Changing Times, Altering Prices
I just bought a new HTC Inspire 4G mobile phone and am looking for a folding, portable Bluetooth full-sized keyboard to be able to type better than via the on-screen keyboards. I’ve used a similar device, although not wireless, for my old Palm Pilot personal digital assistant (PDA) for many years and it’s been great: it fits in a small belt case and obviates the need to carry my laptop around to meetings where I take the minutes (as I always do in committees because I type fast).
There’s a really impressive unit called the Freedom Pro Keyboard for $119; after looking at alternatives, I started ordering it. When I reached the checkbox labeled “I agree to the Terms of Service,” I clicked on “(Terms of Service”) and got a pop-up that included the following text (in UK English):
>Our standard terms and conditions of trade are set out below. They apply to all transactions with other businesses, unless we specifically agree to contract with you on a different basis.
1. General
All orders are accepted and goods supplied subject to the following express terms and conditions (the Company’s standard conditions of sale) and, save to the extent that the exclusion or restriction of liability may be prohibited by statute, all other conditions, warranties and representations, express or implied and statutory or otherwise, except as to title, are hereby excluded. Any order placed by a customer shall constitute an offer to contract upon these express terms and conditions, and no addition thereto or variation therefrom, whether contained in the customer’s order or otherwise shall apply unless expressly agreed in writing by the company’s authorized [sic] representative.
….
4. Prices
Catalogues, price lists and other advertising literature or material as used by the Company are intended only as an indication to price and range of goods offered, and no prices, descriptions or other particular contained therein shall be binding on the Company.
All quoted or listed prices are based on the cost to the Company of supplying the Goods to the customer and if before delivery of the Goods there occurs any increase in any way of such costs in respect of Goods which have not yet been delivered the price payable shall be subject to amendment without notice at the Company’s discretion.
Well, that sure stopped my order! The firm asserted the right to publish a price on its Web site, accept my order with a credit-card, then charge me a higher price without notification! Wow! Mind you, the clause does not explicitly refer to charging my credit card with the high price, but who wants to take the chance?
Changing the price after an order has been placed can lead to serious difficulties. In 1999, I posted an entry in my INFOSEC Year in Review (IYIR) database about one such a case:
>For unknown reasons, the BUY.COM online store Web site listed a $588 Hitachi monitor at only $164.50 — and staff failed to notice the error until two days later, by which time there were 1,600 orders for this incredible bargain. The potential cost was estimated by the company at $320,000. BUY.COM filled 200 orders and told all the rest that they were out of luck. They also posted new language on their Web site addressing the non-validity of erroneous prices.
Analysts speculated on the cause of the error. One intriguing possibility: the BUY.COM online store had a policy of underbidding any price on the Net and may possibly have used knowbots to scour the Web looking for prices of products it was selling. Speculation had it that if a competitor accidentally or deliberately posted a bad price, the unsupervised knowbot could very well poison the BUY.COM Web site database. The same technique could be used in an information warfare attack to ruin a competitor. Even worse, the same problem could occur if two companies inadvertently used the same policy of underbidding all competitors and then simultaneously launched automated processes to lower the price without human intervention.
AMAZON’s “Conditions of Use“, a clause in the “Pricing” section reads as follows:
>With respect to items sold by Amazon, we cannot confirm the price of an item until you order; however, we do NOT charge your credit card until after your order has entered the shipping process. Despite our best efforts, a small number of the items in our catalog may be mispriced. If an item’s correct price is higher than our stated price, we will, at our discretion, either contact you for instructions before shipping or cancel your order and notify you of such cancellation.
Barnes & Noble’s “PRICES” section in its “Terms of Use” includes the following paragraph:
> The price for an item on the Barnes & Noble.com Site may differ from the price shown in a User’s shopping cart — it is possible that such price may increase or decrease between the time the item is placed in a shopping cart and the time that the purchase is actually made. On rare occasions, an item may be priced incorrectly on the Barnes & Noble.com Site. If the price for the item on the Barnes & Noble.com Site is incorrect and is actually higher than the price provided at the time of purchase, then, at the sole discretion of Barnes & Noble.com, Barnes & Noble.com may either (i) contact the User for instructions before shipping the item or charging the User for such item; (ii) cancel the order for such item and notify the User of such cancellation; or (iii) ship the item at the incorrect price to the benefit of the User.
I suspect that many (can’t say what proportion without further research) online firms lean toward the conditions illustrated by Amazon and Barnes and Noble; the idea that a company would propose that “the price payable shall be subject to amendment without notice at the Company’s discretion” strikes me as ludicrous.
I wrote to the keyboard firm’s U.S. representative with a request for an explanation of section 4 of the Terms of Service. Here is his verbatim response, included with the company’s permission:
>Hi Mich,
Thank you very much for bringing this to our attention. This paragraph should certainly not have been in our T&C’s and has now been removed. Apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
Kind Regards,
Paul Bowles
Technical Manager,
Freedom Input Ltd.
Now that is a professional response! I congratulate Mr Bowles and his colleagues for responding so quickly and positively to notification of that questionable clause. And I instantly ordered one of their superb keyboards!
In summary, before you place your order at a new online store, you should actually read the terms of service to avoid unpleasant surprises on your payment summary. If you don’t like the terms of service but really want the product, write to the company. I hope you will be as well served as Freedom Input’s customers.
[Note for the paranoid: no, I was not offered a free keyboard, nor would I have accepted one.]
