Quote:
I also appreciate that a vendor is under no obligation to sell his wares if the vendor chooses not to do so. But once a customer has indicated that he wants to buy an item and has offered the money to complete the sale, the vendor must then complete the transaction.
Or has that changed too?
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Never changed but it is not the case. Until the vendor accepts money no contract exists. Therefore no contract, no legal standing on either side. Equally you can withdraw your offer of money at any point up to the point of a contract being in place.
e.g.
I come to buy a car from you. I look around said car and think its wonderful, I verbally offer (lets imagine a real value) £2000. you accept but no money changes hands. I go off to get a loan, its refused, You have no contract with me so I can pull out. or say its agreed but I find another car better suited for less, again I can pull out as no contract is in place. Equally, you agree a price with me, then 10 minutes later someone turns up and offers £3K. You are quite in your rights legally to take that money. (Morally you stink but hey thats not what we are discussing here).
Equally with ASDA, they put things on the shelf and you are 'invited to treat'. Untill they take your money from you they can pull out at any time without reason. Even after money has changed hands, if it can be proven by ASDA that the price was erroneous and it is clearly an error they can cancel teh contract(it is up to them to prove that the purchaser would have 'known' teh price was erroneous but thats a different discussion again).
e.g. a website advertises an item and instead of it being £999.00 its incorrectly priced at £9.99. even if they have taken your order, accepted money and provided a receipt they can cancel the contract as it is clearly an error. In a relatively recent case Kodak advertised a camera which retailed at that time at £249 for £99. Lots of people bought one(me included). Kodak had taken our money in that they had provided an email saying this is your receipt. The website had also done a credit 'hold' on our debit/credit cards. 2 days later they sent an email saying it wouldn't be honoured. however when pressed in law the reasoning was that this was a model that was a)due for replacement in 2 months (end of line) b) had reported battery life issues and c) had one or 2 spuriously bad reviews it was deemd that teh price could legitimately considered a 'normal' discount in order to clear stocks of an unpopular model. Kodak capitulated before it went to court as they didn't want a precedent to be set. The key things taht won for teh consumers was that we had a 'contract' as Kodak had accepted our money by processing the payments, had given a receipt and as described above it was deemed a fair bargain.