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

[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.

[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.

 

[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. 

[Ethel Street]

2 minutes ago, mrdonj said:

The S21 Ultra has nearly been out for a whole year and its price has been dropping constantly

 

That's the phone you bought?

 

Gather evidence on its price drops too. Yet another piece of evidence to include in a claim to demonstrate there was no reasonable grounds for you to recognise £744 as an error.

[Ethel Street]

20 minutes ago, mrdonj said:

Oh yes, totally forgot. Someone from hotdeals made a point that contracts can be classed as  void "Ab Initio" from the beginning for a pricing error even when a contract is formed. Don't know how truthful that is

 

Load of rubbish. I wouldn't rely on hotdeals for legal advice.

 

If it were true that the contract was void ab initio it wouldn't be helpful for you. That would mean the contract, in law, never existed. Therefore you wouldn't be able to sue Samsung for breach of contract and definitely wouldn't get the phone for £744.

 

There's a contract, it's in writing, and it has a clause dealing with the situation when the seller initially agrees to sell at a price less than they intended and then refuses to complete the sale. Your dispute with Samsung is about how to interpret that clause. It's a classic contract dispute that is bread and butter for the courts. The two parties to the contract disagree over what the words mean and the court has to decide whose interpretation is correct.

[Ethel Street]

As the 14th is only 2 days away maybe hang fire and see if it does arrive before sending off a letter of claim. If the phone does arrive then problem sorted, you've got the phone for £744 plus a 5% off coupon for future purchases as well. (Have I understood that correctly?)

[Ethel Street]

If I've understood you correctly @mrdonj

 

(a) You now have the phone you wanted at the price you originally paid - £744

(b) £75 compensation for your time and  trouble

(c) a 5% discount voucher for any future purchases you make from Samsung UK, valid until 31 December 2021.

 

Is that correct?

 

If so, are you satisfied with that outcome?

 

If yes, then sorted! A good outcome. 

 

I'm sure Samsung's lawyers told them what we said here, that Samsung's claim the website  price was an "obvious and unmistakeable error" would never stand up in court.