In the opinion of Turku Energia, which accidentally sold an electricity contract that was too cheap, consumers should have realized that the prices were incorrect. HS asked the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority about it.
Would it did people really have to realize that the electricity contract offered by Turku Energia was too good to be true?
HS Turku told earlierthat Turku Energia, the electricity company owned by the city of Turku, sold a cheap electricity contract at Christmas time.
However, according to the electricity company, the prices were wrong “due to human error”. The price of electricity was not supposed to be 2.81 cents per kilowatt hour, but 10.55 cents per kilowatt hour.
According to Turku Energia, the company has the right to correct the price, because people should have understood that the price was incorrect.
Can an energy company act like this? HS Turku asked the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority (KKV) about it.
Leading expert Mikko Saastamoinen KKV says that the agreement made as a matter of principle binds both parties. According to him, therefore, the seller cannot usually cancel the contract, even if he has declared the price too low.
Saastamoinen says that in this case, the contract was created when the customer ordered an electricity contract from the online store.
The representative of Turku Energia, who commented on the matter in HS's previous story, referred to KKV's guidelines. of KKV on the website the following is said:
“An incorrectly stated price does not bind the seller if the error is so obvious that the consumer should have understood that it was incorrect information.”
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“In my opinion, this is not an obvious matter.”
Saastamoinen does not take a position on whether the incorrectly declared price in Turku Energia's case binds the electricity company or not.
“However, I definitely do not say that consumers would have found out that it was a price error. This is especially because, based on consumer reports, it has been an offer limited in terms of customer numbers in some way,” he commented.
According to Saastomainen, it is therefore not indisputably certain that the error was so obvious that the customers should have realized that the price was incorrect.
“In my opinion, this is not an obvious matter,” he says.
Consumer Disputes Board has given solutions to price errors, but they cannot be directly compared to Turku Energia's case, says Saastamoinen.
“The Consumer Disputes Board has resolved quite a lot of these, but usually it's about the sale of some kind of goods,” says Saastamoinen.
According to his information, the Consumer Disputes Board has never given a solution related to a similar price error in an electricity contract.
17 people managed to grab the Turku Energia offer in question.
According to Saastamoinen, it is assessed on a case-by-case basis, whether the consumer should have understood that the price was incorrect.
According to Saastomainen, attention can be paid, for example, to whether the price fluctuations of the commodity in question are usually large and how well the usual price level of the commodity is known to consumers. In addition, attention can be drawn to whether the product has been offered as part of a promotional campaign.
The Consumer Disputes Board on the website it is stated, for example, that “in mobile phones, the discounts can be very large, for example, when the collections are constantly renewed”.
What then it would be a clear error?
“If the price of the product has been, for example, ten percent or less of the actual or normal price of the product, the error, regardless of the product, can basically be considered so obvious that the consumer should understand it as incorrect,” says Saastamoinen.
Saastamoinen reminds that electricity is a commodity of its own kind. Therefore, conclusions cannot be directly drawn from other decisions of the Consumer Disputes Board to Turku Energia's case.
Clearly an incorrect price does not legally bind the seller.
“Then the seller can announce that the contract will not come into force. In such a situation, of course, the seller may not enforce the contract on his own initiative at a different price. It's a very clear thing,” says Saastamoinen.
HS Turku in the previous story Turku Energia customer interviewed Ville Hirvonen had just received a contract confirmation by email with the new prices. Only when Hirvonen pointed out the errors in the contract to the electricity company was he told that the prices had been wrong “due to human error”.
KKV has received several consumer notifications related to the case of Turku Energia.
“I know of no previous settlement practice. Therefore, my instruction here would be that if consumers have complained to the electricity company and the matter is not resolved, they could, if they wish, make a written request for a recommendation of a solution to the Consumer Disputes Board,” says Saastamoinen.
The decisions of the Consumer Disputes Board are recommendations, not binding legal regulations.
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