The contract that is implicit in the vendor taking (and holding) funds for a an advertized price.
Another consideration here, altgough likely peripheral and adjunct, is at no time during the actual transaction or in confirmation of invoice did the vendor convey that pricing could change -- this came well after parties received confirmation and was passively communicated through a message on their site.
In respect of your first paragraph, consumers are passing them then funds knowing that they don’t have stock. Hence ‘pre-order’.
Ultimately, a retailer reserving a right to vary a price is not materially different from a retailer reserving the right to cancel a pre-order, for whatever reason. The consumer is left in no worse position than an outright cancellation. The logical extension of the sort of argument you’re suggesting is that ‘preorders with cancellations’ are (in principle) ‘legally impossible’, which doesn’t feel right to me. Granted, the position will always depend on the very specific facts of the matter. What terms were provided, what was said + when etc.
I expect that no retailer would do this unless it’s ‘absolutely necessary’, for the obvious reason that it would be extremely annoying to consumers (even if it was lawful).
If a consumer was to ask me what they should do if a retailer increase a price mid-preorder, I would tell them to be pragmatic:
- Accept the higher price, or cancel and take your money elsewhere and don’t bother with that retailer or pre-orders in the future if that annoys you.
- Anything else is wasting your time and, generally speaking, you should
never waste time, energy, stress (and definitely don’t take on ‘legal costs risk’) over ‘peanuts’ unless you feels it’s necessary because of critical personal importance.
^^^ I, personally, wouldn’t be any more bothered than that. If anyone on the forum finds themselves in that sort of position in this 50 series launch, that’s the ‘wisdom’ I would offer.
Meanwhile, if a retailer was to ask me how they should arrange pre-orders / reserve the right to increase prices, I would say it ought to be fine to have pre-orders so long as you do whatever you can to avoid circumstances in which you might annoy consumers:
- be transparent about how it works upfront;
- be clear in your terms;
- keep consumers updated;
- don’t raise prices for reasons other than commercially essential reason;
- if you do raise prices there is a chance that someone will be materially annoyed and then you’ll waste time and energy in dealing with it (and time = cost);
- you mitigate wasting time / cost and avoid annoying people by only taking preorders that you think you can fulfil for that price;
- all said and done, remember also that getting out of bed has ‘risk’ and you need to live and learn, so don’t agonise; make an informed commercial choice as to whether it’s worth it and just get on with it.
… and if I were hypothetically a judge (!) and this came across my desk, depending on the facts and as long as the retailer had been transparent, I’d probably rule in favour of the retailer but make a costs order against them <— retailer’s fault for letting it get that far. Not that it would.
And if either party then started to chuff in advance and talk about “taking matters to court”, which has massive time / costs risk, I would give either party a well-deserved slap / MSI dragon punch
