I had a verbal contract, paid and everything...can they go back on it?

[Consumer_Angel]

Hi everyone,

Does anyone know, if you phone up a business and they tell you the price of some goods and you ask for some money off, they say yes, so you pay over the phone with your card, arrange delivery and then 2 days later you get an email saying you should never have been given that money off, and if you still want the goods you have to pay full price or the transaction will be cancelled....if this is legal? Or have they illegally backed out of a completed verbal contract? I think they should honour that price anyway, as a gesture of good will (it was hardly a lot of money off!) but are they obliged to?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[barracad]

In this contract, as the purchaser are you a consumer or a business?
When you say you paid over the phone with your card, was payment actually taken and processed, or did they merely just take your card details?

[BankFodder]

The answer is that once the contract is made, they are bound by its terms. If they have taken a particular sum of money from your card then I would expect that this wold be good evidence to support your story

[Consumer_Angel]

Hi guys thanks for the relpies, yes payment had been processed because afterwards they said that my card would be credited unless I agreed to pay the full amount. I am actually a small business - does that make a difference then?

Thanks

[BankFodder]

It makes no difference that you are a business.

[raydetinu]

Yep accepted payment, so must honour it, cant come back say by the way its gone up!

[gyzmo]

There are exceptions, such as mistake (see general law of contract) but these are really only for the more comlex contracts.

It is some cases like these, even where yu are clarly in the right, that it is best to walk away and ne'er put money their way again.

[Consumer_Angel]

Well I phoned them about it and they said that they 'reserve the right to rebuke any transaction which would be financially damaging to the company' which I find hilarious because the difference was only £11!!

So because I was so desperate for this stock and couldn't find them elsewhere, I just paid for them. I wish I could have told them were to go..but I'd be shooting myself in the foot! I actually read on Tesco Direct's Terms & Conditions a similar thing - that they can cancel an order if they got the price wrong. So maybe it's not illegal after all?

[gyzmo]

It depends. If its a case of bait and switch or advertising a price knowing they will not meet it then its blatantly wrong and can verge on deception.

If its a genuine mistake, or if one should know that it is a mistake or unreasonable, then the offer can be revoked or the proper price charged. This would be, for example, where a £1,000 plasma 42 inch TV was advertised as £10.00. If however it was advertisied as £950, then you should expect to pay that price.