OT-"Inaccurate" Advertising.

The ad essentially said...

"Small..$999 for 12/ $1470 for 24."
"Large...$1950 for 12/ $2840 for 24."

We went to buy the $1470 thing and they rang it up as $1950.  We said, "No...look at your website."  Clerk said, "Oops."  She called the manager.  Manager said, "Oops...that's the price.  The person in charge of the webite was supposed to fix that."  We said, "We think you should honor that price." The we bought none of them.  (Athough we paid for other services we had already received.)

Should we insist on being sold the items for the advertised price?  (And how would we do that, anyway?)  When you do the math for all of the items--which we didn't do--you can see that indeed the prices should probably be $999 for 12 / $1950 for 24 and $1470 for 12 / $2840 for 24.  It makes mathematical sense that way.

But I went in because of the advertised price and didn't think I was cheating anyone.  Should they have sold me the package at that price? ****pt a copy of the webpage.)

 Most of the time a retailer will honor the price printed in a flyer or on a website UNLESS they have posted signs stating there is an error.  If they didn't have it posted and you brought it to their attention, ordinarily, they should have honored it.

However, my retail experience is with books and not anything near as pricey as you are discussing. I would have, were I the manager, tried to negotiate some form of middle ground to avoid losing your business altogether.  

And then I'd have taken it out of the web-person's hide, metaphorically speaking.  

But it is their choice, just as it was your choice to walk away.  I'm not sure they made the best customer service move and I'm not even sure they made the move best for their bottom line.  

Using that GoogleMachine you keep telling me about, I found this:

California's Business and Professional Code 12024.2 (effective since 2005):

(a) It is unlawful for any person, at the time of sale of
a commodity, to do any of the following:
(1) Charge an amount greater than the price, or to compute an
amount greater than a true extension of a price per unit, that is
then advertised, posted, marked, displayed, or quoted for that
commodity.
(2) Charge an amount greater than the lowest price posted on the
commodity itself or on a shelf tag that corresponds to the commodity,
notwithstanding any limitation of the time period for which the
posted price is in effect.


Don't know if this was in LA County, but you could call these folks: http://lacountydca.com/tsFalseAdvertising.htm

Or their equivalent in the county in which this occurred.

Harking back to my conflict resolution class--which I passed ONLY because it was a Quaker College and they don't fail people--there are three levels of conflict resolution:
1--mutual interest (I want the product, she wants the sale...she should honor the advertised price.)
2--rights (the law says if she advertised it that way, she has to honor it...or I report her ass and she pays a small fine.)
3--power (I'll blast her ass all over yelp and other review sites and all that good stuff, providing evidence of the false advertising.)

I am currently on #1...awaiting a call from the owner. 

But thanks for the links!

I think the law says they have to sell it for the price being shown in the store. So the website doesn't count as that's the website price. Some stores do have different prices online than in the store and that's legal.

But it's bad customer service not to honor the web price in this instance.

I was JUST reading your mods thread and *poof*

sigh.

My hubby and kids are afraid (not really) when I get jipped like that. I demand managers, when/if I get no satisfaction there, the I get the district manager involved, if that doesn't work then I take it all the way to the top. It usually doesn't get that far, but I have no qualms about doing it if I know I'm right!

The squeaky wheel gets the grease. I am polite, but firm and usually I get what I want. I think that if that's what was advertised, then they should honor it. Take it to the top if you have to!  Write e-mails, letters and phone calls. Make them get tired of hearing from you.   

They probably threw up a small print sign after you -- "about the error."

I always thought retailers would honor the printed advertised price.  Its only good business.

I saw on a webpage, free shipping over $50, it didn't ring up like that and I chatted w someone online and they said that webpage has expired? So not sure how that works.