Best Buy won't honor advertised price -- $9.99 for 52-inch TV

[Name Lips]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32390436/


$9.99 TVs? Best Buy won’t honor price goof
Electronics retailer corrects too-good-to-be-true online pricing error

NEW YORK - Few if any of the deals retailers have offered online during the recession have been as good as Best Buy Inc.'s sale price of $9.99 on a 52-inch TV Wednesday. But it quickly turned out the offer was too good to be true.

The electronics retailer said it will not honor the $9.99 price posted Wednesday morning on its Web site for a 52-inch Samsung flat-screen TV. By early afternoon, the TV was listed at $1,799.99, almost half off the original $3,399.99 price.

Bloggers and Twitterers lit up the Internet with posts about the offer, some insisting Best Buy must honor it, others making jokes.
Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here

Best Buy, based in Richfield, Minn., said it has corrected an online pricing error and will not honor the incorrect price. Orders made Wednesday morning at the incorrect price will be canceled and customers will receive refunds, the company said.

Best Buy did not immediately return a call for additional comment.

Shares fell 27 cents to close at $36.50 Wednesday.
:lol:

Now, I think anybody in their right mind would know that the $9.99 price was a misprint...

...but haven't companies been forced to honor misprints before? If they advertise a price, aren't they obligated to actually sell at that price?

[nerfherder]

Now, I think anybody in their right mind would know that the $9.99 price was a misprint...

...but haven't companies been forced to honor misprints before? If they advertise a price, aren't they obligated to actually sell at that price?
No they aren't. It's an invitation to treat, not an unconditional offer, so they aren't bound to accept an offer to buy.

There's even a wiki page about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invitation_to_treat

[Schizm]

yeah, the page was jammed this morning by the time I got there... but I won't deny trying to order three of the damn things!

[shiningbrow]

The local Safeway is always posting error announcements in the store with disclaimers reading "sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused." There's really no way to force them to honor such mistaken ads.

[Harry]

The retailer always has the right to refuse a sale, and any twit who thinks Best Buy owes them? This is WHY Best Buy has the right to refuse. Mistakes are made. If a retailer were forced to play by such rules, who would ever pay full price for anything? Why not, say, walk into a car dealership with a placard and a magic marker and set your own price.

[Janos]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invitation_to_treat[/url]

That let me to this gem that I only vaguely remember hearing about at the time, and never the full details:

Leonard v. Pepsico, Inc., 88 F.Supp.2d 116, (S.D.N.Y. 1999), aff'd 210 F.3d 88 (2d Cir. 2000), more widely known as the Pepsi Points Case, is a famous case tried in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1999, in which the plaintiff, John Leonard, sued PepsiCo, Inc. in an effort to enforce an "offer" to redeem 7,000,000 Pepsi Points for a AV-8 Harrier II jump jet, which Pepsi had shown in a portion of a televised commercial which was intended to be humourous. The plaintiff did not actually collect 7,000,000 Pepsi Points, but instead sent a certified cheque for $700,008.50 as permitted by the contest rules. Leonard had 15 existing points, paid $0.10 a point for the remaining 6,999,985 points and a $10 shipping and handling fee.

The claim alleged both breach of contract and fraud. The case was finally decided in 1999. Among other claims made, Leonard claimed that a federal judge was incapable of deciding on the matter, and that instead the decision had to be made by a jury consisting of members of "the Pepsi generation," to whom the advertisement would allegedly constitute an offer.[1]

The court, presided over by Judge Kimba Wood, rejected Leonard's claims and denied recovery on three grounds.

It was found that the advertisement featuring the jet did not constitute an offer.

The court found that even if the advertisement had been an offer, no reasonable person could have believed that the company seriously intended to convey a jet worth roughly $23 million for under a million dollars.

The value of the alleged contract meant that it fell under the provisions of the statute of frauds, but the Statute's requirement for writing between the parties was not fulfilled, so a contract had not been formed.

:lol: