What does the law suggest?
According to federal law, the company is not in any position to honor the mistaken price and they don’t have to carry on with the price lesser than the original and thus endure the loss. Even if the price of a product once displayed incorrectly, the company can deduct the original price from customers after correcting this mistake. That means the law is not encouraging customers to go ahead with disputes regarding the display of wrong prices on an e-commerce website.
Third-party pricing mistake
Double pricing mistake
How are price mistakes identified?
Usually, a mistake in the price, especially a huge difference, would attract a large number of customers, and thus there will be unusual sales on the site. This sudden traffic would be noticed and thus rectify the mistake. Even customers also can report any such pricing issue noticed by them. There would be a “Report incorrect product information” option on every product page. In this section, there would be an “other product details” option which would lead to the “price issues” section. Their customers can report any unusual pricing issues.
Why do price mistakes happen?
There are multiple reasons behind e-commerce sites facing a price mistake. Usually, this would be due to certain glitches in the site, technical snag, input errors, etc. The presence of certain hackers is also a reason for such mistakes. Mostly price mistakes happen during festive seasons or during discount sale time when there will be heavy traffic on the site. This may be due to the large data software stores or because of typographical errors from employees. Error in the algorithm, especially during high traffic times also causes price mistakes.
