Lawyers Pounce On Amazon's Pricing Blunder

by Robin Pilgrim, LawAndTax-News.com, London

02 April 2003

A group of lawyers has decided to challenge Amazon.co.uk's decision not to honour orders for mispriced hand-held PCs, according to a report from the Revolution UK magazine.

A spokesperson for the lawyers, who have chosen not to be named at this stage of the proceedings explained that:

'I am appalled by the decision Amazon has taken not to honour these contracts. Had Amazon offered all those who sought to purchase the reduced-price handheld PCs one such product, without admitting any obligation to do so, it would have gained a great deal of publicity and goodwill and avoided any legal claims under its inadequately worded terms and conditions.'

In a statement released immediately following the mispricing incident which created demand for the product so high that it knocked the internet retailer's UK site offline for several hours, Amazon announced that:

'In keeping with our Conditions of Use and our Pricing and Availability Policy, we will be cancelling orders made for the HP iPAQ Pocket PCs at the incorrect price this morning. As the Conditions of Use clearly state, there is no contract between Amazon.co.uk and the customer for an item until Amazon.co.uk accepts the customer order by e-mail confirming that it has dispatched the item. Until that time, Amazon.co.uk is within its rights not to accept any customer order.'

However, the lawyers have challenged this assertion, on the grounds that the customer's attention is not drawn to the company's terms and conditions at any point during the ordering process (for instance via a tick box, prompting them to accept in order to continue with the transaction), and that the information provided on the technical steps required to complete a contract online, and within the terms and conditions themselves is both ambiguous and complex.

This contravenes the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts regulations, which state that terms and conditions must be intelligible and expressed in plain language, according to the lawyers.

However, other experts have suggested that the group is unlikely to force the online retailing giant to back down, as according to Trading Standards guidance on the subject, case law indicates that if the buyer recognises that a price is a mistake but chooses to take advantage of that mistake anyway, he or she has no right to insist that the original price be upheld.

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