Forum Moderators: buckworks
Have you ever had this happen?
What's the best response for this person? (...besides, "listen buddy...let me think...no!)
You might have to offer the guy a compromise, like offering him a discount.
Or you could try to "cheat" your way out if your site is low profile by claiming the item is out of stock, or something to the effect.
SN
However I'd just cancel the order quietly, and if he gets funny then worry about where you stand.
In the UK, there is widespread mis-understanding of the sale of goods act etc; with many consumers assuming that a merchant is obliged to sell them things, which, of course, they are not.
[edited by: dmorison at 2:10 pm (utc) on Aug. 13, 2003]
But it did say 0.00, but then again that DELL LCD monitor I ordered for 99cents never came ;)
Have you ever had this happen?
Yes, and so have many other e-commerce sites. You'll see it featured on a popular tech news site once a year or so - I believe the last one was a large e-com outfit offering iPAQs for $40 or something.
What's the best response for this person?
The only time we've had it happen, we noticed it after 5 units were ordered. We decided to honor the order.
We took a loss, but the guy was so happy that we honored the order, he turned around and bought quite a bit of product with us over the next year. He also became quite an evangelist on a popular community site relating to the e-commerce site.
We, in turn, added code that does not let you post a product without a price. :)
I believe their defence was that their Terms and Conditions of sale stated that until they sent out an e-mail confirming the order no contract had been entered into. So they didn't send the confirmation e-mail to anyone who placed an order for any of these palm-tops
There were a lot of articles about it at the time and it may be worth scanning the archives of The Register, BBC etc. The legitmacy or otherwise of this whole scenario was discussed in detail.
There was a problem with your order. If you would like to purchase this item for $105 + shipping, we will be happy to ship it right away. Otherwise, the order is cancelled.
I repeated this message for all 4 orders he placed.
He did get an auto-confirmation email listing the price as $0. I would think it's pretty difficult to say there is a financial agreement when there is no money changing hands.
Might be different if your price were off slightly, but it would be clear to anyone that there was an error.
Heck, I'd just quietly fix the error. How would he prove the price? Anyone can alter a confirmation email. Besides he'd have to go to court which wouldn't be worth it.
This error wasn't on my shopping cart, but on the shopping cart I built for my customer. He said not to worry about it, and this person can try all they like. He also thanked me for all the work I've been doing because the cart is really helping his business. All seems well.
1. do not load any product feeds that have a price of $0.
2. do not allow any purchases to take place for items with a price of $0.
If you know your code well enough, you might want to patch it to error out any $0 items.
http:**//www.out-law.com/php/page.php?page_id=pcworldwebsitepr1060092619&area=news
Case goes to court this month.
Send a standard response, something like:
Due to one or more of the following reasons, your order has been cancelled:
* The product is discontinued and there are no alternatives
* Delivery address is invalid
* No response to contact
* Credit card has not been successful
* Security checks have failed
* No payment
* Other reason
Then provide a link to your terms (use the # reference to point straight to the cancellation for any reason).
At the end of the day, it could be that the security code was incorrect on the CVV code, or your account is pre-auth and the card has been stopped since it was authorised. In these cases you cannot supply the goods.
It should not be legal to be forced to supply the goods if E&OE is on every page, however the law is strange, for example Argos in the UK were told they had to supply mis-priced TVs once, but if they suspected that a card used to purchase one of these TVs was reported stolen, they do not have to supply the goods!
Note that in some countries (including the UK), terms and conditions are NOT VALID unless the user has been forced to read them. A tick box is NOT ENOUGH to cover you by law, but displaying the full terms on a page in the checkout process that a user has to see is valid by law.
I assume E&OE means someting like terms and conditions, but i would appreciate someone defining this abbreviation.
I think it is like terms and conditions in the UK.
Is there such a thing as a guide to writing Terms and Conditions (or E&OE)? Are there any standard Terms and Conditions that I could freely copy?
It depends so much on your industry, so it is really hard to point to any free/standard ones.
What I did, and I think most people do, is to look at an establised competitors' t'n'c's and adapt them.
The other option, which I have also done, is to get a specialist internet lawyer to write them (whatever you do, don't get a lawyer who knows nothing about online work).
Although we do our best to represent our product descriptions, inventory levels and prices fairly, we do make mistakes. In these cases, we reserve to right cancel any order and refund the customer's money as a full remedy.
to the bottom of our term and conditions page. It has worked for us - be sure to add a line on your cart and checkout and confirmation pages that says all sales are subject to our terms and conditions - make it hot to the terms page...
"us lawyer" - once the offer is acepted then it should be binding. the web page is an offer - order is an acceptance.
It’s not a contract without consideration. Consideration makes a contract enforceable by law & it's simply when two parties each exchange something of legal value. The person making the offer must gain and lose something of legal value, and the person accepting the offer must gain and lose something of legal value. $0 is not something of legal value--no contract.
I tried to order a super cheap thingie from Amazon a while ago, and got (as expected) an email saying the price was a mistake and my order was void. :) Nobody really expects someone to sell them something for nothing, IMO.
"us lawyer" - once the offer is acepted then it should be binding. the web page is an offer - order is an acceptance.
Which is why you should state in the terms that it can be refused for any reason i.e. it is only accepted by human review. An automated system does not accept the order, especially if no money has been taken.
On the down side, under such a view, potential customer made an offer and apparently received an auto-confirm, which could perhaps be deemed acceptance of the offer.
Yes, the listed offer at $0 was not intended, but then, the law doesn't always protect someone from making a bad business decision.
Disclaimer: The above in no way constitutes legal advice. .oO(If it did, the words would be bigger, there'd a whole lot more of them, and there'd probably also be an inovice (and not one for $0) headed your way LOL)Oo..
That's the way U.S. courts have viewed errors in newspaper ads. For a contract, you need an offer and an acceptance. But courts have long held that newspaper ads were usually just invitations to readers to make offers.
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I hate to see pages of legalese fine print on websites. Generally it serves little purpose and certainly isn't conducive to ecommerce. Can you name a brick/mortar store that makes visitors sign or read a waiver before entering?
Imagine going to a fine restaurant and finding tiny print on their menu disclaiming liability for everything bad that might happen as a result of eating their food? Yuck!
The reason these bb discussions arise is because there has been so little litigation related to ecommerce.
For a contract, you need an offer and an acceptance.
Don't forget consideration. :) There are at least 3 essential elements to a valid K:
offer
acceptance
consideration
Additionally, I have them on every site, but terms of service agreements are not legally binding unless you make the user do the software clickwrap agreement "I Accept" button.
Ticketmaster Corp., et al. v. Tickets.Com, Inc. U.S. District Court, Central District of California
March 27, 2000--The Court stated: "Many web sites make you click on “agree” to the terms and conditions before going on, but Ticketmaster does not. Further, the terms and conditions are set forth so that the customer needs to scroll down the home page to find and read them. Many customers instead are likely to proceed to the event page of interest rather than reading the “small print.” It cannot be said that merely putting the terms and conditions in this fashion necessarily creates a contract with anyone using the web site."
Hey, odds are the fellow never checked/read the TOS of the site... add a clause real quick about "right to refuse an order for any reason" and call it done.
Yeah, I've also done this, updating the TOS "on the fly" :)
It has worked fine, apart from once, when the customer presented us with a screenshot of our TOS (before the updating occurred - damn us for having the time and date on all the pages!)... We gave him 50%...
