Q: this is a question about online shopping. I put an item in my cart and continued to shop the sale on the website.
i did not leave the website and was continuing to shop the sale for 20 minutes or so. when i went to pay for the item in question, the system stated the item was no longer available. they sold it out from under me even though i had placed the item in my cart. this is akin to being in a store with an item in my basket and because i'm not ready to check out yet another shopper dipped their hand into my basket and took my item out and bought it. is this practice legal?
A:
There doesn't seem to be anything illegal about this. It isn't against the law to operate an online shopping website where inventory isn't well coordinated with shopping carts of customers. It isn't a good business practice, but it shouldn't be against the law, unless it's done for deceitful purposes. You could bring the problem to their attention so that their programmers could look into the issue and prevent future shoppers from experiencing the same frustration you did. Good luck
Tim Akpinar
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