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Dell Forced to Honor Accidental $15 Monitor Listing

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BigRocket
07/02/09

In reply to Dell Forced to Honor Accidental $15 Monitor Listing
Most business law would say that they have to honor it. This is different than going into you local Fry's and seeing a $15 sign under a monitor and trying to get that price at the register. Fry's can reject your "claim" because no transaction has yet taken place and thus no contract exists between buyer and seller.

In the Dell case, the buyer and seller have entered into a contract since a transaction has indeed taken place. Dell should, by law, be forced into honoring that contract no matter if you bought one or 500 of those monitors.
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okenny :) ...building bridges (to hide under)
07/02/09

@BigRocket: In America, you're typically not required to honor a mistake.
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itchytooth
07/02/09

In reply to Dell Forced to Honor Accidental $15 Monitor Listing
Slickdeal Effect
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Firebrand
07/02/09

In reply to Dell Forced to Honor Accidental $15 Monitor Listing
If the transaction has gone through, Dell should honor it. It's not some silly misprinted flyers..
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ceilingFANBOY
07/02/09

@Firebrand: It was probably a misconversion from NT to USD. When the conversion makes 15 equal to 500, it seems like a very reasonable mistake, probably even easier to do than making a typo.
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deanbmmv
07/02/09

In reply to Dell Forced to Honor Accidental $15 Monitor Listing
In UK you're generally expected to honour a mis-price. You change it straight away but you let the first few go through. They stuck a price on it for price X, if they said it was wrong and you have to pay a different price whats to stop them doing it with everything?

But from what I've read on other articles covering this it seems in US they just go "oops our bad, just buy it at full price now" and that's accepted?
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ceilingFANBOY
07/02/09

@deanbmmv: From my understanding, the way the law is written, a company does not have to honor a price that is obviously an error as long as a reasonable attempt at correcting the error is made. For example, if a 50" TV is accidentally listed as $100 instead of $1000, the company does not have to honor the price because it is not reasonable to expect that price to be correct. However, the company is obligated to notify customers of the pricing error and not require an additional purchase to cancel the order. Meanwhile, if said 50" TV is accidentally listed as $949, the company would be required to honor the price.

Of course, all of this can be nullified by proper response as well. For example, if something is in an ad to go on sale a certain date and there is an error in the pricing the company will not have to honor the error pricing as long as an attempt to notify customers is made before the sale goes in effect. For example, several times something is advertised in an ad for Wal-Mart at a wrong price or with incorrect information but a flier is printed out and put in the location of the item days before the sale goes into effect.
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Hilo
07/02/09

In reply to Dell Forced to Honor Accidental $15 Monitor Listing
It mentioned that 26,000 customers placed orders for nearly 140,000 monitors...

So, on average, each person ordered 5 monitors.

No, in my opinion they shouldn't have to honor this. What remotely reasonable person doesn't realize this is a mistake? I don't know Taiwanese law though, so eh.
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Hilo
07/02/09

@Hilo:

Or, perhaps, honor any single orders and disregard those who ordered multiple units in an obvious play to resell them for profit.
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Hello Mister Walrus
07/02/09

@Hilo: They should not have to honor the sales if the price is clearly in error. It's not like someone mistakenly keyed in $120 instead of $150. This was 19" monitors for $15 - no one can seriously believe that that was a real price.

In Nasdaq stock trading, for instance, you can cancel clearly erroneous trades if the price difference is above some threshold. This helps keep the market orderly. This should also be applied to electronics sales.
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Hello Mister Walrus
07/02/09

@Hello Mister Walrus: For instance, last year, there was a mispricing of LCD TVs of various sizes on Amazon for under $40. I was among the many people who ordered multiple TVs just in case they shipped. Sure enough, all the orders were canceled and we received apology messages, and that was that. We would have had to be incredible douche bags to harass Amazon or the seller to make them honor the deal.
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