If there were reason to believe this was blatant false advertising to lure unwitting customers, then there would be hell to raise. That doesn’t sound like the case here so I’d shrug it off.
That is a misquote. And your positition is a pot of poppycock.
One possibility- when the wines were entered into the POS system (and by POS I mean point of sale and not what some of us think of when dealing with often archaic inventory management systems), the clerk accidentally treated them as 375s- which can happen whether or not that wine actually exists in 375 format.
I worked in wine retail in college/grad school, and this kind of mistake happens a lot. More than once I have found what seemed to be a nice price online, and turns out there was a mistake of this nature. Sometimes the price was honored- sometimes not. It is what it is.
Tom has the most probable answer. I used to update our entire website once a week along with daily individual changes in quantity or price. When updating the entire website, I would have to chose columns from the flat file for the upload. The flat file also included wholesale purchase price for monthly/yearly inventory. That column was “cost.” Many years ago, I accidentally chose the “cost” column instead of the “price” column and uploaded our cost as the price of the wines and didn’t bother to double check my work by going on our website. Fortunately, some kind soul called shortly afterward and asked if the prices we had listed were correct or in error.
We have also listed wine on our site pre-arrival including the price based on the vendor’s “case” wholesale price, only to find out it’s a six pack “case” when it arrived. You get vigilant about what size a vendor’s “case” is after you’ve sold wine for less than you paid for it.
Tom- I ordered two different bottles. 6 of one and 1 of another. Both were mistakenly entered as 375ml? Possible? yes…that said, I don’t feel any better about the card being charged and a retraction after the fact.
As another member stated, bottles are on blowout all the time and who am I to think this wasn’t (for some reason) one of those times. I am not a mind reader, especially since they were having other sales at the same time ith similar discounts.
To those who say shrug it off…I have. I didn’t blow up on them after an initial response stating my displeasure and don’t have intention of taking it further. I was simply using WB as a sounding board.
As others have said it’s not hard to figure out who the shop is based on the few facts given? It’s fairly easy yes, but that entails a touch of research and those nt looking for that name and say “shrug it off” shouldn’t care enough to do the investigating. Those that want to and would like proceed with caution in the future in terms of buying from them, are free to do so and have every reason to if they feel like it was bad business.
Touching on the point of when there is a contract. Over here an advertised price and even processing an order on a website does not represent a contract. However once the money has been taken from your card, then that constitutes a contract.
Correct Ian, but I think even then there is a ‘get out’ in the clear case of an ‘obvious’ error.
Yes Russell, they do still have that get out.
I had one happen yesterday ironically a local store sent an email, I called ahead (long drive) to check for availability and to check the price, she said “come on”. I get there and it’s marked $11.00 above the email price, they took care of it with no problems. I noticed this morning they had updated the price.
The email even has a disclaimer to the effect of ‘in the event of a discrepancy the store will prevail’.
I had a very similar experience with this same store recently. About a day or two after I placed the order, I received an email telling me that the wine I ordered was not in stock and was no longer available. They removed the wine from the website, but have since relisted it at a higher price. Interestingly, the number of bottles in stock now is the same as it was when I placed my order at a lower price.
I understand that pricing errors occasionally happen, but I didn’t appreciate being told that the wine was out of stock, when it pretty clearly wasn’t. The store just didn’t want to honor its advertised price. Given the issues that others have experienced with this same retailer, you have to hope that these are genuine errors and not an attempt to pull in web traffic from Wine Searcher.
I had something similar happened to me. The wine shop advertised Groth Estate for $50 a bottle. I ordered a case and they sent me a case, but it was not the estate cab. They said they made a mistake advertising it as estate and they would not honor the pricing. Even wanted to charge me to return the wine that they sent in error. After some maneuvering, they finally paid for me to ship it back to them and gave me full credit. I won’t buy from them again.
There’s a phrase in England (and perhaps in parts of this country?) — “on offer” — that refers to items being sold by someone. (i.e.: “we have this fine South African late harvest Norton on offer.”) That tends to suggest that the listed price on the shelf or website is an offer rather than an invitation to receive offers. But that’s just using common sense … I don’t recall this aspect of contract law, either, so “common sense” could be wrong here.
Very interesting! (see my post below this post of yours I’m quoting and immediately preceding this one, where I deduced the exact opposite to likely be true)
Do you mean Reserve? All of Groth’s cabernet is estate.
Pricing errors happen. Shrug and don’t dwell on it.
I recently saw a Hi Fi ad for a pricey piece of gear that listed the price for the object at 90% below the intended price.
The site had no obligation to part with the gear at that price, they apologized for the error and relisted it at the proper price point.
Humans are involved, errors can occur.
Speaking hypothetically, because I cannot give legal advice:
Yes. Acceptance of buyer payment normally forms a contact for goods. I might also call a seller pricing mistake a unilateral mistake as to price by the seller, realized afterward, and if so, it is unlikely an out for the seller. But it is going to be case by case.
When/if there’s a legal contract can vary from state to state. I don’t think that’s the point. It would be highly unusual for anyone to take the time and money to enforce a contract for the sale of a few bottles of wine at retail.
What is the fair thing to do/the best business move decision are more what we’re talking about here.
The size/sophistication of the business is key to me. I cut a small businesses a lot more slack. It’s also usually pretty obvious what is an honest oops, and what is something else – i.e. if this wasn’t how they usually cut prices, prolly the former.
With a larger business, where this one transaction isn’t going to materially affect the bank account, not standing by it means they are dead to me.
YMMV.
I was only following up on Ian’s post. No more. What choices the buyer makes under the circumstances and for what reasons are separate questions if there is a contract. If there is no contract, however, there is no choice.
I agree that it’s hard to justify holding an honest seller to a bargain that one suspects is lop-sided. But if the deal seems reasonable, notwithstanding the mistake, I might play hard ball. Like you said, mileage may vary.
I wouldn’t even sweat it for a bit after the fact.
If a clerk took my order on a Friday, and the manager didn’t see the error until Monday, I would still call it “karma,” and not bang about them “not honoring” a price.