A tablet worth 10,000 yuan was mislabeled as a tablet worth 1,000 yuan. The e-commerce company refused to admit it and angrily sued the buyer.

A super tablet computer originally priced at 14,500 yuan was sold at Gome Online for 1,450 yuan due to an operational error by a business company employee. In just three hours, more than 500 units of the computer were sold, causing the seller to lose 6 million yuan. Recently, the seller, a Beijing business company, sued one of the consumers to the court, demanding the cancellation of the sales contract between the two parties. The Haidian Court accepted the case.

The business company claimed that it had signed a cooperation agreement with Gome Online this year to sell electronic products it represented on the online platform provided by Gome Online. On August 25, when the business company released information about a super tablet computer, due to an operational error by a company employee, the computer that was originally priced at "14,500 yuan" was marked as "1,450 yuan per unit". Within 3 hours after the wrong information was released, the number of tablet computers sold on the Gome Online platform reached more than 500. According to preliminary statistics, the business company's losses amounted to 6 million yuan.

Mr. Liu purchased a computer of this model on the same day. The business company believed that since the tablet computer was priced incorrectly, Mr. Liu's purchase of the tablet computer was a major misunderstanding, so it filed a lawsuit in court requesting the annulment of the sales contract relationship established between the plaintiff and the defendant on August 25, 2014.

The reporter called Gome Online yesterday, and a customer service staff said that the case was not Gome Online's problem, so it was inconvenient to reply.

According to the Haidian Court, in accordance with Article 54 of the Contract Law of the People's Republic of China, if the contract between the buyer and seller is concluded due to a major misunderstanding, is obviously unfair when the contract is concluded, or one party uses fraud, coercion or takes advantage of the other party's danger to make the other party conclude the contract against their true intention, the injured party has the right to request the People's Court or arbitration institution to change or cancel the contract. At present, the case is under further trial.

Ma Guohua, a lawyer at Beijing Youtian Law Firm, believes that such price mispricing incidents are not uncommon in the industry. The same thing has happened to companies such as Dell, IBM, and Taobao. The solutions are usually order refunds, compensation, or normal shipment. For merchants, order refunds will cause consumer complaints, while normal shipment will result in direct economic losses.

According to the relevant provisions of my country's Contract Law, such transactions can indeed be considered as contracts concluded with "major misunderstandings". However, the business company also had obvious faults. Even if the court supported the merchant's lawsuit, the merchant could not simply take back the wrongly sold computer, because the original price of 14,500 yuan for this tablet computer also included various costs and purchase prices, and even if the business company took back the tablet computer, it would have become a second-hand product, so the best way is to negotiate with the consumer to resolve the issue.

In addition, if the consumer does not return the computer purchased at the wrong price, then when the computer has problems and needs to be repaired or replaced, it is unknown whether the price of 1,450 yuan on the computer invoice will be recognized by the merchant. The resulting warranty and other issues are also a major hidden danger.

Different outcomes of those mispriced

Suning.com

In May this year, due to a mistake made by a price maintenance staff at Suning.com, an Acer W3 tablet originally priced at 1,999 yuan was marked at 499 yuan on Suning.com's website. Although Suning discovered the mistake and restored the original price immediately, more than 1,000 units of this "most affordable tablet in history" were still sold within a few minutes. Suning.com later confirmed that the loss from the price error was over one million yuan, but it would still ship the product as usual and bear the loss.

Lenovo

Previously, the Lenovo S5000 tablet computer, originally priced at 1,888 yuan, was mistakenly marked at 999 yuan by the supplier, which attracted a lot of attention. Afterwards, Lenovo simply "made the best of a bad situation" and officially adjusted the price of the tablet computer to 999 yuan and continued to sell it.

In 2004, IBM mistakenly marked the price of its notebook Combo CD-ROM drive at 1 yuan, which was priced at 1,500 yuan. In the end, it still shipped the product to the subscribers at the price of 1 yuan.

Dell

In June and July 2009, Dell made two of the worst mispricing mistakes in history in Taiwan. The 19-inch LCD screen was priced at NT$500 and the 20-inch LCD screen was NT$999. Each LCD screen and computer was at least NT$7,000 cheaper, so nearly 100,000 orders were flooded in. However, Dell refused to ship the products afterwards and only gave buyers discount coupons as compensation, which caused many consumer disputes at the time. Subsequently, 31 netizens in Tainan united and cooperated, filed a lawsuit in August 2009, and spent nearly a year on litigation before finally winning the case. The Tainan District Court ruled that Dell must ship the products according to the contract, but the case can still be appealed.

Amazon

In 2012, Amazon mistakenly marked the price of Huawei Honor's black China Unicom customized mobile phone at 1,999 yuan as 1,499 yuan. Amazon cancelled the user's order on the grounds of "system price error" and was complained by the user.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.