PS3 for 40.00!!

[Peppergirl]

I decided to post this over here at Fratch rather than CS because I felt it could generate unwanted debate over there.

In a nutshell:

So apparently Target mistakenly advertised PS3 systems on Amazon.com for $40.00. People bought them, then Target realized their mistake and refunded their money and advised they wouldn't get the product for $40.

Queue much whining, flailing and righteous indignation.

A petition has been started.

Here is the link for the article explaining the mishap:

http://www.thegamerbuzz.com/playstation-3-for-39-99



And here is the petition:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/TargetHonor/




What say you? Should Target honor the price?


Here's one of the signatures on the petition that I got a HUGE kick out of:

"This is totally unacceptable. Even though I did not order a PS3, if these whiny bastards deserve something, so do I. I would like a PS3, a WII, a cheeseburger, a written apology from every member of management(both Amazon and Target-probably Sony as well), a gift card and the Beatles White Album. If not, I will take my business elsewhere to places like Circuit City, Smith & Hawken and Snyder Drug Stores. I don't care if it was a mistake or not as I have not made one yet and don't plan on it in the future. Feel the wrath!!!!!!!"

[Eisa]

Honestly, I think they should honor them cuz they fucked up righteously.

Although I don't think people should kick that much of a fuss up over it, since, well...jeez, it's just a PS3.

[Plaidman]

Indeed it is a mistake, but they need to honor their agreement.

This is why it pays to have a checker. They didn't want to spend the extra time or money to make sure it's as priced as they wanted it, then it really sucks.

Otherwise, it really is false advertisment, despite that it wouldn't make any sense for a PS3 to sell for only 40 bucks, they stated that was the price.

[HYHYBT]

"False advertising" doesn't cover things like printing errors. I'm sure they would honor it anyway, if the price were anything like a reasonable sale price, but it's not. Unless PS3's have come down quite a lot since I saw one last, NOBODY is going to see $40 for one at a legitimate store and think it's anything other than a mistake. And the only ones who will expect them to honor such a price are the sort who imagine that the law requires them to. The sooner they learn otherwise the better.

[Canarr]

Under German law, misprinted sales prices are binding - *unless* they so ridiculously low that any reasonable human being would *have* to realize that this is a mistake.

Example:
- a bigscreen TV should cost 500 €, is priced at 400 € by mistake - the store would be required to honor the price of 400, since people could reasonably expect a TV to be sold at that price.
- if the same TV were accidentally priced at 5 €, the store would not be required to sell it at that price, since it should be clear to anyone except the dumbest EW that nobody sells a TV at that price.

So, in short: no, I don't think they should be forced to honor that agreement. 40$ is ridiculously low for a PS3, and everybody should know that. Mistakes happen; people should get over it.

[smileyeagle1021]

I'm split on this one... while yeah, it seems like an obvious mistake and misprint, it isn't that uncommon for retailers to sell a product at a loss (major loss at that) to get revenue elsewhere... just look at the cell phone industry (hell, I just got a $600 phone for $150 because they were willing to take that loss in exchange for my contract for two years of service). In this case it is hard to argue that something like that is the case... if it were the 360 I could see maybe it was a deal with signing up for XBOX live premium services... so...
Yeah, it is not so black and white as we'd like to think.

[Ginger Tea]

Sometimes you find you have a warehouse of older modles with smaller hard drives and hardware bugs not fixed in latests versions (not firmware fixable), not saying they did mind you, but you find a warehouse overstock of the old modle as your stock rotation sucked and the new shiny ones went out first, old gen not as atractive sits and lingers and you need to shift it.
with the ps3 its a harder analogy, hell it still has the linux features enabled so it would sell for more on ebay.

A better analogy would be the drive less arcade 360, find a large enough stock of those and they won't sell for much next to the slim elite, so you sell for a loss on the arcade and hope peeps stump up for the overpriced drives.

E&OE is listed in most printed advertisments in the UK Errors and ommissions exempt, I'm not too sure legally where the store would be if this happened here, but sometimes you have to take a loss over the bad press and faith generated, unless you get alot of that anyway.

[Boozy]

And here is the petition:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/TargetHonor/

"Wah! We wanted to take advantage of someone's mistake and get something for nothing, and they called us on our bullshit. Wah!"

Target doesn't need to honour the price of something when it was so clearly a fucking typo. And they won't miss these customers who are whining about it, either. These are the sort of customers who try to return their used Christmas lights in January.

[lordlundar]

These types of incidents aren't new, and usually occur with travel websites and airport hotels (there have been a number of cases with flights and hotel stays going for $1, taxes included). The early ones were legally forced to honor it because they had no typo exclusions in place. Some others decided on compromise or chose to honor it out of goodwill.

Therein lies the catch here. They have written clearly that they will not honor prices that occur as the result of a typo. So all the petitions in the world mean squat, as the most they are legally required to do is refund the payment or cancel the transaction if a payment has not been processed. (and please don't try the "good customer relations" excuse. All honoring that price is going to do is produce people that are going to scour the website looking for more typos to scam off of)

[Rageaholic]

I'm split, but am leaning towards the customers side. Sure, some of them may be overreacting (boycotting target over this? really?), but that doesn't mean they don't have a legit complaint. It sucks that they made the mistake, but I think that charging them for the real price after already buying it at 40 bucks would be bait and switch (whether intentional or not).

[Boozy]

I don't see how this is a legitimate complaint. What did the customers lose here? The ability to get something for next to nothing? Five minutes of their time when they placed the order?

They haven't been "wronged" in any way. They're just whining because they couldn't get away with something.

[BlaqueKatt]

to everyone siding with the customers-this is from the terms and conditions of amazon's website:

Welcome to Amazon.com. Amazon Services LLC and/or its affiliates ("Amazon") provide website features to you subject to the following conditions. If you visit or shop at Amazon.com, you accept these conditions. Please read them carefully

Parties other than Amazon operate stores, provide services, or sell product lines on this site.
We are not responsible for examining or evaluating, and we do not warrant the offerings of, any of these businesses or individuals or the content of their Web sites. Amazon does not assume any responsibility or liability for the actions, product, and content of all these and any other third parties. You should carefully review their privacy statements and other conditions of use.

So let's do what they say and review Target's...oooo look.

Despite our best efforts, a small number of the items on our Web site may be mispriced. As part of our shipping procedures, we verify price before an item is shipped out.

* If an item's correct price is lower than our stated price, we charge the lower amount and ship you the item.
* If an item's correct price is higher than our stated price we will cancel your order and notify you of such cancellation via email.

so no one read the fine print-or any print for that matter. And yes I'm one of those people that reads EVERYTHING, you never know when a company will sell your info garnered from an order to another company.

[Crazedclerkthe2nd]

These people that cry "customer relations" don't have a damned clue about business and here's why:

Let's say they honored the $40.00 price. A bunch of people would get cheap PS3s but they likely wouldn't think "man, Target was so awesome doing this, I'm going to shop there more now!"

They would probably either:

A) Drive to the nearest Gamestop and sell the system for $150
B) Immediately list the system on ebay/craigslist for the same purposes as A)
C) Keep the system

So if I am Target and looking at the pros and cons of letting these systems go for cheap it breaks down like this:

Pros:
- Good PR, possible picking up of a few loyal customers

Cons:
- $10 000s of losses
- Most consoles would probably be purchased by people with the intent to resell.


For businesses who look at the bottom line, those potential losses are more than enough to make them NOT want to honor a supposed deal like this.

[ExRetailDrone]

All the customers whining and complaining about this typo need to get over themselves. From what I gathered working in the electronics department at Target, they make squat in profits from any of those big items. They make their money on peripherals, which is why they had us push to sell them when customers purchased big ticket items like gaming systems, TVs, or MP3 players. The markup on those items is small, so selling them by themselves won't make Target much profit. If they had went ahead an honored all those sales, they would have been losing so much money it's ridiculous. And I doubt they would have made many loyal customers who would have returned to purchase items at regular prices. Those who are bitching and moaning about not lucking out on a typo certainly are not showing the loyal customer mentality, that's for sure.

Don't get me wrong, customer service is important to an extent, but the main goal of any business is to make a profit, plain and simple.

[Hyena Dandy]

Alright, here's the thing.

If there had been no policy stated, I would have wanted them to honor the agreement.

But. There WAS a policy stated. And basically the complaining is amounting to "TARGET IS DOING EXACTLY WHAT IT SAID IT WOULD DO IN THE CONTRACT I SIGNED WITHOUT READING! HOW DARE THEY TRICK US BY FOLLOWING THE POLICIES THEY TOLD ME ABOUT EARLIER?!"