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Comment by burnt-resistor | Hacker News Reader

I don't know NC law. Does it have an "invitation to treat" practice there where prices marked are a customer relations issue rather than a legally-binding offer?

To attain change, enough people have to:

1. Correctly identify the source of their misery, because it ain't [insert scapegoats].

2. Find others who agree with them.

3. Make a plan for effective countering of 1.

4. Use intestinal fortitude and endure temporary setbacks to achieve 3. to overcome 1.

5. Prevent 1. from ever happening again structurally, culturally, and through vigilant participation.

The 0th problem is the political operating system is captured by criminals and power has centralized grotesquely in ways that defeat the fundamental function of separation of powers. All elected officials corrupted by lobbyist bribes need to face accountability and have a code of ethics and integrity, because continuing down this path is the road to ruin.

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I don't think the laws of the specific jurisdiction matter. In every US jurisdiction, the prices aren't completely legally binding (what if the previous customer changed the price tag?). In ~every US jurisdiction, if you systematically show one price but charge customers another, that's an offence.

So intent matters. What would decide an individual case is not the exact characterisation of the laws on the books, but how sympathetic a regulator or a judge is to the supermarket's claim that these things just happen sometimes.

If another customer changed the price tag, that would be in the same category as if a person unaffiliated with the store said "I'll give you a deal on this item for $10", then pocketed the money while you walked out with the (still not yours) item. This doesn't really have any bearing on whether the owner of a store putting up a sign with a specific price for a specific item that a customer can directly take possession of constitutes a binding offer.

Sure, but it's in the same category as the owner putting up a sign by mistake, or omitting to update a sign by mistake. Or more realistically, an employee of the owner putting up a sign even though the owner had instructed him to put up a different sign.

> or omitting to update a sign by mistake

No, in this case the shop is legitimately offering an item for sale, and then forgetting to change the price they are offering it at. It's quite disingenuous for a shop to put up signs, and then act like those numbers aren't legally binding, while the real prices are hidden away in a database somewhere. If they want to have their database be the authoritative copy pricing information, then they can just not put up price signs to begin with.

> If they want to have their database be the authoritative copy pricing information, then they can just not put up price signs to begin with.

This one really does vary by jurisdiction, but no, grocery stores generally must display prices by law.

Sure, but the point of those laws is to diminish the ability for merchants to obscure prices, as a deliberate public policy goal.

Such places are likely to have more proactive regulations against price discrepancies well, rather than common law "freedom".

Still I can imagine a few ways for a store to post prices without being in the territory of forming binding offers - keep stock only accessible to employees, post obnoxious signs everywhere stating that the prices are for informational purposes and that no offer is implied, require membership for entry with appropriate terms, etc.

Or rather than continuing to run the complexity treadmill trying to escape regulation, stores can just accept that they're bound by laws that were settled quite some time ago, and that their business includes making offers to sell items.

> NC law. Does it have an "invitation to treat" practice [...] rather than a legally-binding offer?

Are there any common-law jurisdictions in the world where having products on sale in a supermarket is not generally considered invitation to treat but as an offer to sell?

What is an invitation to treat, and how does a store with items on the shelf not constitute an offer to sell?

The invitation to treat is the store inviting potential customers to treat (engage in commerce) with the store by submitting an offer to buy the displayed items at the listed price, which they usually do by bringing the items to the register or (for more specialized purchases) telling a store employee that they want to buy the item. When the buyer makes the offer, the cashier accepts the offer on behalf of the store by ringing up the purchase, and the buyer performs their end of the contract by paying the price, thereby contractually gaining ownership of their purchase.

One reason it works this way is that treating displayed items as an offer to sell would leave it unclear to whom the offer to sell would be made. Clearly each item on display can only be sold to one of the many shoppers who sees it, so they can't all be offered the sale. There are several other reasons too, like different customers being offered different terms of sale based on loyalty program membership, promotions, student or senior discounts, etc.

Here is the Wikipedia summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invitation_to_treat

As the article says, the term in various US jurisdictions may be slightly different, like invitation to bargain, but the basic concept is the same. (I'm ignoring Louisiana entirely, which has a completely different legal tradition not derived from English common law.)

Thank you. The whole process is absurdly over-defined, but I understand why. Bad actors necessitate such wasted energy.

It comes from a UK case, Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain vs Boots Cash Chemist (southern division) from memory.

If the price on the shelf were an offer to sell, then you would be contractually obliged to buy everything you picked up. The offer comes instead from when you pass it to the cashier, which is why I'm saying for the third time on this thread, if you don't like that price walk out and leave the goods at the checkout...see if they find it more fun to put all your goods back, or put the correct prices on the shelf! If a group of people did this at every till the store would be effectively closed.

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