Tom C wrote: >Never mind Mark, I read the 2nd part of your post.
If the customer had taken this to small claims court he probably would have won, but it was probably impractical (was he even in the same state as B&H?). But you know what he *should* have done? He should have just waited until the item arrived and then filed a dispute with his credit card company. That would have been a slam dunk. >On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 11:29 AM, Tom C <[email protected]> wrote: >> Then explain to me why deceptive and false advertising is an issue and >> why there are laws prohibiting it. Worse case scenario (not B&H), if I >> can advertise anything I want and then amend the terms at will, when a >> customer attempts to purchase... is that purely informational or is it >> a fraudulent act? I have a feeling some of the statutes governing this >> topic will differ from state to state, country to country. There are probably both state and federal false advertising laws, and these laws have to find a balance between allowing unscrupulous business practices (the old "bait-and-switch) and penalizing businesses for honest mistakes. Contract law is pretty much the same all over the U.S., and that's where B&H messed up. I wish I had my notes from the law course available now (they're in storage somewhere). The "offer and acceptance" stuff from contract law was fun. Regarding ads being "information" rather than an "offer": One early case involved a Chicago department store long ago. They published a newspaper ad offering something (free) to everyone who came to the main entrance of the store on such-and-such time on such-and-such date. More people showed up than expected and the store ran out of the item. Some customers took them to court. The store claimed that an advertisement was just "information", as was well established in law by then. But because the ad contained specific instructions of what the customers had to do (present yourself at a specific place on a specific date at a specific time) and what they would get in return, the judge found that this particular ad *did* constitute an offer rather than just information, so he ruled for the plaintiffs. Advertisers pretty much avoid that kind of thing now (and put in plenty of fine print just in case). The most fun part of the course was "Leonard v. Pepsico". A similar offer/acceptance contract case. You can look it up yourself. You'll enjoy it ;-) -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
