened in the opposite direction, perhaps a $100 game was listed for $10,000 and some folks accidentally chose to purchase at that price. Would you say the seller is in the right if they say "no take-sie back-sies"?
Do you think the buyers would say, "Sorry for changing our mind, so we will pay the $100 plus an extra $10 for your trouble"? Yeah, right.
How is this different? One party wants to take advantage of an obvious mistake, that simply shouldn't be allowed.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
This is exactly the same thing as being legally on the hook for banking errors or tax refund errors that happen to be in your favor.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
A large percentage of my 100+ Steam games cost $5 or less. Many were $0. I go to the steam store and sort by price, and I buy cheap games that interest me.
I've bought a large number of humble bundles, sometimes for more than average, sometimes for less, once in awhile for $0.
I got burned by so many $40-$60 games a decade ago that I no longer care about AAA games and I'm not willing to pay for them until they hit that discounted price of $5 or less.
I played the original Fallout at some point, and liked it. I haven't played one since. I don't know what number they are on and I don't know how much the game "should" cost. If I saw a Fallout game for $0, that's exactly the sort of thing I'd pick up. I honestly don't know if Fallout 4 is an $80 game, a $40 game, or a $4 game.
I could easily be one of the legitimate people who would have picked this up at $0 not knowing any better. And any company that fucks up like this I expect to make good and let it go. In the grand scheme of things this cost them nothing. The tiny amount of revenue lost is dwarfed by the bad press from being stingy bastards and canceling the sale. Even if 90% of the purchasers were greedy dicks.
Laugh at your fuckup, and let it go. It's the best long-term business strategy in most cases.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Indeed, I've seen items for sale at a B&M store where - combined with a manufacturer's rebate coupon - I've actually profited.
(e.g. item on sale for $9.99 but there's still a $20 rebate coupon valid for the sale date).
It's not common, but it's pretty awesome when it happens.
We have a law that says if you put out a product at a certain price on the shelf you must sell it at that price. There is no weaseling out your way from there.
Which countries? Because I live in the EU and I can't think of any.
You are using a service, not a product. Additionally, you received a full refund, so what legal standing do you have?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
You aren't buying a product though, you're using a service. In Belgium this would be just as black and white legal, as long as you received back any money that was paid (in this case, nothing was paid).
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I worked at a store and we had an offer that said Buy X and get Y for free. Some smart people just removed X from their basked and thus got Y for free. For us that was a loss. But we sold it for that price, so it was a deal and we had to take the loss.
In Europe, as long as it is not too obvious (e.g. a BMW for EUR 100 instead of 100.000 will not work) the advertised price will be the price you pay. And that price includes the price on the invoice in our case.
I would say they should take their loss and learn from the experiece. From what I read it is a legal sale.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
It is a license, which makes things at least a bit of not much more complicated. (I haven't read the license agreement.)
How did people get away with the Buy X Get Y Free thing? If they don't actually buy X, how is the Get Y Free part enforceable?
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
You could not be more wrong. Online / automated systems form the contract between both the user and the person who commissioned the system or who the system is consigned to.
This applies to companies selling things via their own system, as much as it applies to platforms used between users (e.g. ebay where bidding automatically forms a contract between parties).
No, it was about the comparison of losing the "free" game to burning down a village, which, incidentally, was a reference to the MTG card "Reparations".
yes, actually. It was an obvious error.... Or perhaps you didn't bother to rtfa. The original post that went viral suggesting to take advantage of the opportunity even used the exacts phrase "price error"
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
You appear to have missed a key word: obvious. If you know it is a mistake, you don't get to take advantage of it unless you can make a convincing argument that you didn't know (which would be lying, and isn't really possible in this case anyway, since the initial viral post that informed people about it explicitly said it was a "price error").
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
This is the key point that people who keep spouting that Microsoft should be on the hook for this error are omitting. The original viral post that alerted people to the $0 price for the game explicitly used the exact phrase "price error" when describing the otherwise so-called "deal". It was known to be a mistake even to the person that caused the error to be widely known, and it would have been no less clear to anyone else who found out about it through that post.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Except Microsoft didn't really offer it at that price. The so-called "offer" was actually caused by an error that was obvious even to the buyer. It is no different, in principle, to a banking error that happens to be in your favor that is later corrected.
And we are talking about a mistake that was *KNOWN* to be a mistake by the people who took advantage of this. The post that originally went viral about this even explicitly used the phrase "price error".
If someone wants to argue that they believed that the offer was genuinely being made by Microsoft, I'm not sure how successful they would be at convincing anyone.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Only as long as the contract is entered into in good faith by the person using the automated system. Knowingly taking advantage of an error in the system to obtain something for a lower price than the seller had actually ever agreed to sell it for in the first place violates that. If the buyers did not know that there was a fault, then you'd have a point, but that's not at all what happened here. Even the original post that went viral announcing it used the exact words 'price error' to describe it... it was obvious enough to that person, and it was certainly obvious to anyone who heard about it through that channel.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Only as long as the contract is entered into in good faith by the person using the automated system.
Again, not at all. In the offer, acceptance, consideration model of contracts which is what sales fall under there's no such thing as good faith. There is just that, offer, acceptance and consideration.
Bad faith implies a written contract that differs from the a standard contract by something far worse than a pricing error. The classic case in english law was someone that tried to write the contract for the transfer of a house title on the bottom of a delivery invoice which the other party signed. Bad faith has never included mistakes, which courts have either partially or wholly found all parties responsible for upholding.
This is the reason why in most countries at a checkout you have to offer something at the advertised or marked price, it's why sales adverts have expiry dates on them, and you don't need to take my word for it, just do a quick google search for the long sad history of such mistakes costing people lots of money. Or you can take my word for it since I already mentioned that I forced a company to hand over a $300 website for $30 which was an obvious pricing mistake, which the Fair Trade Commissioner agreed, but tough-titties, hand it over, and be more careful next time.
This contract between the buyer and seller is created by the finalization of a particular sale, but knowingly exploiting a computer error in an automated checkout system to obtain a product for a lower price than the seller wanted to sell it for is not actually a sale in the first place. Any record of the transaction may superficially *LOOK* like a record of a legitimate sale to a third party, but if the buyer has every reasonable basis to *know* (key word there) that there was a mistake in an automated checkout system before the so-called "sale" took place that would allow them to seem to get a product for less than what the seller intended to sell it for, then they cannot legally try and claim later that they had participated in a sale.
The *only* legitimate defense a buyer would have to have any legitimate claim to what they obtained through a transaction where there had been a computer error allowing them to appear to purchase the item for less than the price that the seller intended is to claim that they did not know beforehand that the displayed price was actually an error. If this were a true claim, it would be entirely legitimate, and Microsoft would probably have to suck it up). It is apparent, however, that people knew that this was an error before making the so-called purchase, however, so such a claim would be specious, at best.
Try telling a judge in a court that you *knowingly* tried to exploit an error in computer system that a seller had deployed to acquire a product for a lower price than what the seller intended to sell it for and see if a judge determines that the record of the so-called "sale" is legitimate.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
obtain a product for a lower price than the seller wanted to sell it for is not actually a sale in the first place
Look you can keep saying this all you want, it just isn't true. The computer system is described as the offer. That has been through the courts in many countries.
Anyway I'm giving up. If you think your reality is different than the countless legal cases you can look up, or if you think you telling me something now will magically unbuy the HDD I received for which I took the vendor through a legal system to obtain then so be it.
You win, you must be right because you think you are. Have a nice day.
Only if you consider "zero" to be countless.
There are no legal precedents that take side with someone knowingly exploiting a computer error to otherwise appear to purchase something for less than what the seller agreed to. The most you will find are cases where people who have made the argument that there was no way for them to actually tell that there really was an error, but not a single case where all evidence pointed to them actually knowing in advance of the transaction, as was clear in this case because the viral post that pointed so many people to the so-called "deal" explicitly said that it was a "price error". If someone wants to make the argument that they didn't hear about the error until after the had "purchased" it for $0, that might even fly... but not if they knew about the error beforehand... and I'd dare say you wouldn't be able to find a single case that says otherwise.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
If that happened in THIS particular situation, on XBox Live, Microsoft would immediately offer a refund. So it's a poor analogy. They are not trying to screw anyone here, new release video games have pretty set prices and anyone on either side who recognizes the pricing mistake pretty much immediately knows it wasn't intentional. Duh.
Except yes, anyone who would buy Fallout 4 with all of the DLC is obviously a fairly hardcode gamer and knows the most popular game of the year is not going to be given away for free for no reason.
There's a reason you don't let people working at stores handle stuff like this- you're a fucking idiot.
There's a reason you posted this as an Anonymous Coward. You have no idea what you are talking about, and are a fucking idiot...
Nope, untrue in general. CA is the same as anywhere else in the US when it comes to obvious pricing mistakes where the consumer should know that it's not a reasonable price. Maybe if your supermarket Tide detergent was $4 instead of $8, you have a shot. But if that iPad at Fry's was $8.99 instead of $899 sue away, you will LOSE.
I haven't seen any store having a self-checkout in quite a while.... the experiment with having self-checkout lanes obviously did not work out.......
Wait, wha? Just because you personally haven't seen them doesn't mean they failed. A half dozen stores around me have self-checkout - Safeway, Lucky, CVS, Lowe's - these are not small-time operations. Maybe it's your neighborhood...
Also, I said NOTHING about bait and switch
Bullshit, you said this: "The store would get sued for false/deceptive advertising".
Intentionally advertising a lower price and then changing is is a form of false advertising, and in fact is the DEFINITION of bait and switch. Duh.
I said misleading/deceptive, and for such a thing INTENT is not necessarily required
Deception: something that deceives or is intended to deceive; fraud; artifice.
Bait and switch (called "Bait Advertising" by the FTC) would be the specific law broken, but it very specifically requires INTENT (go look it up, or don't, I really don't care but there is no debate there).
I suggest you learn all the elements of the crime before running off at the mouth
I suggest you get a fucking dictionary before posting this crap. Oh, and unlike you, I don't use need to use my mouth when I type.
Wait, wha? Just because you personally haven't seen them doesn't mean they failed.
I've seen them, and I have personally been around, and seen the places where I once saw them have removed them.
Even CVS has removed theirs.
Studies are showing that the self-checkouts are actually less-efficient (slower) for customers, and still require much attention by store employees.
Perhaps your local CVS and Lowes' just have not taken them out yet for some reason.
I assume them to be a marginal case: the vast majority of checkouts will be with a human checker....