Customers lose TV discount fight
Shoppers took 3 Suisses to court for refusing to honour orders for top-of-the-range television wrongly priced at €180
ONLINE shoppers have lost their legal battle against a website that refused to honour a 90 per cent offer on a top-of-the-range television.
More than 20,000 people tried to buy a Samsung 52-inch high-definition screen on 3Suisses.fr last August, enticed by a 90 per cent discount.
The TV was on sale for €179.99 instead of €1899.99. Initially those who contacted the customer service desk to query the price were told it was correct.
3 Suisses spotted the error two days later. The price should have read €1799 and the site refused to honour the 46,000 orders that had been placed.
Customers banded together, setting up a Facebook group and campaign website. Four hundred of them set up an association and launched legal action.
A court in Roubaix, in the Nord, has now ruled that the price was "clearly ridiculous" and that the site was right to have cancelled the sales.
The customers have been ordered to pay the firm's legal fees. They will not be launching an appeal.
French law requires vendors to honour an incorrect price unless they can prove that it was an obvious error (erreur manifeste)
3 Suisses said it was an "obvious typing error" and apologised to customers who had wanted to take up the offer.
Consumer watchdog the Institut National de Consommation said: "In these circumstances, web users had every reason to think it was a real, serious price."
