dabs.com foul up - please help

Chief

Dear all,

The other day I was browsing on dabs for a couple of items when I decided to check the clearance items section. Low and behold I spotted around £2000 worth of gear with prices running as low a 0p and 11p. So I thought i would give it a go and order the stuff, the majority of the stuff arrived during the week and I'd heard nothing from dabs.com. On Monday I placed and order for another few items (the errors have never reappeared since the last order) that I needed and had noticed that the order refused to clear. I rang dabs to ask what was going on and promptly received the following mail:

Dear ******* *******,



Customer service have asked me to inform you that the previous sales order that was processed, put items through at incorrect prices. They need to you pay the correct system price for the items or we will have to collect them from you.



Please advise.



Best Regards

******* *********

dabs.com plc


Can anyone tell me legally where I stand? Thank you for your help folks....

KdjaCL

Afaik once sale is made thats it ,they invoiced you with the price and you paid so thats it they can do nothing.

BUT they an english website and i not a solicitor ring citizens advice ,i was in a similiar position few years ago and was told i had to give back the free 32" widescreen tv i got as it was a mistake on shops part (i didnt in the end).

kdjac

Victor

It's fuzzy. If it's a genuine pricing mistake a seller is entitled to refuse sale. The thing here is the sale went trough.

Now I suspect you realise that the price was wrong, did you mention to them it was wrong?

Its harsh on them, but I suspect the law is on your side for anything you paid money for. If you paid nothing for something, I wouldn't be so sure as there was no "consideration" (one of the three essentials of a contract).

How about making a settlement with them - somewhere well below £2,000?

Sceptre might be a good person to ask.

elexes

hmm

truly they are at fault
it was there fault that they quoted sold and sent out the items u ordered .

you entered a contract with the sale and agreed to the terms quoted by them at the time . once the sale was gone through ( it has gone through right ? ) the contract is over .

its there fault they quoted and accepted the wrong ammount .
unless they can prove that it was a computer fault there aint much they can do ( im sure they could do this if they tried )

but u shoudl tell them that you will box up everything and leave it for them to collect as it was not the deal you expected . once uve boxed up the items you could give them a time to collect the items by . ( a month or so ) and after that point charge them for storage . note its up to them to refund you the total price of the goods


i think im right on this somone else will prob say im wrong but wait and see

aphex™

They dont sound very sure of themselves in that email to you. They might feel that you might get away with it. Ofcourse they'll try and ask you to send it back (thats what the discussion here is about) but their tone isn't like "We'll have the cops round if you dont give us the goods first".

Just don't reply and the problem might fizzle away. Really, i dont imagine a judge or anything telling you to hand the stuff back after THEY shipped it off to you. Sale completed. (just an opinion, im not a lawyer).

And hey they're in a different country (aren't they?), so tell them to buzz off.

secret_squirrel

I think in these cases the companies usually have a get out clause if they can prove you *knowingly* bought them at prices that werent correct. (Its a similar situation to the banks mistransfering 10k into your account and you going on a spending spree *knowing* it was a mistake.

However since they were in the clearance section I would have thought you were ok, since you would expect silly prices there. (Or at least thats what you could argue legally)

Didnt amazon get stung on cheaply priced pda's a coupla years ago? I know they cancelled most of the orders but I think some ppl got them charged and delivered before amazon caught on.

sceptre

OK, let's preface this with "I am not a practising lawyer" and contract law was not one of my favourite areas but here's how I see it:

After the Amazon debacle (see below) it's been made pretty clear that even on the internet pressing the buy button and paying doesn't constitute any more than an offer on goods that a retailer is under no obligation to accept. A case could be made that if money is taken from your credit card and you get an email saying that the goods will be dispatched soon that this is an acceptance of your offer but a court probably wouldn't run with this one, though they'd have to think about it. In any case all the smart retailers now include a disclaimer at the bottom of such an email that it's not an acceptance of the offer.

This however is different. They've sent you some of the goods. Pretty much all legal decisions in sane jurisdictions have held that an offer is irrevocable (and hence a contract is in place and irrevocable) once performance has commenced. By performance of course I mean their putting the goods in a box and sending them to you. Their legal people will be familiar with (or can at least look up) two of the relevant UK decisions - Daulia Ltd v Four Millbank Nominees (1978) and Offord v Davies (1862 (it's old but still relevant)) - where performance of contract terms was held to be indicative of acceptance. There aren't any UK cases saying the opposite as far as I can see.

Basically you've made an offer, it's been accepted as indicated by their performance, you've paid consideration and as far as I can see they can sod off. If you haven't received all the gear from your first order you could probably seek to enforce that and get them to send you the rest of the gear but what I'd do is send them a note telling them that any court will interpret their performance of the terms of the contract as formal acceptance of the offer, mentioning the two decisions above and say that you'll call it quits at that if they go away and let you keep the goods as you're legally entitled to do. And that you'll accept an email confirming that or else you'll seek to enforce the remaining purchases on the part-fulfilled first order (put this bit nicely and coat it with sugar). As secret-squirrel mentioned it's pretty relevant that this stuff was in the clearance section as it makes your case stronger. Komplett had a pretty good sale lately and I picked up some stuff at 5% of the retail price and none of it was an error. It's not actually anything like a bank transferring money into your account by mistake as in the case of a bank error it can be easily verified that it was a mistake and there's no contract backing it up. I'd keep the gear and be pretty sure that the law was on my side.

Incidentally, not that it really matters, but UK precedent (Entores Ltd v Miles Far East Corporation) would indicate that the contract was made under Irish law rather than UK law. Because this is such a large potential for internet retailers, Dabs have presumably a clause in their conditions that all sales are subject to UK law (everyone has it so I'd be amazed if they didn't) which makes the two above decisions relevant.

How much did you actually pay (not including shipping)? I'm just being nosey.

Originally posted by secret_squirrel
Didnt amazon get stung on cheaply priced pda's a coupla years ago? I know they cancelled most of the orders but I think some ppl got them charged and delivered before amazon caught on.

They didn't actually get stung per se. It was Kodak cameras offered at £99 instead of the intended £299. Amazon rightly pointed out that the offer isn't accepted till they say it is and told people to shag off. They eventually fulfilled most of the orders and took the hit (as they've done with DVD pricing errors) but that was more down to PR than a legal obligation. These days they cover themselves pretty well with a nice disclaimer about being able to revoke the sale at any time before goods are shipped. There's a clear distinction between this and what happened to Chief the jammy bastard though.

halkar

From the mail you got looks like it will not be possible for you to shop from them unless you pay the full amount of what you bought. If you don't care about shopping with them anymore I'd say ignore the e-mail and wait for the next one. Its not your fault that you ordered some stuff from clearence sale. They are there to clear so it is possible that one might not know the real price of the item and the site doesn't tell you the price of the items before they move to clearance sale. So it is possible that you did not know how much the items cost before sale. Yeah yeah we know you did know but pretend . Seriously, ignore the mail, wait for the next one and see where it leads you from there. If I were you I would tell them to f off Your order goes through few people before it gets to you so let whoever made the mistake to pay for it

By the way what did you buy you lucky shopper?
If things gets out of control sell what you bought and tell dabs you don't have it anymore

KdjaCL

Right Sceptre has filled you in with the legal details ,now what did you buy?

Plasma Tv for 11p?


kdjac

Chief

##UPDATE##

Hello folks, just got another email from the dabs.com crowd, I was going to take your advice on ignoring them... any thoughts on this latest email...


Dear Mr *****,



I have just listened to your voice mail which you left for ***** ******, and read the notes on your order.



If the price on the goods was slightly less than that which it should have been, then I would agree with you in stating that it was a grey area, but as the price of the goods could not possibly be that which was quoted, then this is classed that you took advantage of a situation and error which we had.



The total value of the goods which you received was £1353.68, and the price which you paid was only £194.83, so this was obviously a problem with the pricing on your account.



This has been confirmed by Trading Standards authority, as it was obvious that the price we quoted where incorrect at the time you placed your order.



Please either return these item back to us for a full credit on the amount you paid, or confirm that we can bill you for the actual cost of these goods.

---

***** *****
Customer Services Manager
dabs.com plc
www.dabs.com





PS. Thanks for all the help from you guys, I got a sony pda, digital camera and a few other bits n pieces from them, cheers!

spongebob

You got them at 15% of face value, good one .

I recall a recent Komplett clearance where many items were down to 10-15% of face value. This was a clearance sale of end of line items too ....and entirely legitimate. We were actively encouraged on the Komplett Board to clean out the shelves in the warehouse to make room for the new stuff .

Had the goods appeared at these values in the 'normal' part of the website then DABS may have a (slight) case. DABS not only incorrectly tagged these prices, they also tagged the goods that were mispriced as clearance items and not as normal 'carried' stock....where the discrepancy may have been noticeable beacuse one PDA was €50 in the middle of a stack of €500 PDA's .

As you felt that they were discontinuing these lines it was not unreasonable to assume that they were being discounted heavily .... which is what you did .

Dabs will have a far more complete picture of Manufacturers policies that you, it is reasonable to assume they act accordingly. Sony discontinued PDA manufacturing last week which will dramatically reduce the value of ALL Sony PDA's for example. Dabs would have known before you did, is it nor reasonable with hindsight to assume they acted accordingly and cleared the items ?

Story of that http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/01/sony_exits_pda_biz/

As a corollary, would DABS have refunded you the depreciation on a discontinued SONY PDA as quickly ........had you paid full price last week before the Sony announcement that they probably knew was coming and found out it had halved in value by the time you actually got it ???

UK "trading standards" have no legal effect in Ireland as you cannot be described as a UK consumer subject to UK consumer law .....when you have no rights under said law being an Irish Consumer.

HTH

M

Our man in Havana

UK "trading standards" have no legal effect in Ireland as you cannot be described as a UK consumer subject to UK consumer law .....when you have no rights under said law being an Irish Consumer.

The thing to remember is that they have his credit card details and they could decide to charge his card for the balance.

EKRIUQ

Originally posted by Bond-007
The thing to remember is that they have his credit card details and they could decide to charge his card for the balance.

Charging anyones credit card without there permission would be seen as fraud and if dabs thought it would be as easy as that I'm sure that they would have done it by now.

Where dabs are caught over a barrell is that consideration was paid for the goods and they were shipped bolting the door when the horse has bolted is no good. Its like if they to succeed with getting the goods back or getting the purchaser to pay their increased price would make a mockery of online buying. And open the door to companies to charge extra after a transaction is completed.

Is there any sale of contract law that gives a company a reasonable amount of time to rectify their mistakes?

spongebob

If they had a leg to stand on they woulda done so already. He can simply get it reversed off by his CC issuer anyway.

M

Chief

Thanks to all for your help! and using your help i've emailed them the following:

Dear Mr *******,

Firstly you may not bill us again for the goods as payment has been made in full as per your invoice.

Secondly had the goods appeared in the 'normal' part of the DABS website then you may have had a (slight) case. It also appears that you tagged the goods, that were according to you "mis-priced" as clearance items (because we ordered them from 'Clearance Corner') and not as normal 'carried' stock. So it was not unreasonable for us to assume that the prices were correct.

Thirdly any court will interpret your performance of the terms of the contract as formal acceptance of the offer (Relevant UK Decisions - Daulia Ltd v Four Millbank Nominees (1978) and Offord v Davies (1862) - where performance of contract terms was held to be indicative of acceptance.) We shall let this matter rest if you email us confirming that you will let us keep the goods as we are legally entitled to do so.

Yours sincerely,

******* *******


So hopefully that will do the job, again, thanks for the help folks, I'll keep you lot updated!

Chief

They just emailed back.. being a little more threatening.. maybe I should just ignore them completely...


Dear Mr ********,

Please confirm by return as to which option you wish to take from the below.

a) - Return all the goods for a refund on return
b) - Pay the full price of the goods
c) - Take this matter to court (cost & expenses will be applied for)

I am sorry if this seems strict, but we believe that you have taken advantage of an error, and buying items worth over £100.00 for 11p is an obvious error, which you proceeded to take advantage off by adding more items for this un-realistic price.

---

****** ******
Customer Services Manager
dabs.com plc
www.dabs.com

Email: ********@dabs.com


Again thanks for all help... any more is also greatly appreciated

eth0_

Originally posted by Chief

c) - Take this matter to court (cost & expenses will be applied for)

tee hee hee! They are pretty thick if they think they can win this, afaik once you've paid and the goods have been delivered they haven't a leg to stand on.

spongebob

http://www.tradingstandards.net/pages/faq.htm

---

I saw goods marked at low price in a shop but the shop refused to sell them to me. Can they do this?

Yes. A shop is not bound to sell you anything, or at any price on display. They are making an invitation to treat, and the invitation can be withdrawn at any time before acceptance. However, price indications should not be misleading. If they are, it could be an offence under the Consumer Protection Act 1987 and should be reported to your local Trading Standards Office

What if the shop tells me to get lost?

If the shop ultimately refuses to refund your money and you feel you have a good case you must take action yourself - consider taking them to court, you can use the small claims procedure depending on the value of the goods [or services] is less than 750ukp [in Scotland] or 5000ukp [in England] - reduced to 1000ukp for claims involving personal injury. Court fees vary and you should check your local court service for details, or try courtservice.gov.uk or scotcourts.gov.uk.
You would be best to get advice first, as in certain circumstances you may be liable for costs - your local trading standards office will provide advice free of charge, and may even help you fill in forms.
What if the price is on a website and I order it and give my card details?

It's just the same as above - if the retailer has not gone as far as accepting your offer - which might be debiting your credit or debit card then they will be able to decline your offer to buy the goods at that price - of course they should take steps to amend the website details as soon as possible after they find out about the error. This is a more complex issue however than for a shop purchase, and acceptance of your offer may depend on a number of factors including the sellers terms and conditions, and will likely vary from case to case.

---

They accepted your offer to treat ! They debited your card. They are the Trader . You are not the Trader and are therefore not obliged to follow Trading Standards. Nor can you get protection from Trading Standards as you are not a UK Consumer .

Give em Mucks 3rd Law Of Post Millenial e-Commerce

"a DABS clearance sale is not worth the proxy server it was unintentionally cached upon "

or tell them you will return them once they start to pay their VAT here like Komplett do (their turnover is over €30 in Ireland so they should )

M

Cyrus

as far as i can see ( as a rusty former law student) this is similar to all these instances of items being advertised at incorrect low prices on the internet and people ordering only to be told to get lost by the etailer once they have realised the error,

as there was an invitation to treat but no conclusion to the transaction the buyer hadnt a leg to stand on

But the difference here is that they charged you, issued a receipt and furnished you with the goods, i cannot see how they are in the right.

Best of luck to ya buddy dont back down, and i would ask them to cite the relevant legislation that makes them think they have a case

sceptre

Originally posted by Chief
They just emailed back.. being a little more threatening.. maybe I should just ignore them completely...


Dear Mr ********,

Please confirm by return as to which option you wish to take from the below.

a) - Return all the goods for a refund on return
b) - Pay the full price of the goods
c) - Take this matter to court (cost & expenses will be applied for)

I presume they mean that they'll take the matter to court (rather than offering you the option to?)

Unless there's a
d) - Do none of the above

Basic contract law (as I mentioned above, I didn't continue with that nasty law stuff but I can still do basic contract law) would seem to indicate that there was a contract, they fulfilled their side, Chief fulfilled his side and that's the contract concluded.

Now they want more money. Chief didn't know for certain that the goods were mispriced (might have had a damn good inkling that he won't be mentioning to them at any time but then again he might not - that Komplett sale was one serious sale). It was in the clearance section - to be honest if I saw a good deal there I wouldn't think twice about it.

Like Cyrus, I'd be interested to hear the relevant legislation that makes them think they've a leg to stand on. You're covered under the UK Sales Of Goods Act, covered under the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 Mewnwhile Dabs are members of the PC Association [1] (their code of practice is worth a quick look) which re-iterates their commitment to the Sales of Goods Act (not that they get a choice) and includes nice lines like "Where credit card payment is made, members will stick to the terms and conditions of whichever credit card company the customer is using" (Chief - get a copy of the terms and conditions of your CC issuer if you can), "Members must take all reasonable steps to promptly resolve customer complaints and disputes, recognising that prolonged disputes are bad for their business and bad for the standing of the Association and its members as a whole.", offers an arbitration process and handily a complaints process where you could complain about dabs having broken the PC Association Code of Practice (which is certainly worth looking into)

I've some sympathy (not a lot I suppose) for dabs, as I would for any business that may (or may not) have made a pricing error. However, they had a number of opportunities to notice this error (assuming it's an error - you've no verification that it was an error) - on acceptance of your offer, on putting through the credit card payment (they have debited your card, yeah?, before putting the goods in a box and sending them.

To be honest when you're talking goods of this value, it might be worth the few quid that a solicitor would charge to check it out and give a formal answer to the question. I've little doubt that it's their fault and that you're in the clear. However get a proper legal opinion and you can then complain them to the PC Association as well as Trading Standards (see Muck's link)


[1]It shouldn't be forgotten that this association is one of those things set up by the industry so they can wave a big flag and swear blind that they don't need government regulation. To which I say "pooh" but get a legal opinion from a practising solicitor or from the UK Trading Standards and you can use them to make Dabs go away. Or use their code of practice and the Sales of Goods Act 1979 (as amended) and the Sale and Supply of Goods to Consumers Regulations 2002 (the big new amendment)on them

I'll say this obvious point though - do not offer to pay any more money than you have (regardless of how small). As far as you're concerned, the goods were on clearance discount.

l3rian

well played Chief!

dont budge an inch, be really slow with replying to their emails, ignore all their threats, and enjoy all your cheap stuff

oh i nearly forgot, CANCEL your credit card, it wont cost a penny and it will rule out any possibility of dabs charging you anything, think about it: they could just charge you and then you would be the one singing for your money back, and dabs will be ignoring all your emails and leaving it months till they refund you

Our man in Havana

Originally posted by l3rian
well played Chief!

dont budge an inch, be really slow with replying to their emails, ignore all their threats, and enjoy all your cheap stuff

oh i nearly forgot, CANCEL your credit card, it wont cost a penny and it will rule out any possibility of dabs charging you anything, think about it: they could just charge you and then you would be the one singing for your money back, and dabs will be ignoring all your emails and leaving it months till they refund you

Good advice there about cancelling the credit card. Make sure that they issue a new number.

eth0_

Originally posted by Muck

or tell them you will return them once they start to pay their VAT here like Komplett do (their turnover is over €30 in Ireland so they should )

M

Why would they have to pay VAT when they aren't based in Ireland?

sceptre

Originally posted by eth0_
Why would they have to pay VAT when they aren't based in Ireland?

EU regulations - intra-Community / cross-border sales get charged VAT at the rate of the destination country (& gets paid to the exchequer of the destination country) where any retailer sells over a particular amount of goods to that other EU country. From a certain perverted point of view this facilitates fair cross-border retailer competition (and doesn't cost the purchaser's government a penny in lost VAT) (it's a question for another thread as to whether this is total BS)

Chief

Going on a little advice
I decided to get in touch with the register, nice bloke on the phone to us a few minutes ago. He said this (to his knowledge) is the first time that this has happened (as the goods were despatched and not just paid for). So we shall see how it goes and will let you guys know whats happening (or you might even read it on theregister.co.uk .

Take it easy folks,

|Chief|

DMT

If they were to take Chief to court, would they have to do this in Ireland as a UK court has no juristriction here?

Mr E

I'm sure Chief isn't the only one who spotted the cockup on the site. Dabs are probably trying to bully quite a few people to send the goods back (or pay full whack). If The Reg link to this thread, you might get a few others in here to back you up.

Victor

Originally posted by DMT
If they were to take Chief to court, would they have to do this in Ireland as a UK court has no juristriction here?

I'll defer to sceptre, but this would be covered by EU law, which as best I know - as this is retail distance selling - fall in Chief's favour. If it was a company to company sale it might be different.

jwall

We made an open and honest mistake on our site and a few customers benefited with a single item on their order. This customer in question who is a registered business customer of ours and has a special pricing arrangement from us was then able because of how our discounting rating works able to obtain a significant quantity of goods at around £0.11p per item. This was obviously a mistake on our behalf and every other customer we have stood by and allowed them to keep the goods.

This particular customer who decided to take advantage of our obvious mistake had been asked to return the goods to us at our expense.

We have not cited any legal terms of any sort because to us this is about ethics and not legalities.

In the past when we have made pricing mistakes we have stood by them and allowed our consumer customers to gain by our mistakes, this customer is a reseller of goods and we would like to think we could have agreed an amicable return of the goods.

Jonathan Wall
Director
dabs.com plc

Cyrus

obviously what will happen is that you will no longer do business with this man now

however the reason you are not citing legalities is because legally you have no comeback, id imagine you are well aware of this

jwall

We have taken advice in the past from Trading Standards who have said that if we can prove the offer was obviously a mistake, a Sony Port Replicator that should sell for £150+ for £0.00 would seem to be an obvious mistake, then we would possibly have a case.

In this case we have just asked the customer to return the goods in good faith. If he decides otherwise than that is up to him and we will then take a decision on what to do. We do not want to come over as being heavy handed in this and would just like to resolve matters amicably.

Jonathan Wall