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Category: Mistaken offers

Oh no, not again … yet another mistaken offer

27 August, 202430 August, 2024
| No Comments
| Contract, Mistaken offers

Qantas mistake, via OzBargainGrowing up, I remember a tv programme about technology repeating the aphorism that

To err is human; to really foul things up requires a computer

Like many pithy axions, its first usage is unclear. And I don’t remember the particular tv programme on which I heard it. But it is well illustrated today by the following story:


Airline mistakenly sells hundreds of first-class tickets at heavily reduced prices

Qantas … had flights between Australia and the US displayed on its website on Thursday, but instead of advertising the usual rate for these journeys, an error made the flights appear to be up to 85 per cent less than the usual first-class prices. …

The relevant error is pictured above, left. Though it does not appear on the Quantas news site, a statement by a Qantas spokesperson cited a coding error, and said this was “a case where the fare was actually too good to be true”. If something looks too good to be true, that’s because it usually is. And this is not the first time that an airline’s website has really fouled things up. For example, in 2008, an Irish airline listed transatlantic business-class flights for €5 plus taxes; in 2012, a US airline listed flights to Hong Kong at four air-miles plus taxes and fees, or about $35; and, in 2018, a UK airline listed flights between Dubai and Tel Aviv for £1.…

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Of Schrödinger’s contract and ambiguous terms: when a website mistakenly lists designer trainers for €10, do their ambiguous terms and conditions apply?

5 September, 2022
| 2 Comments
| Contract, Mistaken offers

Schrodinger's Cat, via FlickrIn the famous thought experiment proposed by Erwin Schrödinger, a hypothetical cat in a box may be considered simultaneously to be both alive and dead as a result of its fate being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not have occurred. For reasons that will become obvious a little later in this post, I was reminded of this as I pondered an article by Conor Pope in the Irish Times last week, in which he reported that the upmarket Irish retail store Brown Thomas [BTs] cancelled online orders after it had mis-priced designer trainers at €10 instead of the usual €150. This is a common scenario. To take only two examples, in 2010, Arnotts, which is now part of the BT group, offered an online deal for €98 televisions which also turned out to be too good to be true; and, earlier this year, Morrison’s supermarket website mistakenly listed premium whisky for £2.50. In any event, this is how BTs responded on twitter to their mistaken overpricing:

To our customers, please note we experienced a pricing error on our website this morning. Orders sold at an incorrect price will be cancelled as per our terms and conditions.

…

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Supermarket website mistakenly lists premium whisky for £2.50 – do their inconsistent terms and conditions apply?

17 June, 202217 June, 2022
| No Comments
| Mistaken offers

From today’s Guardian:

Morrisons mistakenly lists £2.50 whisky

The retailer identified the pricing error on its website before any bottles were sold

Mark Twain reputedly said: “Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whisky is barely enough.”

Online shoppers at the supermarket Morrisons came close to testing his theory when the retailer accidentally priced bottles of a Scotch whisky at just £2.50, a 93% discount from its usual price of £36. …

Whisky lovers piled in, posting their delight on social media, only to discover their big orders had been thwarted at the last minute.

The pricing error was identified by Morrisons, and due to minimum unit pricing legislation making the charge per bottle illegal, the retailer cancelled all orders before they were actioned. …

Glenlivet Caribbean Reserve on MorrisonsAs the image (left) from Morrisons’ current website implies, someone must have mistakenly entered £2.50 instead of the intended £25.00. But Morrisons were able to play the get-out-of-jail-free card of Scotland’s minimum unit pricing legislation (in force since 2018) prevented the offer from taking effect. Ireland has similar legislation (in force since the beginning of this year). However, if they could not have played that card, would they have been bound to sell the whisky for £2.50?…

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The legal effects of some butterfly-effect typos; including mistaken offers, and restitution of mistaken payments

21 August, 201910 September, 2019
| 3 Comments
| Contract, Mistaken offers, Mistaken payments, Restitution

The Book of Kells is one of the great treasures in the Old Library in Trinity College Dublin. It is a manuscript of the Four Gospels in Latin based on the Vulgate of St Jerome. It was written and illuminated in the ninth century, probably in part in a monastery on the island of Iona in Scotland, and in part in a monastery in Kells, Co Meath, Ireland. Though a great medieval treasure, it contains some typographical errors. For example, the Gospel of Luke has an extra ancestor in the genealogy of Jesus (Luke 3:26; pictured left). It seems that the scribe read “qui fuit mathathiae” as “qui fuit mathath | iae” and thus wrote “qui fuit mathath” (the first line in the picture on the left) and “qui fuit iae” (the second line in the picture). Even Homer nods.

I was reminded of this when I recently read an article by Tom Lamont about the effects of electronic typos: an SMS misdirected to a wrong mobile phone number (leading to a marriage!); a satnav directed to Rom (in Germany) rather than Rome (in Italy); a jet from Sydney directed to 15 degrees 19.8 minutes east (and landing in Melbourne) rather than 151 degrees 9.8 minutes east) (bound for Kuala Lumpur).…

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Valentine’s Mistakes

8 March, 201620 August, 2019
| 1 Comment
| Consumer, Contract, Mistaken offers

Complicated blue valentine; heart via pixabay; complicated via facebookLast month, the Daily Mail website ran a story under the headline: Fury as Tesco offers large bottles of Budweiser for just 14p each on its website – only to cancel orders because the price was a mistake. The offer appeared as a Valentine’s Day special, for beer lovers everywhere. In another example, last Autumn, shoppers on Sears.com noticed that expensive toys (such as kids’ accessories and play sets that cost hundreds of dollars) were available for only $11.95. Nancy Kim on ContractsProf Blog explains many of the contract law consequences of this mistake.

This kind of mistake happens a lot. Sometimes, it’s human error; sometimes, it’s a misfiring algorithm – thus proving the old adage: to err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer (though, some of these errors could be maliciously caused by hacking). And these errors seem particularly headline-grabbing when they involve really cheap tvs or flights. I’ve looked at the legal issues in these situations several times on this blog: see here, here, here, here, here, here and here. …

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If an offer looks too good to be true, it probably is

4 March, 201320 August, 2019
| 2 Comments
| Consumer, Contract, Mistaken offers

VikingDirectThe image on the left is based on screen grabs taken by @jimboireland and @WayneDoyle___ (click through for a bigger size). It shows a ‘samsung 51″ series 4 3D plasma tv’ for sale on a retail website for “€6.49 plus VAT” (I’ve zoomed in on the price, just to make the point). This offer looked like it was too good to be true; and that’s exactly what it was – too good to be true. The €6.49 was a typo for €649. I have blogged about similar mistakes on the part of United Airlines, Aer Lingus, Dell, Best Buy, Arnotts, and Round Hall. This time, it was VikingDirect.ie – and, as the Irish Times and The Daily Edge are reporting, they have apologised to their customers, but are not going to honour the sale of the televisions at 1% of its retail price.

The customers will probably argue that they had contracts with the retailer, which the retailer must honour by selling the tvs at the knock-down prices. However, these contracts are subject to the website terms and conditions, section 5 of which details how the relevant contract is made: the customer’s order is an offer to purchase the goods on Viking’s conditions; and the offer is accepted, and the contract is made, when Viking send the customer an e-mail acknowledging the order.…

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When an airline website makes a mistaken offer, do terms and conditions apply?

26 July, 201220 August, 2019
| 4 Comments
| Contract, Mistaken offers

Image of Hong Kong by Paul Hilton/Bloomberg via Chicago Tribune/LA TimesWhen a website makes a mistaken offer which customers then accept, contracts may very well result. However, that is only a small part of the story. The mistake may mean that there really is no contract. Or the website’s terms and conditions may protect them (though there are some situations in which such terms might not be enforceable).

This kind of mistake is a pretty regular occurrence, and it happened to United Airlines over the weekend. Via the Gulliver blog on the Economist website, I learn of the following story in the Chicago Tribune:

United Airlines error sells Hong Kong flights for 4 miles

United Airlines customers with reward miles were able to book tickets over the weekend to Hong Kong for only four miles, plus taxes and fees, because of a programing error, according to the airline.

A round-trip flight from Los Angeles to Hong Kong typically starts around $1,800 or 60,000 reward miles under the MileagePlus reward program.

But because of a programing error, some United passengers who booked flights to, from or through Hong Kong were charged only four miles plus taxes and fees, which amount to about $35. …

United Airlines have cancelled the tickets, though it is not clear to me that this is permitted in Rule 5 of United’s Contract of Carriage (and it may run afoul of the US Department of Transportation rules).…

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Is a newsletter deal to sell a €395 book for €136 too good to be true?

1 December, 201020 August, 2019
| 4 Comments
| Contract, Mistaken offers

Round Hall logo, via their siteBy way of update on this morning’s post, here is an extract from an email I received today from the Irish publishers Round Hall (the local imprint of Thomson Reuters) which raises very similar issues:

Oops! Correction of Offer Price for The Criminal Process

Correction

Our E-newsletter distributed on 30 November 2010 contained a mistake in relation to the 20% savings advertised for The Criminal Process by Thomas O’Malley.

The correct offer price, valid until the 15 December 2010, is in fact €316, and not €136 as advertised in our latest e-newsletter. The list price is €395. I’m sure that you will agree that this is still an excellent offer for this particular title!

Our sincere apologies for any confusion caused. (Our marketing department is doing suitable penance at the moment, and is also paying a little visit to the optician…)

…

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Hi there! Thanks for dropping by. I’m Eoin O’Dell, and this is my blog: Cearta.ie – the Irish for rights.


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