Littlewoods Website Offer.

TallaghtHoop

This morning on the Littlewoods website they were selling a Balmoral Kitchen Table and Chairs valued at €899 for €21. It was obviously a mistake, which they now seem to have twigged, but not before me and a few friends ordered a couple. What are the chances on us ever receiving them? They have already debitted my card for the €21.

Zab

Are you sure they debited your card for the amount rather than just put a hold on it? That would be unusual.

Ken.

I'll put it to you this way. If you get the €900 item for €21 I'll give you the €21.

theteal

Ha ha, how did I know this would end up in here? There's a big thread in bargain alerts. Never going to be honoured - there's even a facebook page for people to share their "pain".

Obvious mistake is obvious - attempt to amass lots of potential customer info is not so obvious but possible

dudara

This topic is discussed to death every time one of these pricing mistakes happens.

Long and short - Littlewoods do not have to honour the price.

Thread closed
dudara

dudara

Thread reopened, as I believe that the Bargain Alerts thread has been closed.

However, I do not want any of the After Hours type behaviour exhibited in BA in this forum. Any off topic posts will result in infractions/warnings.

dudara

subway

thanks dudara.

the link from the irish examiner, and the advice from the NCA which i believe is shockingly bad, is likely to encourage this "debate" deeper into insanity

http://www.irishexaminer.com/text/ireland/kfididmhmhkf/

However, the chairman of the Consumers Association said anyone who bought the furniture for the knockdown €21 price is entitled to their goods — and if they do not get them they should take a case to the small claims court.

lets see how this plays out, it could set an interesting precedent if the advise stands (which going by all previous judegements, it wont).

did anyone listen to joe today?

dudara

I *personally* believe that this is shockingly bad advice from the chairman of the Consumers Association and will cause people to waste their time pursuing something to which they're not entitled.

Generally, a contract is formed when money exchanges hands. This is fine in the old days, when a shop assistant would physically take the money. This would give them a chance to realise if there was a pricing error, and if so, reject the sale.

Now, in the modern world, with automated charging of cards, pricing errors are not so quickly spotted. There is literally no manual intervention until later in the process. Organisations have to have the right to refuse obvious mispricing, even if cards are charged.Otherwise, they would have to honour every pricing error, which could be extremely costly. Imagine if a little small business made this mistake and they had to honour it. It could sink their business.

But the topic of serial mispricing is another story - this is not the first time this has happened with Littlewoods. It may bear further investigation.

subway

serial mispricing by littlewoods is one aspect of this, outweighed completely IMO, by the sheer number of people who purchased the item, full well knowing it was a mistake.
i believe that, given the thread on BA where this originated, not a single one of them can claim they thought it was a genuine offer.
its outrageous and a judge will see sense, i hope.

in terms of the transfer of funds, my cursory understanding is that in online transactions, the money is reserved on the card until the retailed accepts it.
in theory, the real life equivalent action is me putting 50euro on the counter and calling that an acceptance, as "you have my money".

Zab

dudara wrote: »

Generally, a contract is formed when money exchanges hands. This is fine in the old days, when a shop assistant would physically take the money. This would give them a chance to realise if there was a pricing error, and if so, reject the sale.

Is it not customary to not charge the card until later in the sales process? If Littlewoods don't do it like that, why do they not?

If the consumer doesn't get a right to change of mind it's hard to see why the retailer should.

That said, I can't pretend that the situations are exactly the same. Kilcoyne's advise seems rash, but he did say it to people who bought "in good faith". Seeing as nobody reasonable thought this was an special offer rather than pricing error it seems likely that his advice applies to nobody.

subway

Zab wrote: »

Kilcoyne's advise seems rash, but he did say it to people who bought "in good faith". Seeing as nobody reasonable thought this was an special offer rather than pricing error it seems likely that his advice applies to nobody.

if you read the BA / facebook, you will certainly see plenty of people claiming they thought it was a special offer. i would say they are unreasonable also, but it seems they are sticking to their guns.
perhaps laughing about littlewoods staff losing their jobs will show them up as just being greedy, rather than hard done by?

Melendez

This post has been deleted.

Zab

Melendez wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

A good point. I overlooked that.

omahaid

The same thing happened in 2009 with a computer on the littlewoods website (there is a thread hanging around). Unless some laws have changed since then I would have to say to not expect the table/chairs.

Have to remark though, littlewoods have really handled this badly.

Skid

subway wrote: »

thanks dudara.

the link from the irish examiner, and the advice from the NCA which i believe is shockingly bad, is likely to encourage this "debate" deeper into insanity

http://www.irishexaminer.com/text/ireland/kfididmhmhkf/


lets see how this plays out, it could set an interesting precedent if the advise stands (which going by all previous judegements, it wont).

did anyone listen to joe today?

It did not feature on Liveline, although it was mentioned in a trailer during The Ronan Collins Show at about 12.45pm

I am more concerned about the ridiculous advice given from the Chairman of the NCA, as mentioned in the Examiner as quoted by subway.

However, the chairman of the National Consumers’ Association of Ireland, Michael Kilcoyne, said anyone who bought the furniture in good faith for the €21 should insist on delivery of the goods.

"My view is: you have purchased it, you have paid for it, so a contract is formed," he said. "In my view, you have formed a contract the minute you hand over the money or your card is debited."

Mr Kilcoyne said buyers were entitled to their furniture "and if they do not get it they should sue Littlewoods".

That is no better than your average 'I'm entitled to it, I'm going to the Small Claims Court' rant. Mr. Kilcoyne should really identify the relevant legislation rather than adding fuel to the fire of this mess.

subway

omahaid wrote: »

Have to remark though, littlewoods have really handled this badly.

Personally I feel they were railroaded and hounded by a bunch of lunatics over a weekend.
The poor agents trying to handle the sm complaints did their best and were not dealing with rational humans.
I think there systems really let them down, evidenced by emails, calls and order updates being crossed, but that's what happens when everything has to be instant and your trying to resolve these things.

The only way to handle the flood of crap on their wall would have been to close comments, and that is sm suicide for a company

omahaid

It was mispriced from Thursday to Sunday and they kept accepting orders even after they had admitted the pricing error, that's really not handling it well in my books.

subway

You have to ask yourself, when did they become aware of the error and how quickly could they resolve it?
Assuming the flood of orders Started after the bargain was posted on Saturday night, that's probably what triggered the investigation.
Being that they probably have no decision makers working over a weekend, the response is to stop ship on all orders, pending a decision, usually once they reach the on call duty manager.
The on call manager more than likely supported the stop ship and told customer care to issue the cancellation / investigation notice.

All I can ask, is what do you expect from them?
Common sense in these things, for the bargain hunter, is keep quiet till your order ships.
Unfortunately, word got out over the weekend which caught the company and the purchasers out as the company had time to stop all orders in time for Monday morning.
A company won't notice a price issue until someone tells them, either by ordering too many or by letting them know.

Again, I'd like to hear how you believe a company can identify pricing errors and what to do to handle then when identified out of hours?

omahaid

Seriously, it went from €900 to €21 and you think no system could have been in place to flag this (clearly none exists). And you think there was no way of pulling this product from their website on a weekend? And you must remember, this exact same thing happened in 2009, except with desktop computers instead of tables.

subway

Since you haven't properly responded to the general version of these questions, I'll ask more directly.
How do you propose it would be flagged or avoided?
Do you know their price update procedure and therefore know what caused the failure and why it was missed?
Do you think they are not running an investigation today?
Do you know for a fact that this is the exact same root cause as the previous error?
Do you think they purposely allow things like this to happen?
Is your issue now changed from their follow up response to the fact that any error could ever possibly occur?

omahaid

subway wrote: »

Since you haven't properly responded to the general version of these questions, I'll ask more directly.

I'm happy to answer more directly.

subway wrote: »

How do you propose it would be flagged or avoided?

To my mind this is very simple. If any product is reduced to ~ 2% of it's original value it requires a managers sign off. I presume this is not in place, if it is then there are other questions to answer.

subway wrote: »

Do you know their price update procedure and therefore know what caused the failure and why it was missed?

How would I know that?

subway wrote: »

Do you think they are not running an investigation today?

I don't think so. This same incident occurred in 2009 and they obviously didn't fix it then.

subway wrote: »

Do you know for a fact that this is the exact same root cause as the previous error?

No, I don't work for Littlewoods. I'm only surprised that the same error could occur again.

subway wrote: »

Do you think they purposely allow things like this to happen?

I don't know, I don't see much evidence that they handle these situations all that well.

subway wrote: »

Is your issue now changed from their follow up response to the fact that any error could ever possibly occur?

I genuinely don't understand this question.

How about you answer one question for me.

Do you think they could not have pulled this product from their website after they were alerted to the pricing error when you consider the incident in 2009?

celtic-chick

Hi all,I ordered the table & chairs for €21.I've just checked my account with littlewoods & the order seems to be in the middle of been processed.I have checked a few times over the weekend on their track & trace page & it was blank.
I wonder if we are going to get the table & chairs.Fingers crossed:D

dr strangelove

From Littlewoods' website:

2.2 When you submit an order to us on our website, you will receive a 'bounce back' confirmation email of this order saying that we are processing your order. You will then receive a second email from us acknowledging your order and giving you estimated timescales for delivery. You should check both emails for accuracy and let us know immediately if there are any errors. Neither of these emails constitute acceptance of the order by us. Your order will be accepted by us (and a contract will then be formed between us) when we despatch the goods to you. Title to the goods will pass to you on delivery.

3.2 Whilst it is our intention to keep our website up to date and error free, product description or pricing errors may occur. If we discover such an error after you have submitted an order to us, we will contact you prior to accepting your order with the correct details. You may then either cancel your order or re-confirm it based on the correct information. If we are unable to contact you, we will treat your order as cancelled.

(My bold.)

So, no, you're not going to get the stuff at that price.

rameire

littlewoods have also said on their facebook page that all of the orders have been cancelled.

littlejp

omahaid wrote: »

To my mind this is very simple. If any product is reduced to ~ 2% of it's original value it requires a managers sign off. I presume this is not in place, if it is then there are other questions to answer.

You'd be surprised how simple the back end systems for sites like Littlewoods are. So many things are inputted by the user which means there is a higher chance of user errors. Mistakes like this can happen. In a perfect world they wouldn't.

I do agree that they should have taken the item down once they were aware of it. I manage an e-commerce site and if something like this happened I could patch it up on my phone no matter where I was.

caz0078

Hi All

So much banging on here bout littlewoods said i throw a question into the fire.
I seen the 21 euro table on sunday nite which on littlewoods behalf this was bad managment considering it was up on site since thursday . I said id chance my arm as i do really badly need a new table. Watching my littlewoods account since then this morning when i log in and go to track my orders i see it says order processed and latest delivery date 16-4-12 . Hope this means il get it .

rameire

it doesnt, they are cancelling every order. you will not get the table.

NicsM

celtic-chick wrote: »

Hi all,I ordered the table & chairs for €21.I've just checked my account with littlewoods & the order seems to be in the middle of been processed.I have checked a few times over the weekend on their track & trace page & it was blank.
I wonder if we are going to get the table & chairs.Fingers crossed:D

Littlewoods are aware of the issue, there is no way any of these orders will slip through the cracks.

RacoonQueen

caz0078 wrote: »

Hi All

So much banging on here bout littlewoods said i throw a question into the fire.
I seen the 21 euro table on sunday nite which on littlewoods behalf this was bad managment considering it was up on site since thursday . I said id chance my arm as i do really badly need a new table. Watching my littlewoods account since then this morning when i log in and go to track my orders i see it says order processed and latest delivery date 16-4-12 . Hope this means il get it .

You won't get it.

I'd hazard a guess that the web guys don't work over the weekend/are on call for server issues etc and that's why the price stayed up all weekend.

caz0078

iv a friend who littlewoods is hounoring her order

rameire

thats great.
you can let us know how they are when they actually turn up. :rolleyes: