Can Websites Change Prices Once Ordered?

Q.

I've just ordered a Nintendo Wii online and when I placed my order it was advertised at £159.99. After an hour or so went by, I contacted them as I hadn't received any confirmation e-mails back from them.

They said they hadn't confirmed the order because they had just changed the price to £169.99 and were refusing to sell me the item for the advertised price when I ordered it. It is now showing the updated price of £169.99 on their website, can they do this?

A.

On the high street, if an item is advertised at the wrong price, the company selling the goods or services has to remove the items from the shelf. There is no obligation to 'honour' the advertised price and therefore no binding contract for sale. However, as a goodwill gesture it is not uncommon for larger companies to allow the consumer to pay for the item at it’s mislabelled lower price.

The same ‘no obligation’ principle applies to websites and online shopping stores in the UK. If the price advertised on the website turns out to be incorrect, then the seller does not have a legal commitment to complete the sale. Remember that an advertised price is not a contract of sale. It is therefore acceptable that the seller can refuse to complete the transaction if the price has changed.

It is probably right to assume that the company that you tried to purchase your games console from consider the information to have been ‘out of date’ or in the process of being updated, and was not deliberately deceptive in their advertising. The fact that no order confirmation was sent through means that the company did not accept or acknowledge a sale, and the goods remain their property. The company has the right to decline your order.

If the company you were trying to buy from was based in the UK, they will be under the regulation of the British Code of Advertising, and the Control of Misleading Advertisements Regulations. The British Code of Advertising “requires all forms of non-broadcast advertising to be legal decent, honest and truthful and to be prepared with a sense of responsibility to both consumers and society”.

Therefore, if you have any complaints, you can always try contacting the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in writing if you feel that the matter should be taken further. You can also try contacting Trading Standards. However, you should be aware that it is unlikely that any action will result in compensation, especially as technically the product was not sold. It is also unlikely that the advertised price was deliberately misleading, and so the likelihood of any action being taken by Trading Standards or ASA is fairly minimal.