Apparently the customer is not always right!

[crispykreme]

I was shopping the other day and my ds spotted a LEGO pack. A little bag with a Disney character in. As he's been really well behaved and never usually asks for anything I said he could get it.

The price on the shelf ticket said ' Disney blind bag £1.20' .

He spend the rest of the time I shopped looking at the bag and feeling to see if he could guess what one it was. He was so excited.

Got to the till, scanned LEGO bag and it comes up at £4.50!

I knew LEGO can be expensive but there was no way I could pay that much as we are low on money at the moment.

I asked the cashier if she could get someone to double check the price as I was sure it was £1.20.

Someone came back with the ticked that said Disney blind bag £1.20. Apparently as it was still scanning at £4.50 that is the price it was.

Now usually if that happened the shop would sell to me at the ticketed price. Customer always right ?

I had to refuse the item and leave poor ds near to tears. I promised I would get him one for his birthday or at least when our money situation is better.

Aibu to have expected it for the price clearly stated on the ticket?

KAAAAARRRRRREEEEENNN

Yep, one of the first things I learnt in business law, the shop is not obliged to sell anything at the price you see it at, but what a shame for you and your son that they didn't honour it as a gesture of goodwill

I believe legally the army obliged to sell you anything, however, I seems like a terrible way to run a business. Advertising a product for £1.20, actually going to the effort of having a £1.20 price ticket on the shelf then saying “oh actually it’s £4.50”

If that’s how they treat customers then I don’t think I’d be going back.

Advertising a product for £1.20, actually going to the effort of having a £1.20 price ticket on the shelf then saying “oh actually it’s £4.50”

KeyWorker It was clearly a mistake, not done deliberately. Retail workers are only human, you know.

You're right, work in retail should be obligatory. Six months for everyone, like National Service.

^This

@KeyWorker

I believe legally the army obliged to sell you anything, however, I seems like a terrible way to run a business. Advertising a product for £1.20, actually going to the effort of having a £1.20 price ticket on the shelf then saying “oh actually it’s £4.50”

If that’s how they treat customers then I don’t think I’d be going back.

You know retail workers are human and make mistakes too, right?

I used to do pricing in retail - we had thousands of items in stock. Mistakes happen.

You're right, work in retail should be obligatory. Six months for everyone, like National Service

I meant to say, when i first saw this, that two friends and i were saying exactly this yesterday

They work in a nice high street clothes store which is reopening in a week or so and they are not looking forward to it

Whenever this has happened to me - I shop in Asda - they’ve given it at the price advertised and usually a £2 voucher as a gesture of good will. I go round hoping for mistakes!!

IN a local dept. store I once bought an unusual earthenware item which seemed rather cheap for what it was. There was a price label stuck on it.

Once I went to pay for it, it was evident that they thought I’d taken the price label from something else - it was very uncomfortable. I found out later that the proper price was about 3 times as much! They let me have it in the end, but it had never occurred to me before that people do such things - talk about live and learn.

Sorry but you saw a pricetag for a DISNEY blind bag. What your DC chose was a LEGO blind bag.

You read the wrong label. I would still have bought the bag regardless as I couldn't do that to my DC

Ex retail worker here. They most definitely don't have to honour it. And please, to those of you crying about 'good customer service' and how you 'won’t be back'. Do the stores a favour and don't come back then. They’re not obligated to sell something to you becuase you THINK you should have it. Mistakes happen, compensation shouldn't be the first thing to pop into your damn heads. 🙄

Also....£4.50. You couldn't afford....£4.50. Yeeeesh. 🤦🏼‍♀️🙄

@SistineScreamer are you serious! £4.50 for someone struggling financially is a lot of money. If you haven't realized not everyone can work at the moment.

Oh hear we go with the ‘you have to be charged the price on the shelf or it’s false advertising...blah bloody blah!’ The amount of times you face that shit in retail is unreal

If you put the wrong price on an item it IS misleading advertising. As I said above there is a disconnect between contract law and consumer protection law.

@SistineScreamer that was unnecessarily harsh.

@cologne4711

Oh hear we go with the ‘you have to be charged the price on the shelf or it’s false advertising...blah bloody blah!’ The amount of times you face that shit in retail is unreal

If you put the wrong price on an item it IS misleading advertising. As I said above there is a disconnect between contract law and consumer protection law.

No, if you put the wrong price on something it is a mistake. Happens all the time because, shockingly, retail workers are human too.

And customers are also known to put things back in the wrong place too! A display can be perfectly correct upon opening at 9am and by 9.30am about 20 things will just be dumped there by customers who can't be bothered to re-trace their steps and put things back.

That's really frustrating, you should be annoyed and the shop should have sold it to you at the lower price

What vanilla just Said

Happened in our high street clothes store (higher end...not much higher 😀)

White top picked up by customer in sale area and deposited in full price area

Angry and ultimately disappointed customer

Legally they have to sell at the price advertised
. So the one on the ticket

No, no they don’t. They certainly don’t ‘legally’ have to do it.
They can simply withdraw the sale.
It’s a shame for the op certainly but shop have not done anything wrong.

If you put the wrong price on an item it IS misleading advertising.

I suspect for anything to be enforceable there'd have to be evidence that it was deliberate and systemic - e.g. advertising campaign showing huge discount with real price buried in small print. It wouldn't apply to the isolated mislabelling of an item by mistake, or an item being moved to the wrong display in error.

"The customer is always right"... except when it comes to reading receipts, signs and SELs; understanding offers; knowing retail law or understanding their consumer rights and the limitations of said rights.

I work in customer services for a large supermarket and we will usually honour an SEL price as goodwill if it is a store mistake but if it is any more than a 10% price difference we will verify it on the shop floor to make sure it is a genuine error and not a "customer reading the wrong label and demanding the wrong price for the wrong item" error before we process any price change/refund/goodwill.

For example today I had a customer bring a bottle of whiskey to my desk and tell me it had an £18 SEL but it had rung through the till at £35.

As that was a price difference greater than 10% I had to check the product on the shop floor. When I reached the shelf there were two labels - one for £18, one for £35 next to each other. The £18 SEL said "X whiskey - 70cl £18" and the other said "X whiskey - 1L £35"

Guess which size the customer had picked up? They did not get their 1L of whiskey for £18 because was not a store error, it was a customer error.

If I had got to the shelf and there was no £35 SEL, or it wasnt clear that there were different sizes or the label had just said "X whiskey - £18" without specifying the sizes clearly etc then I would have honoured the price for the customer and had someone fix the issue.

In these circumstances the retailer has the right to withdraw the item from sale.

Correct.

I used to work in retail. Customers used to take the labels from sale items and stick them on to full price items. They would then come out with the whole “I know my rights” spiel when the sale was refused. No Karen, there’s no way this recently released £200 leather jacket costs £20, and no matter how patronising you get, I’m not going to risk my job to “honour” the bogus price

Shops usually honour the price on the shelf but they don't have to.

The Lego minifig blind bags have come in several different "series". It could be something like series 2 was reduced but you got a series 3 bag. Or the price might have been for a different product altogether. Although in such a situation I'd say it's good customer service to explain that.

That's what's been so great about Covid. Our more obnoxious customers have come in refusing to use a trolley, refusing to keep to the one way system or to socially distance because 'they know their rights and won't be told what to do' (it's usually a female on the door overseeing customers queueing and coming in).

And they've been banned. It's lovely in our shop at the moment!