QANTAS cuts AU$4,000 from price of Mac Pro

Apple Australia's base price for the Mac Pro is AU$4,899. So when Australian airline QANTAS store for frequent flyers started offering the computer for just AU$$520.53, plus 5,000 frequent flyer points, news of the bargain quickly hit sites that track this sort of thing. A single QANTAS frequent flyer point is worth somewhere …

[notowenwilson]

I'm surprised they got away with rejecting the order. From my distant past working in retail the law says that there has to be an offer and an acceptance, and once that's been achieved, the contract is binding. Putting the Mac for sale on their site constitutes and offer, placing an order constitutes acceptance. Unless they've added something to the consumer protection laws recently it seems to me that the contract has been established.

A while back I ordered a very high end solder re-work station from a certain multinational electronics parts retailer (despite not really needing such an impressive piece of kit). They had it on their site for about 90% off normal retail price. I was expecting an email saying 'sorry, we screwed up' but much to my surprise a week later said piece of kit turned up. When I checked their site, they had fixed the price by moving the decimal point one place to the right.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Putting the Mac for sale on their site constitutes and offer, placing an order constitutes acceptance.

It's the other way around. The offer in this context is made by the prospective customer, i.e. to buy item XYZ for ABC dollars. The merchant then accepts (or rejects) the offer. A merchant doesn't have to sell something, even at the price they have it advertised, as long as they aren't discriminatory about it.

IANAL, but if you had ordered one of these and Qantas charged your credit card before reneging, then I believe you would have a legitimate legal complaint, since taking your money is the acceptance. In your example, the merchant might have decided it was easier to take the hit on a small number of sales rather than risk fighting it.

[Slipoch]

Reatil NSW & ACT law

I have worked for 16 years as frontline customer contact point. Over those years I have had numerous dealings with fair trading and advertising law.

Other states may differ, but I am certain that in NSW and in ACT if you advertise the price and it is incorrect the first item bought per person MUST be at the advertised price (possibly legally all of them may have to be at the ad price), you must inform the customer the pricing is incorrect at the initial sale as well.

If payment has been accepted (even if refunded later) then the contractual obligations apply for the supply of goods for the price, the merchant may choose not to sell something to a customer BEFORE taking the money and must notify the customer that they are choosing to refuse sale.

Quantas could also get done for false advertising and possibly bait & switch advertising (for changing it after the fact). Another aspect is that if a retailler sells at a massively below market price item, they must have enough supply for the estimated demand (otherwise it falls under bait & switch rules) or notify consumers of available quantity and limit per customer.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Re: Reatil NSW & ACT law

Other states may differ, but I am certain that in NSW and in ACT if you advertise the price and it is incorrect the first item bought per person MUST be at the advertised price (possibly legally all of them may have to be at the ad price), you must inform the customer the pricing is incorrect at the initial sale as well.

I believe this is the corporate policy of Woolworths, but not the law.

[Black Betty]

I think there's a "publication error" provision.

Otherwise it would only take one smart arse at Kinko's to bankrupt a business.

You get bargains like yours because the packing department just slaps the computer generated label on the box and shoves it out the door. I suspect the data entry error was only picked up when Billing and the warehouse reconciled their books at the end of the day/week/month.

[Oengus]

Wow

You only need 24 first class return flights to London to get the points to buy the Mac Pro... or use Business Class for a couple of the trips (and save around $3000 per flight) and use the money saved to buy the Mac Pro when going through Duty Free on the next flight...

[Anonymous Coward]

QANTAS cutting prices is old school

United Airlines cuts it's own passengers!

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-12/united-airlines-issues-third-apology-after-stock-price-tumbles/8436058

[manitoublack]

Sad fact is a hackinstosh with a build cost <$1000 will have greater compute performance than the 4 year old Mac-Pro.

Apple have since admitted that the design has boxed them into a corner and the next gen mac-pro will be a significant departure

Still for $500-700 or so it about falls on the price to performance curve. At it's retail price I can't believe that people are still daft enough to pony up for one today.