Due to a pricing cock-up, I just bought five 80-inch widescreen digital TVs on A Certain UK Retailer's website for 49p each!

(nb. they've removed the offending listing now unsurprisingly - I think the news spread pretty quickly!)

what does e&oe stand for?

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******* Bush 28in Integrated Digital TV, DVD 5 £2.45
Recorder and Stand

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So, anyone want to buy a telly? We're saving to go to NYC!

Man, I'd love it if this worked!

: )

how much?

So it turns out that my brother's firm acted for Argos on their last mis-pricing case. He says that the test for contractual mistake in this situation is whether you could have reasonably expected the stated price to be correct. We'd have more chance if the price had been £49, not 49 pence. Argos refused to cough up last time, although other sellers have paid up in these situations.

I think the fact that many of us purchased in multiples may count against us :-(

Which very much echoes what I said upthread, that no court would ever believe that we honestly thought they were that cheap.

Ah well. It was a fun speculative ride!

Also, just found out one of "us" ordered 100 of the things! Hee.

Dear Sir/Madam.

I do not accept your offer of a refund. By both sending me an email to confirm the purchase, and accepting full payment for the goods, Argos has agreed, legally, to the terms of sale. Argos made a mistake - a mistake which it has made more than once in the past, and thus is in no position to defend - and Argos should be held accountable for that mistake.

I would like to know what Argos intends to do to compensate the customers whose goods will apparently not be delivered. I think it not unreasonable to request that all customers who ordered multiple units - as accidental a slip of the keyboard, no doubt, as Argos's original mispricing - should be compensated with one unit, as a gesture of goodwill. The press has already had a field day, and Argos will both save public face and retain thousands of satisfied customers by honouring at least part of the otherwise breached contract.

Thanks for taking the time to read this email. I look forward to hearing from you very soon.

Best wishes...

FWIW i've had one run-in with arsegos customer service, and they capitulated pretty easily ;)

sadly i doubt they'll capitulate over what is quite obviously flagrant opportunism on my part - to the tune of 350 quid - but who knows, we'll see!

I also know of a whole group that saw, astonishingly, NYC/Reykjavik, for $150US last year. They bought nearly the entire plane, and spent the trip as a sort of FAP for the group.

I know! The plan was to use sarcasm as a way to second-guess any excuse they might come up with. So if they say "we didn't mean to put them up at 49p", i'll say "i didn't mean to order five, and my friend didn't mean to order 100 either", and they'll have to concede that yes, these accidents do happen on occasion.

With no way of proving that I *didn't* only want one, they'll cave in to the central argument that I could arguably have only wanted one anyway, and thus wasn't *knowingly* trying to take advantage of their cock-up, and I will thus get a telly!

Hmmm. Hi Argos folks, hope you're reading!

http://osta.delfi.ee/i/upload/y05/w09/509456.jpg

more evidence!

Haha, wifey and I got TWO return tickets from london to Chicago over Xmas/New Year's...and our card was never debited for them. This was almost three years ago, about $1300 worth of flights!

Good luck, Charlie!

More likely response: "So we've both made some mistakes. Let's call it a draw. Thank you for your patronage."

can i try to pwn you all with FOUR GRAND from the royal bank of scotland, plus flowers, plus wine?

they sent the cheque payable to "mr simon [my partner's surname]".

so i sent it back, and demanded they sent me a correctly-made-out cheque ... for £150.26, to cover the cost of the stamp.

fair play to them, they did.

(gobsmacked)

Have you ever seen him juggle?

to be honest, that may well be the point. But he really does know his onions, and it does sound kinda cool.

apparent resignation

(gobsmacked)

Allow me to explain. I don't honestly think our protracted postal wranglings resulted in the member of staff throwing in the towel, but I do recall the naive 13 year-old me being flushed with triumph that the final letter we received from the bank on the issue, complete with apology and full compensation, came from a completely different person - who happened to have the same job title as the person, with whom I'd been corresponding up to that point.

Similarly, I never gave Comet what-for for their astonishing incompetence regarding our fridge in 2003. The full refund (and John Lewis doing inside 48 hours what they couldn't inside 8 weeks) blunted my ire.

But, y'know, good luck getting your cheap tellies. Hopefully the person who maintains their website won't get the loss docked from their wages if you're successful.

I once tried to get Motorola to admit in writing that their iTap predictive text is a) woeful and b) doesn't work right. I came very close, but after an exchange five letters in the end I had to settle for a phonecall from some engineer who did admit both points, but said they weren't ever going to pay up for T9.

I don't know why I did this, except to make me feel better after yet another hasty and wrong buying decision that led me owning the Worst Phone in The World. (It was hasty because the battery on my C5 was goin and I had to get home to watch my new Laserdisc)

i hate to say this but their managers don't seem anal enough?

After my protest e-mails they have relented and are now overcharging me by only £12 this month.

Take that The Mang!

See also previous phone purchases of Sonys P800, Z7 and J5 (working chronologically backwards). And way too much other shit I have bought.

In the end, I was looking at a P910 to replace it but realised I didn't use half the functions on it and didn't need to replace them - so decided on something which was much smaller and looked cooler, and the saving paid for half of my 60GB Zen Xtra.

'It comes down to whether a reasonable person would think it was a joke and they would," he said.'

oh bugger. well, it was a fun flight of fancy...

heheh! a naive 13 year old indeed. a far more likely "bank" scenario is that said staff member was promoted.

My mother would probably have floor-kicked any teacher who yelled at her for letting me read at my own rate. That half of them were her former teachers might have been something to do with it.

Sometime during secondary school half of my brain fell out of my ear I think.

did you write a letter to complain?

i was pretty good at school too and yes picked up stuff quickly but by the time i finished uni everyone caught up and now i'm at some crappy job! yay!

although it's kind of easy to be ahead of class when i go to my first maths lesson in the UK aged 12 and our class were doing fucking SUMS. jesus back in my country we do sums at.. 5?

haha END OF THREDD. You fuckers.

1. gobsmack

To be completely dumbfounded or shocked. That I know of, its origins are Irish.

I have know idea what a "gob" is or why it is common practice to smack somebody with one when they are shocked.

It seems like a rude thing to do, though."Well, I'll be gobsmacked!" exclaimed the taxi driver, as he watched two sworn enemies hug.
Source: Yogi!!, Apr 18, 2005

update: Argos followed the email I posted above with an identically-worded letter; and yesterday, they credited my credit card with the amount they'd debited before.

to be honest, i kinda lost enthusiasm for the whole project - or at least i must have done, since i never even got around to replying to the letter with a "don't you dare give me my money back" tirade.

pity. could really have done with a new TV for nil cash!