Author: Matthew White
Date: 12:52:19 06/18/03
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On June 18, 2003 at 12:50:24, Mr j smith wrote: >For those who continue to insist that Chessbase has wronged them by not >including 2 free engines with their purchase of Junior 8, in the face of the >plain meaning of the advertisments (which clearly state that only Deep Junior >purchasers receive the 2 free engines ), in contrast to the ambiguous cd covers, >and example from the real world may help show why your whining will fail to >bring you satisfaction. > >Suppose that a franchise holder of Mercedes Benz automobiles places an ad in >various newspapers and by accident the people in charge of the advertising copy >switch prices and certain details of a Mercedes Benz with a plain old Ford >sedan. In my example instead of selling for $50,000 the Benz was advertised for >$10,000. > >Do you think it would be both fair and legal for Mercedes Benz to honor such a >mistake? Of course not. There is no court in the United States that would >honor such an obvious mistake, and in the United States, there is the UCC >(Uniform Commercial Code) which deals with such issues. > >From the examples of advertised print that I have seen it would seem that there >was a mistake on the part of the advertisement department of Chessbase, which >Chessbase almost immediately rectified. The mistake however is only >superficial; the CD cover. A careful reading of all the ad copy clearly states >that only Deep Junior 8 was offering 2 free engines, not Junior8. Your example deals with the value of the goods purchased. What's at issue with Junior is the advertised vs. delievered product. Putting a 5 instead of a 1 is an innocent typographical error. The UCC does not compel a vendor to sell an item at the advertised price, given an innocent mistake (typo). A great deal of ad copy placed online was taken directly from the back of the box (or vice versa). Therefore, the mistake is not nearly as superficial as a single character mistake. The customers who bought Junior 8 did so under the assumption that there were, in fact, going to be two engines on the CD. The engines are NOT free, the customer paid for them. Would the customers still have bought J8 knowing that they were only going to receive one engine? Possibly, but it is also possible that they would have bought Deep Junior 8 instead, or that they simply would have passed altogether, since what they wanted is the engine that played Kasparov. The UCC's handling of pricing is very different from its handling of advertising. Matt
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