GIANT Tanks from B&Q for £50

[Justme]

I have the same letter, don't we have any recourse? They accepted my money and confirmed my order, I will write and inform them that I will be writing to the Times.....
Mike McMillan

Same here. As the company that makes them is still making them then I dont see how running out matters.

Especialy as they took the site down & then put it back up again after checking it.

[petertc]

I already have a rain water system in but i thought i would have a look at the tank, and  diy.com still seems to be  down for maintenance!!

[ecogeorge]

Am I  the first to get a letter from B&Q saying they are unable to accept my order  for 2 Argonat water butts. Due to a system error on the website that  continued taking orders for the product after their stocks had been exhausted . This model  has been discontinued and B&Q will not be stocking it in the future.

My order had been accepted , -I 'll check later to see if money was taken and then refunded!

rgds George.

[Richard Owen]

I have an order acknowledgement email from B&Q timed at 1:06 on Sunday morning.

It states that they will contact me within three working days to arrange delivery.

I've heard nothing so I've sent an email to the address supplied asking them to contact me regarding arranging a delivery date.

I'll let you all know how I get on.

[Mike McMillan]

I emailed H2O asking if they would supply B&Q with mote tamks. There reply was " 

Hi Mr McMillan
 
Unfortunately no more stocks are available.  This was due to a B&Q error on the website, which enabled customer to purchase the goods on line. (The tanks were only supposed to be
available in the store, to get rid of non moving stocks). 
 
I am told that all customer swho purchased the tanks will be contacted by their customer services department and all monies refunded.
 
 
Kind Regards

Julie Haley  Accounts



Mike McMillan
Julie Haley
Accounts & Retail Co-ordinator

[Procrastinator]

I ordered on the 22nd, and got an e-mail confirmation immediately, the money went out of my account on the 24th, but yesterday got the letter from B&Q dated the 24th saying they were unable to accept the order. I haven't got the money back yet, but that's probably just the bank hanging on to it for three "working" days before crediting it to my account.

A bit disappointed, luckily I hadn't started digging the hole!

[Richard Owen]

I got my, can't accept the order, letter this morning. They provided an email address for further information. I sent them this email.

Hi,

I am in receipt of your letter of 24th June.

I wonder if you could check something for me?

My understanding of contract law is that for a contract to be made there must be an offer, an acceptance and a consideration.

I believe that you offered, via your website, these water butts for sale.

I believe that I accepted your offer by going through the buying process on your website.

I believe that when you charged my credit card, that was the consideration. I am therefore at a loss to understand why your letter claims to be unable to accept my order for two tanks, when you accepted the order at 13:46 on Sunday June 21st. You did, after all, entitle the email, "B&Q Order Confirmation."

I therefore believe that we have a contract for you to supply me with two water tanks.

I would like my water tanks please.

Obviously if you could point me to relevant part of English and Welsh contract law that relieves you of your responsibility to fulfil your part of the contract simply because  you do not have your internal systems under control, I would be delighted to receive it.

Yours sincerely,
      Richard Owen

Dunno what will happen, but it has to be worth two minutes of email time.

[Kombi]

Dunno what will happen

I do. Their sollicitor's bill has just gone up!! 

[Iain]

Richard
Sent a similar letter yesterday and am awaiting a reply
Iain

[dhaslam]

The way offer and acceptance works is that the customer makes the offer and the seller accepts.  Putting through a payment does seem to imply acceptance but possibly not if it is detailed in the terms of sale.  

They have some very odd rules.  I was going to buy some ceramic tiles from them but I has told that if you are over sixty you should buy them on Wednesday because they would be cheaper.   I asked if I could order them and have them invoiced on wednesday but that wasn't possible. When I phoned on the wednesday they were all gone.    

[Richard Owen]

The way offer and acceptance works is that the customer makes the offer and the seller accepts.  

Made an arse of myself again then.

No change there.

[martin W]

so guys n girls whats the real deal?

Can we make them deliver the goods for the accepted charge of £50 plus delievery, even though they say they are out of stock and it was a website error?

I've got an order confirmation on MOnday 22nd June at 6:12 am? Then a few days later the letter.....

Whats the ruling if the manufacturer still has stock?

[Richard Owen]

Our contract is with B&Q, not the manufacturer.

I'm going to wait until close of play on Monday and if I haven't heard back from them by then I'm going to drop a line to the chief executive letting him know how his staff as playing fast and loose with customer loyalty and contract law.

Probably make an arse of myself again.

[kristen]

FWIW our eCommerce systems use to store Credit Card details, but not debit the card until the goods were shipped. This meant that when stock ran out etc. there was no refund necessary, as customer's cards had not been debited.

We do have occasions where clients make mistakes listing them without setting the actual quantity, or making a typo in price and / or qty.  That's up to the client so sort out of coruse.

On one occasions a client listed TTF screens at a bargain price to get rid of a couple of dozen that had been sitting in the corner of the warehouse for ages, they failed to set the qty-on-hand, the "Offer" was well publicised in the forums, and they had more than a thousand orders when they came in to work the following morning

The ensuing discussion in the forums was interesting. Most people had not heard of the company and said they thought it was a scam (company is a large mail-order company with over 20,000 product lines, so not some fly-by-night).  There was lots of talk of taking legal action, and that the company had just done it to harvest email address, and so on.

For every negative comment there were other people saying they had dealt with the company often, and it was honourable (different scenario here, I grant you ), and that the item had been listed as "Limited stock available", credit cards had not been debited (which seemed to be a big factor in favour of the company), and the people who did receive stock said as much [in the forums] and "Be quicker next time".

On balance I thought it did the company no harm; the company didn't want it to happen again!

We now have safeguards in our eCommerce system that prevent pricing-accidents (if that is what this was @ B&Q)

However, the biggest problem we now have is that the credit card companies no longer allow us to store card numbers, [and we have to do the 3D-secure thing as well, to reduce fraud] so we no longer have the option of having the order-fulfilment package take the payment as the goods are shipped. It is possible to "Pre-Auth" the Credit Card with the value of the goods (when you place your order online) and then actually "debit" the card when the goods are shipped, but none of the Order Fulfilment packages we deal with support this option.

So those things are contributory to this type of foul-up. (I don't have a problem with the fact that this is intended to reduce fraud)

I'll be interested to know what the law says, in practice, on this matter

[Amy]

remember when hoover were giving away free air tickets?

they were swamped and retracted the offer but peeps took them to court and won

Go for it Richard, just dont lose your temper cos thats how i make an ass of myself