[want2know]

In the Netherlands this also happened some times on webshops.

And everytime a judge ruled people had to bring the goods back or should pay the full amount.

The reason is that it is very clear for the buyer it is a mistake. And almost all webshops have a legal notice about wrong or false prices.

[Freak_NL]

If I remember correctly, in these cases (bunk beds and televisions) the orders were never fulfilled. The court ruled that a sales contract is not binding if the buyer can reasonably suspect that the price shown is so absurdly low that an error on the side of the seller is apparent.

That is, you can try to order the item, but the seller has no legal obligation of fulfilling it if they can proof beyond reasonable doubt that a mistake was made, and can return the money instead.

[nickjj]

> The court ruled that a sales contract is not binding if the buyer can reasonably suspect that the price shown is so absurdly low that an error on the side of the seller is apparent.

How can you prove something like that in court in this camera case?

For example, let's say you were just getting into photography and were window shopping by browsing around Amazon's site.

You run into a camera that has a 4.7 average rating with 3,000+ reviews and the example pictures that people were posting look great to you. You have no idea about camera specs but you see it for $149, so you buy it. That doesn't seem too unrealistic, especially not when phones cost $1,000. You could totally think "oh, well $150 for just a camera sounds about right".

[ryanmercer]

>How can you prove something like that in court in this camera case?

Go look at the screenshots in the article it shows the prime savings at checkout:

>Prime Savings -$1,204.52

That is a pretty clear indication that "wow, this is astronomically discounted" which should reasonably clue any adult with their full mental faculties in to "something strange is going on here".

[michaelt]

I have Steam sales offering me games with 90% off, Groupon offering me 88% off a gym membership, and a local perpetually-going-out-of-business menswear shop offering me 90% off everything. Amazon themselves advertise used books priced from £0.01!

Admittedly, many camera enthusiasts probably knew the market rate for this sort of equipment - but the fact something has a 90% discount doesn't automatically prove it's mispriced.

[ryanmercer]

Software which is infinitely reproducible for (effectively) free once it is made, is a lot different than high end lenses and very complicated cameras with costly electronics and worked optical glass.

[XorNot]

Am I missing something here? A $1200 markdown isn't impossibly large.

[ryanmercer]

It's a 1200$ markdown on a 1300$ item.

[JustFinishedBSG]

Because you can infer that the "-99%" near the price is weird.

[nickjj]

The a6000 is normally $550 and was marked down to $95. That's not a big enough discount to infer it was a price mistake. Especially not when Amazon advertises this as one of the biggest discount days of the year.

[tripzilch]

And it's quite possible that a Dutch court would rule different in that particular case.

[LeonidasXIV]

This is because (at least in many shops in the EU) ordering does imply a sale, no contract has been made, it is only a notion of intent (which if you read the T&C in the order confirmation you'll find pretty often). The contract is only made when the company ships it, thus agreeing to the sale.

[Uberphallus]

Actually the contract is in place when the order is confirmed. At least from EU webshops it's common to receive two mails, one for order received, another for order confirmed (potentially hours or even days later).

This actually hit the spotlight recently in Spain as Dell advertised 1000-1800€ laptops for 29-35€ on their site[0]. Many people bought, received the first AND the second email around 5h later.

If it wasn't for that second email, they could cancel the order no questions asked, but actually someone on their side said "yep, this order looks fine" and clicked confirm. Consumer associations are hitting Dell with all their force.

[0] In Spanish: https://www.eldiario.es/tecnologia/portatiles-Dell-clientes-...

[mlonkibjuyhv]

My god Dell's webshop is a steaming pile of fun. I've only had to deal with being unable to order months on end - this sounds much more friendly!

[Uberphallus]

Not friendly, they canceled the orders, breaching their own contract and the law doing so. They went past the "no backsies" point in the transaction and they actually backed out.

[londons_explore]

With Amazon having big ads saying "massive discounts on prime day", I as a buyer might well consider $3000 down to $100 is in fact a massive discount rather than a mistake.

[mikorym]

I think that if Amazon does ship these (and it seems some already did) it's actually pretty neat advertisement for them. Any publicity is good publicity, right?

I wonder how much an advertisement campaign with this amount of buzz usually costs.

[novaRom]

Absolutely. It is a tiny fraction with significant publicity effect. It's even here on HN discussion.

[want2know]

Yes but it has more costs involved than just this.

For example the statistics of the brands Sony and Canon are now wrong and the budget of advertising is still as it was yesterday. So the bookkeepers have a lot of exta work to get this straight.

[john_minsk]

They won't even notice that. Data collection at this scale is anyway not 100% accurate. Especially for marketing purposes.

On the flip side if their data collection is that good they can see who was on the fence to purchase high-end gear for photo shooting, but bought the deal. That can lead to opening new demographics or targeting them with features people want from top models. Only having full information, you could argue which option is better.

I definitely hope that they don't have data at this level.

[mattashii]

> And everytime a judge ruled people had to bring the goods back or should pay the full amount.

This is slightly different from what I remember, so can you link me an example?

Last time I checked, the webshop must fulfill the order, unless the price is obviously wrong, and the webshop cannot force a return for something the customer has already recieved and paid for.

[want2know]

Here an example (in Dutch): http://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/inziendocument?id=ECLI:NL:G...

[mattashii]

Ah, I see. So, in short, you can be forced to return an order, but that is only because the order was not made with a "legal" price [0], so no legal transaction has taken place, and all that happened was you sending the webshop money without cause, and they mistakenly sending you a product, which both must be returned upon request by the other party.

[0] a "legal" price is a price which the customer would expect for such a product. But in a shop advertising "up to 60% off", a 50% off TV would still be legal price, even if it is a price error.

[want2know]

Yes. It is a little more complicated than I posted earlier, but the point is that not all parties agreed on the arrangement so there was no arrangement.

[ridaj]

I don't see anything here where it says people had to bring back TVs. Seems like orders were unilaterally cancelled by the seller.