Legislation doese exist to protect the consumer from stores that repeatedly missell items through misleading pricing etc. but fines of the scale you mention would never be enforced for a one off pricing error? Even if the store was prosecuted/found guilty and fined it still could not be forced to sell the item at the lower price.
I had cause to discuss this issue recently with our local trading standards office who said that they would very rarely ever even try for a prosecution. Their reasoning was that with current limits the fines issued would never be enough to cause any of the big retailers anything more than a minor inconvenience and would certainly not act as a deterrent.
As you say there are a lot of ill informed managers/staff out there who will just roll over and let the matter go when a customer starts to raise his voice and mention Trading Standards etc in the middle of a shop floor. But that doesn’t make it a legal right.
Guess where I used to work - the systems in place were terrible, frankly they belong to the dark ages. They then outsourced IT to Accenture who failed to deliver and JS had to write off a huge amount of dosh :chuckle: Guess where I don’t work anymore and have no love lost for :lol: I used to be responsible for the pricing and had trading standards visit once a month for 6months because the previous manager had “skills that didn’t match his job role” :ghey: I presume the same with other retailers - a shop is a shop.
You’re right that a £1000 item fine is unlikely to be odne for a single item, but from a consumers point of view, push your luck imo. The managers will have been told of this as a scare tactic from higher management, if you mention it the expression on most shop floor managers is highly amusing :devil:
For such a flagrant disregard of the law and care of the consumer then JS deserves all they got in those cases And imo the TS were right to prosecute.
Then again when a company has a turnover of £17,141 million (http://www.j-sainsbury.co.uk/ar_2004/index.asp?pageid=54 I can see the point of view where a £19,000 pound fine is going to have little effect on the overall company.
I would agree that it if you see an mis-priced item it may well be worth a try, and I have done it myself with great sucess, but just beware that they may know what the actual law states and call your bluff
What happens if a shop charges more than their advertised price?
It could be breaking the law and risk prosecution. The Consumer Protection Act says that it’s illegal to sell things for the higher price, but if the shop has made a genuine mistake, such as putting the wrong price ticket on by accident, it is very unlikely that it would be charged with an offence. Everyone can make mistakes, after all. If you feel that a shop is deliberately trying to con you or you’re unhappy about the way it advertises its prices, get in touch with Trading Standards (www.tradingstandards.gov.uk).
Can’t I insist that a shop sells me something at the marked price - even though they may have made a mistake?
No. This is where a lot of people get confused about their rights. Shops are not legally obliged to sell customers anything but most are happy to serve you because that’s why they’re in business. If they choose not to there isn’t much you can do about it unless they discriminate against you because of your race, religion or sex. That is illegal.
/& £19000 is nowt to the likes of Sainbury’s… infact Tesco will charge us £10000 or it could even be now £20000 per pallet of finished goods if there is an error and it has to be withdraw from sale.
Im pretty sure that they are obligated to sell…when i bought my xbox from comet, it rung up on the till 20 ish cheaper than it should have been, and they still sold it to me. Comet being thieving scum, im sure they would have done everything to get that extra 20 out of me. Then again, legal obligation didnt matter to them when i had a warranty claim with it, as i recall the support girl who actually rolled her eyes right at me when i asked for the manager, and the manager himself who was a slimey smiling tw@t who told me to f%*k off in so many words.
Hi Mantra2K, I really did not mean any offence, [b]I apologise if it seemed that way[/b].
In my defence, I did say, and I meant it, that I hoped nobody got fired for the labelling mistake.
Anyway, the rights I referred to, as I understand them, are that a retailer is breaking the law if they insist on selling the item to you at the higher price. They can refuse to sell the item to you, but then in so doing, you haven’t lost anything. However, if they do sell it to you then you can insist that it is at the advertised price.
Now, this does not of course just apply to said emporium. I have brassed-necked it elsewhere in the past. It’s amazing how many times you can get yourself a bargain just by having a bit of guts, keeping your cool and nerve. Labeling mistakes happen and the customer can benefit. I’ve also found that shop display goods can be negotiated over. Am I a scrouge…well maybe, but the little guy can win and it’s a good feeling too.
To balance it out a bit (and Mantra2K, I’m sorry that sounds patronising), in a different PC World branch a while back the manager gave me a discount on a 3.6G P4 CPU. For reasons I won’t go into here, I needed a 3.4GHz beast - they didn’t have them in stock, but after checking spec’s etc with me, he offered to go halves on the difference to the 3.6GHz unit. Brand new and sealed. Top bloke!
I might have found it cheaper elsewhere, but once again, my advice is to watch for the bargains - they do exist sometimes.
there is alway’s room for bartering, I remember year’s ago being told at a hi-fi
store that they aim to make 20% on what they sell.
Its a weigh up based on how much a store/shop wants to have a sale
end of the day if they say drop the price and make 15% its a profitable sale
still even if they act like there not making anything.
No offence taken at all! It was Alta Rica that caused the offense! Not that I expect them to apologise.
There have been plenty of times where we’ve gone half way with people when we don’t have something in stock, or if they need an exchange and we only have a better model in. If you are calm and aren’t rude generally we’ll fall over ourselves to try to help!
Ofcourse, if you come in in a crappy mood and start blaring off about your rights and how crap the service is, you really aren’t going to get service with a smile.
I think if Alta felt he had anything to apologise for then he would. Saying that the sales staff are “(often) incompetant” in my experience is a valid observation.
Please remember that in every retail outlet there are good and bad. Once I got a technician who was superb, I told him what was wrong, he checked that straight away, said yup - you’re right, cheers that saved me twenty minutes. Another time I had to call the manager after waiting nearly 40 minutes to get a faulty power supply refunded.
Luck of the draw, and no different in any other retail outlet, McDonalds staff brought food to our table when we had the kids with us in a service station on the way to Plymouth, yet on the way to Leicester we went to there again based on previous experience and it was nothing short of a nightmare. “We’ll have to cook that for you” (wife can’t eat certain foodstuffs), then when it arrives, yup - it was standard.
We can be more critical because in essance many here are more computer
savvy than most PC world staff {No offence intended}
PCworld look for and employ people in general with a retail background
there not that fussed over peoples technical skills.
You will however get a % employed that have both a technical & retail background
and yes you will where you find them have a better experience of being dealt with.
Went for a job interview numerious years ago totally owned the technical
tests … 97/98% but not having a retail background = why i never
got the job and that was how it was put accross as what they look for despite the technical nature of the job.
TBH I like browsing Pcworld - and they come in useful sometimes when I’m desparate but to this day some of the things I here mentioned make me chuckle
other things make me very angry that such info is being told a customer.
Pcworld is a big move it quick consumer store like a Tesco supermarket, Computer savvy people don’t really go to PCworld but joe public does and that’s where the work force is gear up to serving the needs of.
A lot of the people here could actually wipe the floor technically with most
PCWorld staff {No offence intended} but yes there are some good ones
lurking in the stores as well
My wost experience was asking for a DVI monitor cable… I ended up
telling them to forget it as all I got was blank faces and shrugs and words
to the effect of we don’t know what one of them is… don’t think we have them
if they are they would be in the cable section somewhere.
And thats from the so called techies… but as said not everywhere is
going to be like that as there will be shared about some that know what
there talking about.
