Do shops have to sell at the advertised price?

A question about : Do shops have to sell at the advertised price?

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FAQ expansion - Must shops sell at the marked price?

(Contributed by mo786uk)

Do shops have to sell goods at the advertised price?

- you cannot force a shop to sell you something

- this applies to correctly and incorrectly priced items

- this applies to ALL types of shops - whether they are online internet stores or offline physical stores

- internet shops can to refuse to honour prices even after they have taken your money

- if you think a retailer is intentionally trying to misleading with pricing then you should report this to your local Trading Standards, which can be done via Consumer Direct (08454 04 05 06)

A more detailed explanation of the law can be found below.

A shop has advertised a product at Ј10. I have tried to buy it but they have said the product is actually Ј20 and they made a mistake. Do they have to sell me the product at the advertised price of Ј10?

This is a question best answered from both a civil and criminal point of view.

Civil law = your rights as a consumer against a business. If your civil rights have been breached you can take a business to civil court and one remedy is monetary damages.

Criminal law = action that can be taken by a public body to prosecute a business for breaking the law. This usually ends in a fine or prison.

Civil

When you buy an item from a shop you and the shop are entering into a contract. Let take an example of buying a product from a supermarket.

You go into the shop and see a price label for Ј10. This is an invitation to treat. This is basically the shop saying we will take Ј10 for the item if you are willing to offer it.

When you take the item to the till you are making an offer. Which is basically saying 'I am willing to offer you Ј10 for this item'.

The Ј10 you are offering is consideration. This is you promising to pay them Ј10. The shops promise or consideration is the item they are going to give you for the Ј10. Most contracts have to have some form of consideration (although not all).

Finally, the shop can decide whether to accept or not. At this stage they can still refuse to sell you the product and they are under no obligation to. Only when they have accepted your offer is the contract complete and they are bound to sell you the product for Ј10.

Both parties must be willing to enter in a contract and there must be a meeting of the minds. This is where both sides are totally clear what the terms of the contract are. Clearly if the shop and customer disagree on the price there cannot be a meeting of the minds.

Some shops will sell you an item for the price they have marked it just for the sake of good customer service but they are not under a legal obligation to do so.

So, effectively there can be no contract until the shop accepts.

From a practical point of view it is pretty easy to see this in practice in a real life shop as the contract usually complete when they take your money and give you the item.

Its a bit more difficult with online transactions because it is not always clear when a contract has been formed. In the past online retailers would accept as soon as you made a payment. However due to a few cases where shops lost money through pricing mistakes most shops now only accept your offer when they send the item out. This means even if you pay for an item, the shop has not actually accepted your offer even though they have taken your money - this means they can cancel the order. You should read the terms and conditions of the retailer to see what their stance is on pricing errors and when the contract is formed.

Finally, there may arise a situation where you have managed to pay for an item at a lower price and the shop has only realised after you have paid for the goods and taken the item (where the contract is complete for all intents and purposes). In this scenario the shop has sold you the item and you are not under an obligation to pay the difference, although you can do if you want to.

Criminal

Does a shop have to display prices?

The Price Marking Order 2004 is the legislation that makes shops have to display prices for goods. Prices must include VAT and be clearly legible. Items do not have to be individually price (i.e they can use a price list) but the prices should be available so that the customer does not have to ask for them.

There is currently no law that specifies that prices must be displayed for services. This is currently controlled by the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 under misleading omissions. What this means is that there is no blanket answer for every situation, instead it depends on whether the lack of price can influence customers decision to buy. Lets say you go to a bar and order a lemonade. There are no prices listed. Chances are you expect the drink to cost around Ј1. If it does in fact cost Ј1 you are probably happy with that and the lack of a price list hasn't influenced your decision to buy. Now lets say the lemonade costs Ј5. Clearly this could now mean you would not have ordered the drink had you know this. This sort of scenario is where the lack of pricing could be a misleading omission. In my opinion its a bit of a flaw in the law(!).

Was it a simple mistake or are the shop purposely misleading customers with incorrect pricing?

This is all covered by the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008. Without going into too much depth it can be a criminal offence for a shop to mislead consumers about the price of a product and the way in which it was calculated.

This legislation also prevents businesses from purposefully taking orders for a product they know they cannot supply so that they can get you into their shop (bait advertising) or from taking orders for a product but then trying to get the customer to buy another product (bait and switch). Mind you there is criteria for deciding what these are, but I have simplified it here for you.

So finally, the question is was it just a mistake? This really depends on whether the shop changes the mistake ASAP and whether they do it often. In the grand scheme of things a pricing error is no big deal for the authorities to bother taking action on. I would however suggest that you report all incidents where you believe the shop has tried to deceive you. The more information the authorities have the easier it is for them to see which companies are clearly breaking the law.
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