General Chat

Having got a variety of A***S vouchers for xmas, OH and i combined to get things for the home. We decided to get a 6ft floor lamp to give us some more light in the evening in our lounge.

Went online and the sale price was £26.95. It was curently out of stock but i reserved item and email said item will be in store between Fri 3rd Jan and Mon 6th jan.

I drove a round trip of 60 miles to be told sorry theres a delay should be in next week. Disappointed i said well i only come to town on friday and they agreed to extend my collection day to next friday.

Today i get an email to say it def will be available to collect next friday at the original price of....£39.95. It says in the small print on the email"the price may change on a daily basis and the price you will pay will be the price it is on the day of collection"

i am truly hacked off! When i reserved the item, I assumed it would be at the price it was advertised at.

Has anyone else had this problem and do i have a case to argue when i collect.? If they insist they can change the price whenever they want, then I don't want the item for the dearer price and hope I'm not committed to it.

It just seems bang out of order.

Your comments please
Florence
in the hebrides :-P :-P :-(

I was told years ago that a price tag is an invitation into the shop and is only a guide, however when similar things happen to me now I often resort to having a tantrum or cause some sort of fuss, it usually works because they don't want bad publicity either live or on line.
I hope you don't need to do that though and good luck.

Thanks ZZzzz i hope so too as the older i get ,lol Im finding i do not suffer fools gladly and speak up for myself and also create a fuss that 20 years ago wouldnt have dreamed of.

So might just have to stand my ground on this one on principal!

Will let you know what happens.
Florence
in the hebrides. ;-)

I once picked up a pair of shoes in M&S - the whole shelf had said shoes on - the price on the shelf was £15. Got to checkout - £30!!
I said they weren't, and took assistant over to said shelf. 'They're marked up incorrectly' I was told. 'What - the whole lot of them?' I replied. 'I'm sorry, but that is the price the tag on the shelf says, am I 'magically' meant to know someone's done a boo-boo? They're advertised at that price, as is evident by the price on the shelf' .

I got them for £15.

I would argue that the price is the price you order it at - otherwise you could order something for £10, and find the price has increased 100% on delivery/collection date!!!
Surely ordering it is the same as buying it.

Thanks maggie for your imput. I agree i should pay the original price when i ordered so will argue that.

If they can charge what they like then people surely wouldn't go with that? Imagine ordering something for £50 and then on collection it was £100!!!! How many people would pay that not me for one.

Anyway we shall see next friday, keep you posted.
Thanks
Florence
in the hebrides. :-)

The price on the shelf is the price they are inviting you to offer. The offer is yours not theirs, in fact a special offer is actually a special invitation to treat or make an offer.

In not accepting the price on the ticket they are actually right in that they are not accepting your offer. It won't do they much good if they are known to behave like that though!

Fancy having that in the back of my head somewhere!

With regard to the shoes, you should have been sold them at the lower price, then the store should have removed all the others and corrected their mistake.

I do believe that when you get to the checkout you are by law entitled to purchase the goods for the price shown even if it is marked lower by error.

I would have stood my ground and insisted on being allowed to purchase at lower price.

No, you are not.

It is in the best interest of the store to sell them to you at that price, unless it is ridiculous, as the goodwill generated is of more benefit to them than is the money.

They are under no obligation to accept your offer of that price.

Sharron is correct. By law you cannot demand to buy them at the price advertised. If they are wrongly priced they can refuse your offer to buy. However, many larger stores will, in the interests of good customer relations, allow the price advertised. The price is know as 'an offer to treat'.

Shops do not have to sell you goods at the wrongly marked price....to balance that they cannot stop you standing outside their store with a placard telling people they are misrepresenting their prices (my son did this with Currys and he got a very, very good deal on an expensive electrical item) :-D

Well having read your comments, i remember many years ago when I was 16 and working in a supermarket, I created a price problem!!

The supervisor put me on the deli counter as it was so busy. Not having worked that counter before, I was getting a bit confused with weighing etc.. Anyway turns out I put through a pound of luncheon meat at 2 1/2 pence!!!

When it got to the till, the cashier noticed and called the supervisor. The customer said there was obviously a mistake, but by law they were entitled to pay the price the item had on it and the supervisor agreed and therefore the customer got the luncheon meat very cheap.In small shops where they still stick the price tags on(corner shops) the customer will pay whatever is on the tag even if it has been priced lower than it should be.

However, now we have barcodes for most things, does this change anything?

Like with the shoes, if they are shown as £15.00, then that is the price you should pay. If someone has wrongly priced than the store will lose out until they as someone said remove stock and reprice.

never realised just how complicated this whole pricing structure is, never used to be so did it?

Thanks for all the info, very interesting
Florence
in the hebrides :-)

Another point, Florence.
If you are ordering something online, at a particular advertised price, and they expect you to pay the price (which could be different) of the item on the day of delivery, how are you expected to know what the price is?
I would suggest to Ar*os that you are ordering an item from them on the internet at a given price, not attempting to utilise any latent psychic powers you may possess.

If I have the correct store this happens when you reserve something at a discounted price and it is then out of stock. The new stock will come in at the usual price. This store does say that the price you pay is the price on collection not what you reserved it at (as you stated in your post) .
Seems unfair but it does sometimes work the other way. I reserved curtains at one price and paid much less when I collected them as they had gone into the sale.
There is not much you can do, you could of course try speaking to the manager as it was not your fault that the stock had not arrived when you went to collect it.

You cannot demand to pay the lower price but a polite word sometimes works better than tantrum. Well it does with me anyway. :-D

Good Luck.

Thanks maggie, think i will take my crystal ball with me and ask the manager to have a look and see what price appears!!

ginnie i am going to have a polite word and if they wont back down then maybe i will invoice them for 2 journeys at £15.00 a throw. Because the wasted trip cost me £15.00 in petrol plus another next week.!! Maybe when ive used my charm as only one does when one wants something they may see sense and give in....hopefully.
we shall see.

Florence
in the hebrides. :-)

Would not like to be on the receiving end of Florence's charm offensive - I can recall vividly the hell I created, not being a local, when I called "house" on the main game of the evening at a bingo hall in Nairn full of Highland women in tweed skirts and brogues - an experience I would not like to repeat :-D :-D :-D

Good Luck Florence <3

Hello peeps, I'm back after a short break. Just had so many garage bills to pay that subscription had to take a back seat.

Well thought i would tell you what happened when I went to collect my lamp from AR**S. i stood waiting to be served for a few minutes and then a young pretty girl smiled at me and said"can I help you?" "Well I said i hope so as i have a little problem that needs sorting out."

I explained everything whilst keeping very calm, offering to bring in the email i received if it would help. She said dont worry, we will sort it. She went off and spoke to someone and on returning to me said i could pay the original sale price. Thankyou very much I said, are you sure that's ok? She explained very politely that the problem was the price went up inbetween ordering and arriving at the shop. She said as it wasnt my fault she was quite happy to honour the sale price.

Well i thanked her very much for all her help and told her she was a credit to the staff for her helpful attitude. she replied "your welcome."

Came home and oh and myself put the lamp together and what a difference it makes in our lounge. It's 6ft tall so the light being higher up really makes a differnce.

OFITG- have to add that if I had been lumbered with the original unhelpful person in the shop, my attitiude would have been different. But the young girl was so pleasant and helpful and that made all the difference, not forgetting of course, I got what i wanted!!

Florence
In the hebrides :-) :-) :-)

So pleased you got it at the sale price, Florence :-D
And what a credit to the shop the girl is!!

Yes maggie, she was a real gem. Shame there aren't more staff like her.
Florence
in the hebrides :-D

I think it works both ways.

I bought a bag of American Gums in Lidl and one had what looked like a false finger nail embedded in it.

After having taken them into Aldi because I am not as bright as I think I am, I quietly asked a manager in Lidl what he thought about the offending boo boo.

He explained what I needed to do and thanked me for not shouting at him.

Possibly, because I know where I stand on the matter, I don't need to shout.

I agree sharron, one doesnt need to shout to get what we want, but what doesnt help is when you get a very unhelpful shop assistant who is hell bent on sticking to the rules regardless whether they lose a customer.In a small place it really doesnt do to upset people as word soon gets out and people will boycott shops which up here is not what you would want.

At the end of the day, if someone is prepared to help me resolve a problem that wasnt caused by me then i am more likely to go back to that shop again. the first assistant that served me was so unhelpful and made me wonder if i would ever shop there again.

Having worked in a bank for 16 years in customer services, we were trained to meet and greet customers with a smile evry time, even if you were having the day from h*ll and leave your personal problems at home.

Alls well that ended well for me anyway.
Florence
in the hebrides :-)