Online orders are considered as effective contracts, therefore sellers must deliver on their orders even if they have been wrongly priced, the Cabinet’s Consumer Protection Commission said.
The commission made the remarks in response to an incident on Friday in which Apple Inc incorrectly priced a computer model on its Taiwan online store, listing its Mac Mini at NT$19,900 (US$620), close to 40 percent of its regular price of NT$47,710.
The pricing error was discovered on the Apple Education Store Taiwan’s Web site at about noon on Friday. The company has not commented on the issue.
The price listed for the 8GB version of the computer model — the Mac Mini Snow Leopard Server — was even lower than the 4GB version, which is priced at NT$34,900.
The error was corrected at about 7pm on Friday, but by then the site had received orders for up to 200,000 units at the incorrect price, according to local media reports.
Lee Mai (李鎂), deputy director of the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Commerce Department, said although regulations on Internet transactions would not take effect until next year, Apple could face lawsuits over the incident if it is not willing to deliver the wrongly priced computers.
Lee said that according to the proposed regulations on Web site transactions, sellers — with legitimate reasons — could reject orders within two days. However, if the buyers have already paid for their purchases, the orders must be delivered.
Dell Computer experienced similar problems with incorrect pricing last year, involving nearly 200,000 online orders.
On July 1, the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Petitions and Appeals Committee rejected an appeal by Dell and ruled the computer giant had to pay a fine of NT$1 million (US$31,170) for the online pricing errors.
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