To print: Click here or Select File and then Print from your browser's menu

This story was printed from silicon.com, located at http://www.silicon.com/

Story URL: http://comment.silicon.com/0,39024711,10003997,00.htm

Pricing blunders: Enough is enough... it's time to pay up
Amazon, Argos, Kodak, First Choice et al... Thai Airways cannot claim it hadn't been warned...

By silicon.com

Published: Friday 02 May 2003

This week we have seen yet another pricing blunder on the web. Thai Airways has added its name to the hall of shame occupied by companies who offer goods or services at a price they later renege on.

Remember Amazon's £7.32 iPaq handheld computer? Or what about Argos and some cut price TVs?

To date we can only think of Kodak who did the decent thing and honoured its mistake, when digital cameras sold like wrongly priced hot cakes.

So how can these companies get away with agreeing a sale and then changing the price afterwards?

A typical defence in such instances is to claim "obvious mistake" - to suggest that customers were not purchasing items in good faith, but rather knew they were taking advantage of an innocent blunder.

Nobody ever claimed ecommerce was going to roll out without the occasional teething problem, but surely there comes a point when you have to say 'enough is enough'.

Thai Airways has refused to learn from others' mistakes.

Confirmation emails were sent to customers who had booked the flights. As with other cases it has been claimed by Thai Airways that the confirmation email does not represent a contract. However, the company's terms and conditions are not clear on this and it is about time a company was made an example of for not heeding the warning and ensuring it has watertight terms and conditions governing the confirmation of online sales.

The "obvious mistake" rule doesn't really hold much sway in this instance either.

Customers were entitled to believe there were bargains to be found online - especially in light of news that Thai Airways was set to sell drastically reduced fares in an attempt to reinvigorate flagging sales, hit hard by the SARS outbreak.

If companies are running any promotion of this kind, then the onus is on them to ensure no pricing blunders occur for the duration of the offer. Customers would be entitled to treat any seeming discount as a genuine offer to sell at that price.