A large retail chain, MediaWorld, offered 13-inch iPad Air models to loyalty card holders for €17, with orders placed both online and for in-store pickup and the iPads delivered to their new owners.
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It took the company 11 days to realize it had made a mistake and is now asking customers who bought the iPads to either return them or pay almost the full price. Unfortunately for the chain, the terms and conditions that came with the order did not exclude pricing errors.
According to Wired, the mistake was made by tech retail giant MediaWorld in Italy. The process was seamless, even for those who ordered online. In-store, the €15 payment was successfully processed and MediaWorld delivered the iPads as expected.
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The terms and conditions contained no clause to exclude pricing errors, with MediaWorld attempting to rely on a more general principle of contract law. Italian law states that a company can cancel a contract if the error was obvious.
However, a consumer lawyer quoted in the article said that there are so many different promotions, some of them clearly designed to generate publicity, that consumers could not be expected to know for sure that it was a mistake and not a sales pitch.
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Furthermore, the company hasn't issued a formal legal notice, just sent out an email to customers offering them the two options. It's unclear how the story will end, but for now, customers are probably better off keeping their iPads and not responding to the email.
