Has a contract been created

[ostell]

Ordering goods online today and my debit card was declined by the retailer.**

First attempt* resulted in "card declined" message with a suggestion to try again.

Second attempt same results*

Bank showed 2 pending amounts.* Phone call to bank confirmed* no problems their end and the amounts approved

Phone call to retailer and they manually tried to take order, with same declined result.* They blamed my address not agreeing with the bank database

Back to the bank again,who were rather bemused with the excuse, and the third attempt* marked pending.

Found what I wanted elsewhere.

Email from retailer some 4 hours later saying my order (!!??) would be delivered by Hermes.

My position is that as my payments were declined then there can be no contract in place.* I have written and told them, politely, what they can do with their order.

Have I assumed correctly about the validity of the contract?








*

[Law Student 2]

Hi,*
This is a bit tricky.
By displaying the goods online the company was making what is known as "an invitation to treat". In response to this you made an offer to buy when attempting to buy the goods, which the company could accept or reject. If the website said your payment did not go through, and you have proof of this, i would have thought your offer was not complete.
However, if the payment went through and you received an acceptance e.g an email of conformation of the order, this would count as acceptance of the contract.*

I would wait to see what the company say in response and state as the payments status were all pending you had no confirmation of acceptance of the contract and assumed them void. Also, I would say that you took extra steps, calling your bank, to figure out why the status was pending attempting to solve the problem so it was clearly an issue on their end. Perhaps an issue with the website.*
Just to make clear, did the any of the payments go through to the company?

It might be useful to you to have a look at this site for further information*https://www.businesscompanion.info/e...umer-contracts
Hope this helps

[R0b]

Back to the bank again,who were rather bemused with the excuse, and the third attempt marked pending.

I think if you were aware that the third attempt was pending and you didn't do anything to inform the company that you no longer wanted the goods or at least told your bank to block any payment, could be arguable that a contract may have been entered into.

Having said that, if you were told explicitly it was declined then you could say that you relied on that statement and looked elsewhere for the goods, therefore any payment taken from your account was an unauthorised payment.

Probably worth sticking to your guns on this, they might back down though they do have your money presumably so ball might end up in your court to decide what to do.