O/T legal experts (contract law) on here...Question...

Regarding Currys Black Friday sales where people ordered items at sales price and received a confirmation only to find out too late that a claimed 'technical glitch' meant that the order was not processed and they would have to re-order at the full price.
What I do not understand if the general tenet in contract law of 'offer, consideration and acceptance' holds true and those three elements were fulfilled... Currys 'offered' the goods, 'consideration' in the form of payment from the customer is made (albeit the payment was not processed) and IMO 'key' to my argument, 'acceptance' in the form of an acknowledgement of order was received by the customer then surely a contract between the two is valid. Surely by refusing to honour that agreement (contract) and having acknowledged the acceptance in the form of an email to the customer (which to me is the main point) they are in breach of it. Given the customer is now asked to be paid full price the customer can even prove loss since they can no longer locate or buy the equivalent goods at the same price. I understand that a seller who in error advertises something clearly undervalue is not obliged to honour that offer but this is completely different.

'Which' who presumably are correct, since they are experts, state that Currys are not legally bound to honour the sale price. Admittedly my understanding of contract law -mainly Contract stuff I studied at college over 45 years ago was not that comprehensive and a lot must have changed in the intervening years- but can anyone tell me what the 'get out of jail free' card is that Currys can play? To me they should be legally obliged to honour those contracts but clearly I must be wrong.

I have no actual involvement in any of this just curious about the machinations of consumer law.

 

I'm not a legal expert, far from it, but in my experience the answer to questions like this is usually quite simple. The answer is "It depends on what it says in the contract". Anyone ordering would have at some point clicked "I agree" or similar, and the contract they agreed to probably had a clause excluding IT failures from their obligations.

Having said that, morally they should pay up.

 

Not a lawyer but that's always been my understanding. Shops may well honour the offer price if you kick up enough fuss though!

 

It’s called an ‘invitation to treat’ I recall from my uni days, and so the contract is not legally binding.

 

More time required, but the "offer" as I recall it is when you, the customer offer to buy the goods at the price stated. I think the old leading case was the Boots Pharmaceutical one, as I recall!

 

Certainly agree with Stahlrost.

I've just had a look online at Curry's standard terms and conditions. Interestingly, they include the following statement:

We take all reasonable steps to ensure all details, descriptions and prices of products and services are correct at the time the information was entered onto the system. Sometimes we have to hold our hands up and admit we have made a mistake by unintentionally publishing inaccurate information on the site (e.g. the price, description or availability of a product you have ordered). In this instance we may have to cancel your order at any time, even if you have received your Order Confirmation email, and you will receive a full refund of any charges already paid.

No doubt when orderling online there will be a box to tick indicating understanding and acceptance of the terms and conditions. You will probably have to tick this to process your order. That would seem to give Curry's a strong hand!

 

That's based on incorrect info, price and availability.

Not a technical glitch.

So the contract was formed beyond invitatuon to treat and offer, when Curries accepted payment.

In my opinion Curries are trying a fast one and should honour it

 

I could see them using 'availability' to cover for the fact that they had only so many to sell at that price. I think they'd win.

 

Contract law is a bit of a minefield and there are various ways of looking at it. Most of it is custom derived from case law with a good smattering of statutory interference, usually driven by an inequality in bargaining power between the parties. An advert to sell something is an invitation to treat. Your offer of the money is that, an offer and Their acceptance is that, an acceptance. However, it is also generally accepted that a contract is not complete until each party has done something to their own "forbearance". That would indicate the contract is complete when the goods are sent out and not until. I think that's where we are. If Currys have offered an immediate refund it is also hard to see how anyone has lost out. Currys can't unilaterally charge the full amount. The consumer can reject that which I definitely would.

 

Currys' actions are not an offer - the display of goods at a price is an invitation to treat (Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain v Boots Cash Chemists (Southern) Ltd ). The customer makes an offer at the point at which they attempt to buy the product. What actually constitutes acceptance will be buried in Currys' Ts & Cs somewhere, probably with a host of circumstances in which acceptance can be rescinded (which the customer will agree to when placing the order).

 

OK thanks for that. Makes sense although… Darfield138 On one point ... given there were other offers on the day, it could be argued some HAVE 'lost out' having thought they had got the deal they wanted and therefore missed other deals on offer that day. Cynics might argue Currys were caught out by demand over supply issues and engineered the 'fault' to 'take out' the competition. They have subsequently in media headlines agreed to honour the price but I note they have said lower down where they are out of stock they will offer a 10% discount on an alternative. Hmmmm! I wonder how many of the people who' lost out' will find the item is 'out of stock' . As usual Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals are often too good to be true. That said I did get a good deal on a Lenovo gaming laptop on Cyber Monday, buying direct through Lenovo (although I suppose I could find myself in the same boat since the item is built to my spec and takes over 6 weeks delivery). It was a genuine 1 day only price and the same site showed I back to the full price I reseacrched at the time before ordering too and could get nowhere near the offer price on any site except some Germans websites but you have to be careful as some people were complaining that German ones are often not QWERTY keyboard layout.

 

They've agreed to honour all orders placed.

 

Not quite according to this (BBC)
We will be honouring promotional prices for any customer who placed an order between 25 November and 1 December and received an email confirmation of purchase but then had the order cancelled," a spokeswoman told the BBC.

"If we are out of stock on their item of choice we will give the customer a 10% discount off a similar product."

 

Hi tekkytyke. You raise a fair point but the law often diverges from the concept of fairness. What you are referring to is a consequential loss. "I could have otherwise struck a better bargain at the time, that's no longer available and I can't now because of Currys failure". I don't think that would fly. What I would make clear is that if Currys are cancelling any contract regardless of what stage it had reached, the law is pretty clear that they must place everyone in the place they were originally, which means a full and instant refund. None of this "we'll send you something else at a discount" nonsense.

 

I don't know anything about the legal side of it, but I did work for Currys until August, and the nature of my job gave me a lot of insight into the things alluded to in this thread.

I very much recall that, every Black Friday, the same thing would always happen. They'd sell far more than they could ever hope to service, and once it had gone, bad luck. The two main problems were: 1) running out of stuff entirely and 2) not being able to hit their delivery promise, whether that was collecting an item in-store, or the home delivery network. Sure, come into Meadowhall branch at x o'clock on Saturday, and your item will be there. It wasn't, because they'd caused a massive backlog by trying to move too much stock, too quickly. To compound the matter, the text message they sent was automated - so it triggered when the item 'should' have been moved, not when it actually was (if it even existed at all.)

Customers were understandably furious. I pointed it out, many times, and got an indifferent shrug.

Don't use them. Having seen what goes on, even when I worked there and had 10 per cent staff discount, I'd use literally any other retailer.

 

Thanks gents, for your insights and knowledge. I was curious about the legal position but lost my 'Smith and Keenan' reference book many years ago on one of our house moves. The internet is full of contradictory comments from people no more qualified to advise on legal matters than I am so I turn to this BB , with its wide and varied posters with everything from medical professionals, scientists engineers, etc as a good source of reference, not just of footballing matters or BFC, (ideal for nosey curious b*stards like me).

On the topic of 'offering (invitation to treat) what you do not have in stock', it is little wonder that the High street is failing and so many use the internet now. At least Amazon state how many are available or if it is out of stock. The only issue with distance purchases is if the item fails under guarantee as the manufacturers often insist the item is returned to the place of purchase. In the case of a large heavy and fragile item that could be hundreds of miles and couriers are not cheap especially if you need to insure it for transit.

 

There was (fairly recent) case law around internet offers and whether suppliers have to offer them. I can't remember the details, but it was a case where the price was quoted wrongly - something like £9.99 instead of £99.99 and where it was an obvious mistake the supplier doesn't have to honour it.