I bought an item online for £0.00, am I legaly entitled to it?...

[hank_marvin]

Any advice would be great. In short I bought an item worth around £400 online, the price they listed was £0.00, so obviously I snapped it up, bargain I thought!.

My question is, do they by law have to sell it to me?...I would guess so because I paid their asking price and now the item must belong to me yes?...

[admin]

Hi Hank,

I am afraid not. There have been lots of cases like this, athough not as extreme as yours i.e. not something worth £400 being sold for £0, and the seller had not been obliged to sell. In legal terms it is not a legal contract as there has been no 'consideration' i.e. there has been no transaction and it is not a legally binding contract.

Even if it had been advertised for 1p, they still wouldn't have to sell it to you as they don't have to accept your offer.

Tony

[hank_marvin]

Oh well, thanks for replying Tony. I thought that it would have been covered by my Statutory rights under the Misleading Price categories.
Don't get me wrong I never expected to actually get it but it was worth a try!. Also I did actually pay the £0.00 through a secure transaction, surely that must mean that I have actually bought the item and it now belongs to me, I mean I did pay the advertised price after all.

[Tony]

Hi Hank,

Even though the transaction completed electronically no money changed hands as the amount was 0p.

If you check their terms I would expect that their acceptance of your offer to purchase would only be confirmed when the goods are shipped and not just after the payment has been accepted. This protects retailers from mistakes such as this. See below for an example:

Woolworths.co.uk collapses under mispriced TV rush | The Register

The order confirmation received by these people was not an acceptance of the offer, which is why Woolworths did not have to honour it.

Tony

[Paul Carcone]

Tony is perfectly right in this circumstance...and this is one of the fundemental principles of Contract Law...Everywone who has ever picked up even the most basic of law reference books will have read about it.

Another instance of, if it's too good to be true....etc...