Fashion and homeware retailer ‘Next’ accidently listed a £1,198 sofa on its website for just £98. The blunder meant that the sofa had been reduced by £1,100 instead of the intended £100.
Bargain-hunters rushed online to purchase the deal and the mistake went unnoticed as buyers even received confirmation emails and estimated delivery dates.
The pricing error was spotted by users of Hotukdeals, and remained unnoticed for nearly six hours.
Customers said that they had £98 – plus delivery charges – debited from their bank accounts, which meant those who managed to get their hands on the homeware, believed they were getting the ‘deal of the century’.
However these customers face a disappointment from Next, as the retailer is falling back on its terms and conditions small print which states it can cancel orders before they are dispatched for delivery.
After only a few hours Next spotted their mistake and quickly corrected the price. Yesterday the retailer said it planned on contacting all customers involved and explain that their orders would not be fulfilled.
The firm had been in talks with Trading Standards regarding the issue, and found they were well within their rights to ‘cancel the order at any time prior to dispatch’.
A spokesman for Next said: “For a few hours, one sofa option was shown wrongly priced on our transactional website and telephone ordering system. This was a genuine and unfortunate error, which we corrected as quickly as possible”.
He added: “We then discussed with our local Trading Standards offices how to deal with any orders that had been placed at the wrong price. According to our standard terms and conditions, we reserve the right to cancel an order at any time prior to dispatch”.
“We are contacting all customers involved, explaining that unfortunately we will not be able to fulfil their order. We are sorry for the inconvenience and disappointed caused”.
Next is not the first retailed to be affected by a price glitch, last year Currys was forced to apologise for listing a Samsung Galaxy Netbook for £22 instead of £229 on its website.
In October chocoholics snapped up thousands of boxes of Terry’s Chocolate Oranges from Tesco after an error in the pricing system, which meant the price was lowered to £1.75 for a pack of six instead of £16.50.
Related Articles