re: FROGGY Photo charges & CHANGES

[absinthangel.livejournal.com]

.
Thougth this worth a post & wondering how others are feeling about it.    

..those of us that have already paid THE ADVERTISED $60 for a phot op with Mr Leonard Nimoy, have this last week, suffered the disclosure that  'oh that price was wrong/a mistake  - it is supposed to be $80 - oh but if you have already paid  $60 you must still pay the extra $20 now - oh and if you want a refund instead you have to wait until after D*C (practically a month) for it'.... if I hadnt already made a costume for the photo I would be wanting my money back .... and IMMEDIATELY.

How is it DragonCon can allow a precedence like this to be set?    If a vendor/dealer/photographer can do it once, they can do it again and to every price on their site! ... what guarantee do we all have that there will be no further increases to current advertised prices of other photo ops, excused as 'mistakes' but the customer has to cop the loss for the vendor's mistake?

Comments

[thegraycat.livejournal.com]

Is this legal? If you advertise one price, and people pay that price up-front, I'm not sure you can legally 'change your mind' and require that they pay extra. You can change the price and charge future customers the new price, but I'm not sure you can go back and require additional payment from customers who have already paid.

If Nimoy signed a contract with the $60 price, he's stuck with it. If Froggy mistakenly advertised $60, when they agree to $80 (with Nimoy), they are stuck with it (at least for those people who have already paid). The customer may not always be right, but they shouldn't have to pay for a company's screw-up.

The refund policy is another matter - if that's what they advertise all the time, you can't complain about it.

[cuppaco.livejournal.com]

A unilateral mistake is where only one party to a contract is mistaken as to the terms or subject-matter contained in a contract. In contract law, one must first distinguish between mechanical calculations and business error when looking at unilateral mistake. For mechanical calculations, a party may be able to set aside the contract on these grounds provided that the other party does not try to take advantage of the mistake, or 'snatch up' the offer (involving a bargain that one did not intend to make, betrayed by an error in arithmetic, or something like that). This will be seen by an objective standard, or if a reasonable person would be able to know that the mistake would not make sense to one of the parties. Unless one of the parties 'snatched up' the one-sided offer, courts will otherwise uphold the contract. When a party is guilty of a error in business judgment, there is no relief.

Non-laywer explanation: When a customer sees a price that is obviously wrong, they can't scoop up the "scrivner's error" and force the other party to complete the deal. Example: those 40" flatscreen HDTVs that Best Buy accidently put up on their site for $9.99 when it was supposed to be $1999.99. However, here $60 was reasonable. It wasn't like $6.00 when it was supposed to be $60. I'd argue that here was a unilateral mistake on Froggy's part where the buyer wasn't trying to snatch up an obvious error to make a bargain. It was an error of business judgment, and for the people that prepaid Froggy should have to suck the $20.

*FWIW, this is not legal advice. I'm not licensed to practice law in Georgia (yet)*

[jellibean.livejournal.com]

I hated Contracts and I never understood mistakes until this (my professor was AWFUL.) Thank you. ♥

[jarissa.livejournal.com]

Woohoo! An educated soul! Thank you so much!

Upthread, someone noted that the refund policy (it will take x amount of time) was provided before the original purchase, so THAT part of the topic is settled; now THIS covers the core of the entire question, whether the law has anything to say on the topic at all. I did always think that a GOOD law would make some allowance for honest human mistake, so a small business doesn't lose its collective shirt, but balanced with the need to keep dishonest companies from jacking the price around after an order is placed and call it "oops, but we're covered by law".

I still see open the question of where, legally, this transaction took place; but I suspect that's a question that could really only be resolved IN court right now, as I can amateurishly guess at persuasive legal arguments -- some based on current tax codes -- for claiming that it happened at the purchaser's location, that it happened at Froggy's home location, that it happened in whatever state Froggy happens to be incorporated (IF they're incorporated!), and that it happened in Georgia (since that's where the event will take place). Oh, and hey, Paypal's physical location is in California.

Again, thank you so much for the explanation; this entire thread is now going in my Memories, just in case I ever need reference to the concept again.

[cuppaco.livejournal.com]

Yeah, its the joy of being a judicial staff attorney (also known as law clerk), explaining law school concepts to judges who have long since forgot about them.

There could be the argument of lex loci contractus ("law of the place where the contract is made") or lex loci solutionis ("law of the place where relevant performance occurs"). I'd argue that since the contract was equally made in the purchaser's location as it was Froggys, that the only forseeable location to both parties would be where the relevant performance would occur (Georgia) and that would be the law to apply.