VERY UNHAPPY with Century Arms

I have had a Mosin M91/30 rifle on backorder with them since 12/8/2012. The quoted price was $109.87. Yesterday I get a phone message that they are finally going to be in stock in about 2-3 weeks, and by the way the price is now $139.99. A 30% increase in price ??? I was under the mistaken impression that once I got an order conformation from them with a quoted price that was the price I would be charged. My sales person (Gitta) says there is nothing they can do about the price. Thanks for nothing Century. Way to treat your loyal customers.

Send em another message then, and this time tell em you agreed to the original price at the time you placed the order, and will not pay one peny more... and you will cancel the order if they insist on charging more money for it.

Have you already been billed? If not you may not have any ground to stand on. Like most everyone else Century has a notice posted on their webpage for all to see stating that ''prices are subject to change without notice''. I'm in the same boat concerning an AR -15 upper I ordered in Dec. 2012 and still haven't received yet. I wasn't billed at the time so now I'm sweating bullets wondering if the price will be what it was then or will it be some outrageous figure I'm not willing to pay.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, just a not-totally-uninformed layman. Legal concepts may vary from one jurisdiction to another, so the following is merely an expression of what, I hope, is informed common-sense!

The practice of trying to increase an already agreed price is very common in the UK housing market, and is termed "gazumping". The present problem is not of the same order of financial magnitude, but the same legal principles should apply.

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Originally Posted by vintage hunter

Have you already been billed? If not you may not have any ground to stand on. Like most everyone else Century has a notice posted on their webpage for all to see stating that ''prices are subject to change without notice''.

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I must respectfully disagree with this opinion.
There should be no problem if an invoice has already been issued by the seller at the agreed price. But an invoice is a formal request to the buyer to complete his part of the already existing contractual terms by paying the seller. An invoice is not a contract.

The seller is thus not entitled to redefine the terms of the contract (in this case, price) without the agreement of the other party - the buyer - by introducing new terms and conditions in an invoice.

"Subject to change without notice" is commonly appended to published prices in catalogs, online etc. It means that the price quoted is, in effect, a "tender" price or "offer to treat", which is to say, the prospective purchaser may offer to purchase the goods at the named price, but the seller may still say, before accepting the order, that the price has, in the meantime, been increased.

However, "Subject to change without notice" cannot be taken as a contractual obligation on the part of the buyer to accept any price that the seller may define retrospectively, after the buyer has offered to buy at the stated price and the seller has accepted that offer (=purchase order). If it were otherwise, the seller could retrospectively charge, say a million, a billion, whatever... That is obviously making nonsense of the concept of a contract.

A contract is basically a formalized exchange - typically of goods for money, but of course also of work for money, or work for goods.
It requires the form X for Y, not "anything one party feels like for Y".
For instance, "nothing for Y" is not a contract, it is a gift!

Once the seller has accepted the buyer's offer (=order) at the quoted price, then a contractual situation has been established. Retrospectively wishing to increase the price is thus an attempt by the seller to withdraw from the terms of the contract and the buyer is therefore no longer obliged to adhere to the contract - it is the seller who wishes to withdraw. The buyer may indeed be able to compel the seller to complete the contract at the original price.

All this is not just legal theory, but of eminent practical importance if you are, for instance, purchasing a house.

In the case of the item under discussion, the buyer appears to have the following options:
1) to formally withdraw from the contract on the grounds that the seller is unable or unwilling to adhere to the terms of the contract,
2) to compel the seller to complete the contract.

Option 2) may well be used for a contract as important as house purchase. In the case of an item hardly worth a 3-figure sum, the legal costs swamp the value of the item. I would therefore recommend that, in this case, the buyer uses option 1. In writing, of course! And immediately - before the item is delivered. For the reasons explained above, it is unlikely that the seller will try to enforce a completion of the sale at the higher price.

But, as stated at the outset, I am not a lawyer, and things may be different where you live!

I'm no lawyer either but I think I'm going to have to get one from Philadelphia to help me figure out how the legal principals concerning ''gazumping'' in the UK housing market could even remotely apply to the purchase of a rifle in the U.S. That you disagree with me Patrick came as no surprise at all. All we seem to agree on lately is that we agree to disagree.
Concerning back order prices in the U.S., some places honor them while others don't. Evidently Century doesn't. Most don't bill the customer until the item(s) are in stock ready to ship. A few will bill the customer at time of purchase and if prices change the customer is billed the difference. One place I deal with regularly honors backorder prices and locks them in at time of purchase, if the price goes up customer wins but if price goes down customer loses.
So it is my opinion that WHG2's only two choices are:
1. pay the difference
2.cancel the order
I have no idea how things work in Germany and I won't even attempt to pretend that I do.
Anyone care to rebut?

I've personally never heard of a back order price not being honored and a company that does not honor them is in all likelihood doing so illegally and I would report them to the Better Business Bureau.

I walk into a K-mart and there is a tag on the shelf noting a certain price and I go and pay for it and the price comes up something higher, they have to honor that tag price. It's just the way of the retail world. They usually will immediately remove the tag and the price goes up at that point. In my 40+ years of shopping, this has happened to me dozens of times and not once did any company try to back out of the lower price. In fact it happened in Walmart just this past Tuesday when I purchased a DVD.

What Century should have done is state that the items are no longer in stock and they cannot guarantee the price any longer. But they apparently did not do so, they placed the back order, that guarantees the price.

Prices subject to change does not mean they can change once a contract is made and that is what the back order status is. A contract USED to be a simply handshake, accepting an order at an agreed to price IS a contract.

Patrick is correct that the small dollar value of the item in question allows some companies to disregard their contract as they know that it will be cost prohibitive to be enforced. That doesn't make them right, it makes them a company with no honor and no regard to their reputation. So long as someone else is there to buy, they will continue with these type of practices. Get the word out, their bottom line drops and they will start behaving differently.

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Originally Posted by vintage hunter

All we seem to agree on lately is that we agree to disagree.

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Sorry about that, it must be the geographical diffences. But we are in agreement that the buyer has the option of cancelling the order!

Patrick, no worries. I enjoy matching wits with you, keeps me on my toes. Perhaps having a small retail business myself makes me see things in a different light. Seldom anymore are the prices the same from one shipment to the next. If I weren't allowed to raise prices accordingly I'd soon be out of business.
Yes, we are in agreement that the buyer has the option to cancel the order.