Samsung Order Cancelled due to pricing error - Breach of contract?

[mrdonj]

Hey guys, quite annoyed about an order I placed for a Samsung phone on their site being cancelled the same day it was due to be delivered

 

Just wanted to know if them sending me a dispatch confirmation and then not delivering the product due to a pricing error was within the terms of the contract formed when they sent dispatch confirmation. The below text is from their website

 

"1. Your order is an offer to us to buy the Product(s) in your order. You are deemed to have placed an order with us by ordering via our online checkout process. After placing an order, you will receive an e-mail from us acknowledging that we have received your order and containing an Order Reference Number and details of the Product(s) you have ordered (Order Confirmation). Please note that the Order Confirmation is acknowledgment that we have received your order and does not mean your order has been accepted by us. All orders are subject to our acceptance of your offer to buy the Product(s) ordered. We will only accept your offer (and form the contract of sale) when we send you an e-mail confirming that the Product has been dispatched (Dispatch Confirmation). We may refuse to accept your order:

(a) where the Product is not available;
(b) where we cannot obtain authorisation for your payment;
(c) if there has been a pricing or Product description error (see ‘Price and Payment’ below); or
(d) if you do not meet the eligibility criteria set out in ‘Your Status’ above.

2. The contract between us (Contract) will only be formed upon the earlier of i) when we send you the Dispatch Confirmation or ii) delivery of the Product(s). The parties to the Contract are you and Samsung Electronics (UK) Limited.

3. The Contract will relate only to those Products in respect of which we have confirmed dispatch in the Dispatch Confirmation. We will not be obliged to supply any other Products which may have been part of your order until the dispatch of such Products has been confirmed in a separate Dispatch Confirmation."

[BankFodder]

A little more detail please.

It's quite common for companies to say that there is no contract until the item in question has been selected for dispatch.

That seems to be what they are saying here.

What kind of confirmation did they send you?

[mrdonj]

I ordered on the 31st October - Money was taken immediately and cleared on 3rd November

 

Item was sitting on Preparing for dispatch for a few days. They later updated the order tracking page with an IMEI number for the specific device

 

Order status changed to dispatched on the 9th (yesterday). 

 

I received two different dispatch notices telling me the phone would be delivered on the 10th. One is a joint notice from DPD and Samsung and the other is a notice from Samsung's own tracking site

 

DPDs own tracking shows the delivery details were sent to DPD at 3pm on the 9th and that they received the phone from Samsung at 1am on the 10th

 

They recalled the order at 6am after DPD had the phone in their local hub nearest to me

 

Spoke to them on the phone, they said I cancelled it (not true) then stated they'd escalate it further to see what happened.

 

They replied that it was a pricing error and have asked for the phone to be returned to them by DPD

 

 

 

Information from DPD app

 

docs1.pdf

Edited November 14, 2021 by dx100uk
pdfs merged

[BankFodder]

Okay it looks as if you are in a very good position.

Who is the dealer? How much money we talking about? How much did you pay and what was the correct price?

[mrdonj]

Dealer is Samsung UK - Purchased directly from their website using student discount that was active at the time

 

Total price was £744 including delivery

 

Retail price without any discounts from their site is £1,199

 

Current student discount price is £1,079

 

Prices were lower because they were doing deals for "Samsung Week"

 

Just had a response from Samsung as well stating that they do not need to sell the product to me at the lower price because the pricing error is "obvious and unmistakeable" and could have been recognised by me, but there is nothing to suggest that I should know that a discount is unmistakeable. The phone is still a good part over £700 and seemed to be that price for a limited time only

[BankFodder]

So do the maths for me please – you are out of pocket by how much?

[mrdonj]

At the moment £744.03

 

They said I'd be refunded within 3-5 working days

 

If I were to re-order at the actual price they want for the phone with student discount, I'd need to pay an extra £335

Edited November 10, 2021 by mrdonj

[BankFodder]

So after you get refunded – which I'm sure you will – you will be out of pocket £335 – correct?

[mrdonj]

Yeah I'd need to cough up an extra £335 to actually get the phone

[BankFodder]

OK well that is what you need to sue them for in order to enforce the contract.

If you're interested in this then start reading up on the steps involved taking a small claim in the county court.

 

It is straightforward but it is worth knowing the steps in advance

 

[mrdonj]

looks like I have some reading to do. Do I have to do anything before I start the procedure with MCOL?

[BankFodder]

This forum is about self empowerment. You should read around enough to know the answers to these questions and you have been here since 2015.

We will help you – but we need to feel that you are invested as well

[BazzaS]

The key here (other than the self-help BF alludes to!) is that they took your miney

(assuming they did actually take it and you can show this on a bank or credit card statement).

 

You are then in a strong position to argue they accepted the consideration (money in this situation), causing the contract to become crystallised.

 

You are n much less certain ground if the payment was showing as “pending” rather than actually taken.

 

Keep screenshots / records of all.

[BankFodder]

I'm afraid I disagree that the money needs to have been taken. By their own terms, they need only have identified the item for dispatch and at that point the contract is made. They are entitled to sue for the money – and you are entitled to sue for the item.

The transfer of the money becomes a formality. Of course it is helpful to show that the money has been paid – but it isn't essential

[Ethel Street]

4 hours ago, mrdonj said:

....We may refuse to accept your order:

(a) where the Product is not available;
(b) where we cannot obtain authorisation for your payment;
(c) if there has been a pricing or Product description error (see ‘Price and Payment’ below); or
(d) if you do not meet the eligibility criteria set out in ‘Your Status’ above.

 

You need to read the 'Price and Payment' section of their T&C too - it's where they are quoting "obvious and unmistakeable" error from [my bold]:

 

• Price and payment

  1. The price of the Products will be as quoted on our website from time to time, except in cases of obvious error. Product prices include VAT at the prevailing rate. The price quoted on our website for Products excludes delivery charges which are quoted separately on our website.
  
  2. Product prices and delivery charges are subject to change at any time, but changes will not affect orders in respect of which we have already sent you a Dispatch Confirmation.
  
  3. Our website contains a large number of Products and it is always possible that, despite our best efforts, some of the Products listed on our website may be incorrectly priced. We will normally verify prices as part of our dispatch procedures so that, where a Product's correct price is less than our stated price, we will charge the lower amount when dispatching the Product to you. If a Product's correct price is higher than the price stated on our website, we will normally, at our discretion, either contact you for instructions before dispatching the Product, or reject your order and notify you that we are rejecting it. If the pricing error is obvious and unmistakeable and could have reasonably been recognised by you as an error, we do not have to provide the Products to you at the incorrect (lower) price.
  
  4. Payment for all Products must be made either by credit or debit card or by PayPal and is collected on our behalf by Worldpay. We accept payment by Visa Debit, Visa Credit, Mastercard, American Express, Maestro and PayPal. A payment by credit or debit card will only be charged at or shortly after the time you place your order.

  
  5. Price discounts and promotions are not stackable: Multiple promotional discounts cannot be applied together onto one product. In the event that more than one discount can be applied to a single product, the customer will receive the one discount offer with the highest value.

[BankFodder]

So now we need to see the ad

[BankFodder]

In fact I see that there was quite a lot of publicity about Samsung week. Both on the Samsung site 

Life Unstoppable | Experiences | Samsung UK

WWW.SAMSUNG.COM

---

The official page for Life Unstoppable. Take an immersive tour into our house of surprises and discover our uniquely innovative Samsung products.

And also in the newspapers.

Start getting screenshots of everything you can which rambles on about prices being/, extraordinary surprises – anything.

Clearly Samsung have been hyping it up. Samsung are talking about "amazing offers". I don't find that a reduction of about £100 is especially amazing.

I would have thought that it wouldn't be too difficult to find sufficient publicity and wild claims to support your argument that although the discount was substantial, it simply amounted to "amazing" and a retail price which had been "slashed".

The Samsung week was apparently tied into black Friday and intended to pre-empt black Friday.

Get yourself a good half a dozen or so sources. Get the screenshots and link us to them and then we'll give you our view as to whether it's worth a punt

[mrdonj]

I'll definitely do some reading to self-help

 

Money was taken and has been with them since 3rd November, not pending

 

"If the pricing error is obvious and unmistakeable and could have reasonably been recognised by you as an error, we do not have to provide the Products to you at the incorrect (lower) price"

 

This is where I intend to fight my case. I don't see anywhere on the website to suggest that the pricing is abnormal. I don't have my own screenshots but there are some from HotDeals that I can show 

 

 

 

 

docs2.pdf

[BankFodder]

Well start getting your own screenshots. You will be amazed how quickly these things disappear once it's all over.

It's up to you to gather evidence

[mrdonj]

Frustrating that a lot of samsung week pages simply link back to the current UK offers page. Cached google doesn't bring much up either. I do have a few screenshots I've collected though. Will spend a bit more time looking and then put some images in here

[Ethel Street]

You could also usefully do some research online for law sites that discuss when a retailer can cancel a contract because of pricing errors. 

 

A quick search bought this one up, as an example.

 

How to protect your site against pricing errors

WWW.PINSENTMASONS.COM

 

Although it's advising sellers rather than customers (and is some 10 years old) the examples they cite are interesting because in all of them the price at which the product was offered was a tiny fraction of the price it should have been - a £349 TV for 49 pence, a £250 computer for £7, etc.

 

I have no legal qualifications but my instinct is that Samsung will struggle in court to show that a product that was advertised at a discount of 30% off its normal price (£744 -vs- £1,079) is a pricing error that is "obvious and unmistakeable and could have reasonably been recognised by you as an error".

 

30% discounts in online sales promotions are commonplace. You could not, in my opinion, reasonably have been expected to recognise it as an error.

 

[mrdonj]

This is what I've rustled up so far. A couple aren't from the UK but figured it would highlight that Samsung Week was a global thing

 

Don't know if it will do any good, but would bringing up the fact that Dell honoured a price error just a few days ago because they marked the items for dispatch be worthwhile?

docs3.pdf

[BankFodder]

I think the reasoning of my site team colleague @Ethel Street is spot on. Use this as the basis of your argument supported by the evidence that you are discovering on the Internet

[BankFodder]

4 minutes ago, mrdonj said:

Don't know if it will do any good, but would bringing up the fact that Dell honoured a price error just a few days ago because they marked the items for dispatch?

No

[Ethel Street]

Some other research you could do is see if you can find listings of both (a) all Samsung phones crrently on sale and (b) all Android phones from all manufacturers currently on sale, ranked in price order, highest to lowest.

 

The reason I suggest that is because having recently bought an Android phone myself I know that even the supposedly error price of £744 is still a very expensive Android phone. My guess is that £744 would still put it in the top 25% most expensive Android phones currently on the market. See if you can find some data to support my guess. 

 

That would be another bit of evidence to put before a judge to show it's unreasonable for you to recognise a phone priced at £744 as "an obvious and unmistakeable error".

 

Frankly they are trying it on.