HP messes up & now messes up again

[TS | Thomas]

For over 2 months HP has been selling a 17" flat-panel LCD monitor for $199 - less than 50% off the $449 normal price. Now they say it was a mistake, & not only are they canceling orders in progress, they actually expect people to either pay the difference or return the monitors!

There are several places already reporting this news, & this just doesn't look good for HP. They've even resorted to calling customers & leaving voice mail asking for the extra money or the return of the products.

Would you like to know more? I could understand if they made this mistake for a day or so, but to expect people to pay up or return after this long? The best thing HP could have done was to fix the pricing error & honor what they'd sold, or at least shipped already (& let you know it was sold at a much discounted price). At least they've earn some goodwill that way.

 

[agissi]

Thats just redicuious to ask for ppl to pay the diffrence. If they sold it for $199, its sold for $199. Jeeze, its the real world, you make a mistake, and its done. Some adults need to grow up.. you cant just want ppl to pay your loss because you made a mistake.

Thats their problem

 

[Phantasm66]

I am not sure that that is legal....?

Surely, if you sell something for the advertised price, that's that. You can't like change your mind later.

If you could, then surely people would be doing that all the time. Sell something for $100 - actually, we meant to say $150. Sorry. Either give us the extra $50 or return the goods! Rubbish! If that's what's going on, I can't see it standing up in court at all.

 

[Phantasm66]

More here.

And here on Neowin.

....Is this even legal? Anyone with a background in consumer law reading? I'd love to hear from you. I find this one very hard to swallow.

 

[TS | Thomas]

I don't know much of American consumer law, but they're probably mostly just trying to scare people into paying up. I don't think they'd have much legal footing, the price was stated there for over 2 months according to those stories.

If I were to buy a book at Amazon.com for $5 & I received it, I wouldn't expect to have to pay them $10 extra a month later because they had showed the wrong price for 2 months.

 

[poertner_1274]

I don't think it is legal at all. If they accidentally overcharge some people for 2 months, and those people willingly paid for it, will they come back and say "Oh, I'm sorry we overcharged you all, here is your difference back!" No they won't do this, so why should it be the other way around?

If they made the mistake of selling things for that price, they are stuck to deal with the consequences. Which is quite a large loss in sales.

Get over it HP, double and triple check how much you are selling things for. Better safe than sorry.

 

[agissi]

it isnt legal at all. If they do make people pay the diffrence, you could take HP to court and sue for consumer fraud. (ie. its fraud)

 

[Phantasm66]

Surely, if I sell something, and provide a receipt....

...Then that receipt is a contract of sale, yeah?

If I then attempt to alter the terms of the agreement, AFTER the contract has been made....

...Then surely I am IN BREACH OF CONTRACT???

Surely??

I'm no law graduate but that makes perfect sense to me.

 

[iss]

they have to sell at the advertised price unles they displayed a disclaimer to the effect they are not responsible for errors. that only allows them to refuse to sell someone a product at the advertised price.

ONCE the sale is made there is absolutely nothing they can do....Period they are just blowing smoke trying to get people to pay the diff.

 

[Strakian]

At one point in time I worked for Best Buy... needless to say crap like this happened a lot more than it should have.

Regardless, we honored the price to those lucky enough to scoop it up ( i believe we sold 5-10 Geforce 3's when they first came out for $100) and amended the price and told people trying to buy it at that price (before they bought it!!!) that it was a corporate mistake and that we apologize. Aftwerwards we'd ask if they wanted to buy it for the $350 or so that it was actually worth. None did, naturally.

Case in point, if Best Buy of all companies had to eat it, then they knew they had no legal foothold. HP is gonna get roughed if they try and follow through with this. If you have any stock in HP, now is the time to sell...

*I'm not liable for any actual decisions based on tha statement* :grinthumb

 

[Phantasm66]

"Hello, yes. You have paid $50 for something. That's fine, but we would like to ask you to pay $50 more. Is that OK?"

Get real.

 

[Nic]

If money has already changed hands, then it's too late for them to do anything about it. They are within their rights to refuse to sell, but once they have sold, it is too late. Heads will roll.

 

[poertner_1274]

HP is simply at fault here for not paying attention. Nothing more they can do about it, except make false claims.

 

[Rick]

It's probably illegal in every state but California. LoL.