Amazon.de cancels nvme ssd Black Friday deal after 14 days and calls it as price mistake

[ChineseChef]

I can't seem to find an article about it, but I remember a few years back Dell sold some monitors insanely discounted by accident.  They were like $200 original price, marked down to $140.  Or so they were supposed to be, they accidentally left off a 0 and listed the monitors at $14 per, limit 5 per buyer.  They discovered the error after a few hours, but not until they had already sold a few hundred monitors.  They tried to cancel the orders, but they ended up in court.

 

The court found that because Dell had actually charged/billed the customers and had sufficient quantity to ship product, that it was considered a completed transaction, and Dell had to ship the monitors at that price.  The court at the time stated that if the customers had NOT been charged, then a sale was NOT considered complete.  This was in the USA, and was a few years back.

 

So I can see this relying heavily on local country laws, and how those specifically apply.  Which from my understanding (rather limited), is heavily waited against intent and on if money was taken from the customer.

[Thaldor]

10 minutes ago, done12many2 said:

 

That's a 76% difference.  Huge if you ask me.

 

I was just reading through the Consumer Protection Act for Finland.  Can you better point me to where it outlines a vendors requirement to sell at a listed price regardless of intent?  This stuff is interesting to me because it differs so much from what we experience here in the states.

Here you can read the adverticing and pricing policies ruled by the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority. Now that I have refreshed my memory a bit, basicly Amazon would be needed to prove that they have changed the price to the correct one before the order was agreed by the customer, even if the customer isn't charged when the order was made. What image I got from the OP is that the lower price was for a whole day and many people made orders with that price without Amazon changing the price during the black friday, it's quite clear that the orders are binding even if they are not fullfilled by the payment. If Amazon would have corrected the price during the black friday the orders made between changing the price in the system and it showing in the site wouldn't be binding, but every order made before the price was corrected in the system would be binding and customers would get the SSDs at the lower price.

 

In law books those parts are somewhere in the Consumer Protection law and the contract law.

[done12many2]

2 minutes ago, ChineseChef said:

is heavily waited against intent and on if money was taken from the customer.

 

From what I am reading, this is applicable to the vast majority of the countries in the world.  Intent along with what stage the agreement is at plays a big role.

[done12many2]

15 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

Here you can read the adverticing and pricing policies ruled by the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority. Now that I have refreshed my memory a bit, basicly Amazon would be needed to prove that they have changed the price to the correct one before the order was agreed by the customer, even if the customer isn't charged when the order was made. What image I got from the OP is that the lower price was for a whole day and many people made orders with that price without Amazon changing the price during the black friday, it's quite clear that the orders are binding even if they are not fullfilled by the payment. If Amazon would have corrected the price during the black friday the orders made between changing the price in the system and it showing in the site wouldn't be binding, but every order made before the price was corrected in the system would be binding and customers would get the SSDs at the lower price.

 

In law books those parts are somewhere in the Consumer Protection law and the contract law.

 

Great read and thanks for sharing!

 

I can't help but feel that a law like that can also negatively impact not only business in your country, but overall pricing.  When big companies like Amazon takes a huge hit due to an error, a bunch of people might get a great deal, but a bunch more are going to make up for it later down the road.  This could also impact more that just increased prices in your locality, but delays in offers/deals.  Before you know it, you guys end up paying a fortune for the same thing we get at a much lower price.  Wait a minute, that's already happening.  

[Thaldor]

3 minutes ago, done12many2 said:

 

Great read and thanks for sharing!

 

I can't help but feel that a law like that can also negatively impact not only business in your country, but overall pricing.  When big companies like Amazon takes a huge hit due to an error, a bunch of people might get a great deal, but a bunch more are going to make up for it later down the road.  This could also impact more that just increased prices in your locality, but delays in offers/deals.  Before you know it, you guys end up paying a fortune for the same thing we get at a much lower price.  Wait a minute, that's already happening.  

That part of the consumer protection isn't really rising the prices at all, the true horror for vendors is the warranty part and the taxes (here in Finland base tax for products is 24%). The warranty ruling is quite good for consumers, it basicly rules that warranty time is the expected lifetime of the product, so vendors or manufacturers can't give something like years warranty for washing machine which is expected to last for at least 3-5 years. Also (from personal experience) warranties cannot be prolonged through registeration (I had some headset that broke through use after 1,5 years and there was 1 year warranty which could be prolonged to 2 years if I would have registered the headset to the manufacturer the KKV ruled that the expected lifetime of the headset was 2 years because manufacturer promised that the maximum warranty time is that and I got a new headset from the vendor). The vendors are free to offer longer warranties than the expected lifetime of the product (which they mostly do) and warranties can be for one part of the product (like washing machines usually have different warranty times for the whole machine and for the motor of the machine). So, that's quite cool for us

 

But for the high prices I blame the taxes and our so "great" postal service (if the post isn't insured they usually blame the sender and if the police gets interested and starts to investicate the Finnish shitbag named Posti compensates by the weight of the packet and it's quite usual that they fuck up like this (images NSFW for those who can feel the pain of the others): image1 image2 image3).

[tlink]

2 hours ago, done12many2 said:

 

Not at all.  They often do to keep customers happy, but there is no requirement to do so due to an error.

in mexico a company accidently discounted everything massively which resulted in tech being given away for free, literally server setups of 10 thousand dollars where ordered for next to nothing and the government ruled that they have to honour it.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

1 hour ago, done12many2 said:

 

I can't help but feel that a law like that can also negatively impact not only business in your country, but overall pricing.  When big companies like Amazon takes a huge hit due to an error, a bunch of people might get a great deal, but a bunch more are going to make up for it later down the road.  This could also impact more that just increased prices in your locality, but delays in offers/deals.  Before you know it, you guys end up paying a fortune for the same thing we get at a much lower price.  Wait a minute, that's already happening.  

But that only happens if companies actually make such horrendous mistakes - it's frankly hard to understand how they get to happen. They may be more common due to increasing automation, though. Your bakery around the corner won't do many of these  

 

Now, think how easily the opposite ruling (that sellers can claim "mistakes" and not honor orders) can be abused: Amazon, or anyone, could dry out other sellers by offering absurdly low prices, and after the discount period is over cancel all orders and blame "a mistake". The displayed prices could even violate anti-dumping policies.

In this case, I'm inclined to think Amazon didn't do it on purpose, but it was a victim of its own automated price-matching algorithm: someone, somewhere advertised a cheap SSD, perhaps with a mistake in the product's identification or Amazon matching the wrong product, and reacted by setting a similar deal - only to understand what happened later.

But a company advertising "amazing deals" on a certain date, then telling you "sorry, that deal was a little too amazing" doesn't exactly inspire trust.

[Trixanity]

Meanwhile in Denmark, the automatic email you receive when clicking buy isn't legally binding because all websites have a policy that automatic receipts aren't proof of purchase; more like a request to buy. You have to wait for a second email of approval which you often get when the order ships. At that point, it's binding. This also prevents malicious intent as is clearly the case here. The margins on hardware aren't big enough to sell the item at that price and everyone knows that. I won't fault you for buying it. I would too. But whining about it after the fact when they notice the error and considering legal action is a bit ridiculous to me. We don't want companies to step on us but people don't mind stepping on companies (while I prefer the latter, double standards should be avoided). Amazon is huge but consider that many smaller companies use Amazon as an intermediary. A big enough error could cause bankruptcy in some cases.

 

Also, I wonder how a domestic court would handle an international lawsuit. If you buy an item from Germany and it violates Finnish law, how can you sue them when you kinda made the deal in Germany? The site is German but will ship to Finland. However, it operates in Germany and is bound by German law (of course, EU law supersedes). So I don't think it would stand up in court.

[RagnarokDel]

4 hours ago, done12many2 said:

 

It's outlined in Amazon's TOS.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=help_search_1-1?ie=UTF8&nodeId=508088&qid=1467569772&sr=1-1

 

 

TOS dont overturn laws lol. If it happened in Québec, not only would they have to do it for that price, if they made a pricing mistake, they'd have to take $10 out on the displayed price.

[Centurius]

4 hours ago, Thaldor said:

Hope someone in Finland ordered that too, because our law states that if some product is mispriced and a customer makes a decision on that price the vendor must sell the product on that price to the customer (like if there's different price in the shelf and in the cashregister system and the shelf price is lower the vendor must sell the product at that price). Same goes to advertising, if there has been misprint or other error and there's wrong price in ad, the vendor must sell at that price at least until the adverticed sale ends or the price is corrected through same means as the original ad was made. Also TOSes aren't that binding here, at least if they aren't in the same line with the law, so if we presume someone in Finland bought that SSD at that price and he/she takes it to the consumer protection and Amazon was to reply with TOS-card, Amazon would loose and would be forced to sell the SSD at the stated price. This could possibly start some kind of snowball effect (at least in EU) and Amazon would need to be a man and take the hit.

The law of the country it is purchased is the important element when establishing consumer rights. In this case that would be Germany, regardless of where the product was purchased from.

[Zodiark1593]

The line I draw is when the money is actually transacted. Once money is transacted, like how a business can charge a consumer a restocking fee,  a business wanting to cancel a sale where the transaction had already occurred, the customer should get a "restocking" fee alongside the refund. 

 

Unless malicious intent were proven, holding a company to honor an accidental deal seems quite ornery, and sets a double standard. A minor financial penalty for a business to cancel should be enough incentive to reduce malicious practices, while providing some remedy for inconvenienced consumers. 

[Thaldor]

4 hours ago, Centurius said:

The law of the country it is purchased is the important element when establishing consumer rights. In this case that would be Germany, regardless of where the product was purchased from.

That is true, but within EU there's quite few things that change that. FIrstly there's directive that states that webstores must pay their taxes to the coutry the customer residents (probably quite a few webstores don't respect this one) and then there seems to be some directive that states that if webstore serves customes on one coutry with their native language (meaning they have active marketing to them) they must obey the laws and regulations conserning marketing and customer protection of that country. Probably because these and that the nordic coutries seemingly have some really hard customer protection laws, the Amazon doesn't have sites or translations for any nordic countries (amazon.fi (Finland) redirects to amazon.de, amazon.se (Sweden) isn't anywhere and amazon.no (Norway) redirects to amazon.co.uk). I couldn't find any international cases from Finnish sources except few real scams which were directed to EU court where they disappeared (or at least the rulings weren't made public and/or published in the net).

[Senzelian]

9 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

I'd be surprised if Germany doesn't has similar consumer protection laws to the cited northen countries here. Bottom line is outside of a shithole for comsumers like the US, companies should be compelled to honor advertised prices, no matter the mistakes.

 

We forced Dell to do so selling 2k laptops for 30 USD, why can't Germany do at least as good as Mexico then?

Because we are not only protecting the consumer but also the companys, which in my opinion is much better.

[Misanthrope]

15 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Because we are not only protecting the consumer but also the companys, which in my opinion is much better.

Why? We know companies are generally much larger and have a lot more resources than consumers to defend their positions legally whereas consumers generally would not be able to pursue justice for the exact same reasons. Thats why sane countries have sane consumer protection laws.

 

That and just common sense: we don't want exploding phones, cyanide laced pills and e-coli infested meat just because companies want to save money by cutting corners which may include false advertising.

[That Norwegian Guy]

22 minutes ago, Fooshi said:

They should only have to honor them if the customer acted in "good faith" (god tro) that it was the right price (avtaleloven $32, if I remember correctly). In this case, I highly doubt any of the people who ordered that laptop did so, and on top of that, pretty much every retailer in the world reserving the right to not honor such significant price mistakes, Komplett really had no reason to follow through.

 

Laws can be stretched a significant amount, and both retailers and customers alike will warp the meanings of these laws in their favour to the point where it's not about common sense anymore, but pure greed and gains. Source: I work at Elkjøp.

This is from an actual court case, the retailer didn't want to honour the sales but were forced to. The court concluded that the discount wasn't "too good to be true" essentially.

[LastZombie]

yesterday i wrote amazon saying ı should have a right to purchase the item etc here is their answer. 
 

[LastZombie]

forgot the links^^
http://www.amazon.de/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=504940#Preisanderungen
http://www.amazon.de/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=505048
 

[Kowar]

In Germany you can't propose an offer to a party you don't know. The buyer and seller need to know each other to make an offer. If you see a price online or at a local store it's an invitation for the buyer to ask the seller to buy his product for the offered price (invitatio ad offerendum).

 

In your case you asked Amazon.de to buy the ssd. Amazon now has the right to say yes or no. Your confirmation two weeks ago was only a confirmation of your offer to Amazon.de (they recevied your offer). If amazon shippes the ssd they accepted your offer and the contract is legal.

 

Sounds dumb... but it's german law

[LastZombie]

3 minutes ago, Kowar said:

In Germany you can't propose an offer to a party you don't know. The buyer and seller need to know each other to make an offer. If you see a price online or at a local store it's an invitation for the buyer to ask the seller to buy his product for the offered price (invitatio ad offerendum).

 

In your case you asked Amazon.de to buy the ssd. Amazon now has the right to say yes or no. Your confirmation two weeks ago was only a confirmation of your offer to Amazon.de (they recevied your offer). If amazon shippes the ssd they accepted your offer and the contract is legal.

 

Sounds dumb... but it's german law

So it sounds like ordering from a deal from amazon.de is like making a wish

[Thaldor]

8 minutes ago, LastZombie said:

-snip-

On the matter there's quite a little you can do. You probably could contact your local customer protection authority about this and ask (free in Finland), but as the customer protection laws and regualtions differ from one country to another there's not much at least I can say. Also a lot depends on earlier court cases and a bunch of other legal stuff in Turkey (like is TOS really binding and in what part of the deal it is seen as binding). Also as Turkey isn't part of EU the EU directives doesn't bind Turkey and vice versa, so even if amazon.de would offer their service in Turkish it wouldn't fall under the juristiction of Turkish customer protection.

 

Somehow that sounds really stupid that vendor offers you a product for X price and you make an offer to buy that product for that X price and vendor can later back off and tell you that the real price is Y. It's like walking into a market to buy a bottle of milk for 1€ and at the register the clerk would say "Nope, I cannot sell you that bottle of milk for 1€, but I can sell it to you for 1,20€" even if the pricetag would promise you that the bottle of milk costs 1€. It would be understandable if there was a note that "price may wary on the availability of the raw materials" or "price doesn't include shipping and taxes" or anyother good reason why the vendor cannot promise you that the offered price is the final price. And really IMO vendor is responsible to check their prices before making them public, if they don't do that and wrong price is made public, shame on them.

[Kowar]

15 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

 It's like walking into a market to buy a bottle of milk for 1€ and at the register the clerk would say "Nope, I cannot sell you that bottle of milk for 1€, but I can sell it to you for 1,20€" even if the pricetag would promise you that the bottle of milk costs 1€.

That's german law and the clerk could do it. But in reality this never happens. This only happens if the pricetag was false and the clerk notice it. The wrong pricetag could be the stores fault or the customer switched the pricetag with a pricetag of a cheaper product. The same laws are valid for online stores. 

 

For example you could also say to the clerk at the register that you would only pay 0,80€ for the milk. Now the clerk can decide to take your offer. It goes both ways.

[Dackzy]

12 hours ago, That Norwegian Guy said:

Same in Norway. I believe it was Komplett who were forced to sell laptops for 1600 NOK when they meant to price them at 16000. Over 80 orders for them were made, that's got to hurt.

Same in Denmark, unless the store can prove that you have bought the thing in "evil faith" aka planning to put it up for sale and earn money.

[Dackzy]

LTT reposted my comment...

[Senzelian]

3 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

Why? We know companies are generally much larger and have a lot more resources than consumers to defend their positions legally whereas consumers generally would not be able to pursue justice for the exact same reasons. Thats why sane countries have sane consumer protection laws.

 

That and just common sense: we don't want exploding phones, cyanide laced pills and e-coli infested meat just because companies want to save money by cutting corners which may include false advertising.

I was specificly talking about the wrong pricing. Whoever made the mistake is also only just a human. 

 

I want to protect the customer, but also the companies and their workers.

[Misanthrope]

48 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

I was specificly talking about the wrong pricing. Whoever made the mistake is also only just a human. 

What if it's only just human? We as a society can overlook negligence but shouldn't hurt innocents while doing it for the same reason. If you're doing business with the general public you need to be prepared to not make those mistakes, human or not, and assume responsibility if you do. It should be just the cost of doing business, not a burden on the unsuspecting public.