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Comment by k-mcgrady | Hacker News Reader

This is the first I've heard about this but a good response from the business. I noticed he said they can legally cancel all the orders - is that true? As far as I was aware the law (at least in the UK) is that if a product is advertised at a certain price, even if it's a mistake, the business has to provide it at that price to any customer who gets in before they fix the mistake with the only catch being that the business is only obliged to sell one unit of the item at the incorrect price if they realise there has been a mistake (just from what I've heard from people working in retail).

Edit: thanks for making it clearer below

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That's a commonly held misbelief.

If it's an honest mistake, there's no requirement to sell it, and beyond that most email confirmations say something like this from Amazon:

This e-mail is only an acknowledgement of receipt of your order and your contract to purchase these items is not complete until we send you an e-mail notifying you that the items have been dispatched to you.

Exactly. And I think that's pretty fair, too.

Learn about contract law, it's interesting.

In Germany, for example, displayed prices are merely an invitation to make an offer (”I want to buy this!”) which van then be accepted or rejected by the seller. Only if the seller accepts a contract of sale actually comes into existence. By the way, if the seller accepts but changes the conditions (by, say, changing the price) a contract of sale also doesn't exist. The buyer then has another chance to accept or reject this new offer.

It's pretty common sense, actually. Oh, and this doesn't mean that sellers can display wrong prices on purpose. That would be misleading advertising. But if it's a mistake it's not a problem.

It it is an obvious failure, and a general 90% discount clearly is, contracts may be canceled at any time. Additionally, if you read the terms, online orders are often just a request and need to be approved by the other contract partner first. Since Germany and UK are both within EU, law may be quite equal. I think this is a pretty fair rule.

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