Best Buy lists a 52" HDTV for $9.99

[smileyeagle1021]

to quote my business law professor,
"in the event of a mistake, courts will rule on the reasonable person standard. If a mistake is obvious and should have been noticed by a reasonable person, the court will NOT uphold the offer and allow the party that has made the mistake to correct their offer at which time the offeree may accept or reject the corrected terms".

translation, the consumers could easily tell that there was a mistake in the ad, so if it went to court, the courts would rule that best buy does not have to honor the price and may charge the price that they had intended to advertise.

[mikoyan29]

I guess his website is a perfect example of typos. He has the classic there for their and you're for your. Geeze.

Anyways, I'm not sure what the laws on this are but I have to believe there is something in the pricing provisions of the laws that exclude things that are obvious mistakes (even the vaunted Michigan Meijer law). $10 for a TV that would normally sell for 100 times that price is an obvious mistake.

Anyways, the bitching about this reeks of the entitlement mentality that is bringing this country down.

[Kaylyn]

Oops, didn't mean to start a separate thread. I honestly did search, and apparently the board search doesn't like my addon setup because I came up with 0 posts mentioning "best buy." Just so you know I really did try!

[sms001]

Anyone with common sense would understand and not expect to get it for that price.

Anyways, the bitching about this reeks of the entitlement mentality that is bringing this country down.

.... and a fade out screen poll on one of the national news programs asking if "Best Buy should honor their television price." (Gee, slant things much?) had the EW's out in droves - it was about 70% "Yes" when I last saw it. Common sense, not so much.

[wolfie]

to quote my business law professor,
"in the event of a mistake, courts will rule on the reasonable person standard. If a mistake is obvious and should have been noticed by a reasonable person, the court will NOT uphold the offer and allow the party that has made the mistake to correct their offer at which time the offeree may accept or reject the corrected terms".

translation, the consumers could easily tell that there was a mistake in the ad, so if it went to court, the courts would rule that best buy does not have to honor the price and may charge the price that they had intended to advertise.

If the TVs had been advertised at $1,599.99 (or $1,399.99, or $1,299.99), I could see people expecting to have the price honoured - after all, those prices are "in the ballpark" (i.e. it's reasonable to expect a 52 inch TV to be priced somewhere between $1000 and $2000, but not to be priced at $10). Why not $1,499.99? Because "4" is not adjacent to "6" on a numeric keypad (i.e. pricing error due to hitting a neighbouring key).

Of course, if they'd been advertised at $1,899.99 or $1,999.99 by mistake (again, digits adjacent to "6", including on the diagonal), and people had bought them, would Best Buy be obligated to seek out those customers and refund the difference once the error was caught? After all, if they hadn't thought those prices
were reasonable, they would have taken their business elsewhere.

[infinitemonkies]

Just read this:

A 4 star hotel in Venice, Italy accidently allowed people to book weekend packages for only 1 cent. Although the error was apparantly found and corrected quickly, they still had 1400 nights booked under that price.

Furthermore, the hotel is honoring that rate for those who booked before it was fixed, more likely because of local laws than willingness.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

Furthermore, the hotel is honoring that rate for those who booked before it was fixed, more likely because of local laws than willingness.

I'd have to think so, as the Hotel stands to lose a ton of money on those bookings. Regardless, they'll pick up some good PR out of it.