can a chinese online store cancel a paid contractual sales agreement if i wont pay additional costs after the agreement is made

Question

i made an online purchase from a chinese website with free delivery/shipping but the next day they refused to honour the agreement as i refused to pay extra charges for shipping that was already stated as "free shipping" on the online add and included in my final paid sales agreement/invoice. they never even offered a counter offer etc and then tried saying that the items were priced wrong also and that they were old prices etc. making every excuse in the book not to honour the agreement. can i get my order honoured or claim compensation for losses and messing me about etc

Answer 1

There are no realistic prospects for suing a company because they give you the runaround. Everything else pretty much depends on the contract. As an example, on a web page, an exhortation "Free Shipping!" is not false advertising when they charge for shipping, because that exhortation doesn't mean "we always ship everything for free", it means that free shipping is a possibility. When you look at the details of the contract, it will specify when there is free shipping. Some state might enact a very strict deceptive practices law that prohibits advertisement that says "Free Shipping" unless there are no conditions attached to getting free shipping, but that isn't the way it is now.

Once you actually have an agreement, then the parties can be held to that agreement. Whether you actually have a legal agreement can be a little murky with online sales: you may instead have an invitation to treat. A website is an advertisement, not an offer, so you have to investigate to determine what constitutes an offer and acceptance. Clicking something doesn't necessarily count. Actually paying generally does; entering a credit card does not (was the charge just pending?). An express acceptance counts. This would be the primary legal question – do you have an actual offer and acceptance (and how would you know)? I presume that there was a step where you had to check a box and click "submit", and the check box said that you agree to the terms of sale. There should be something in there that addresses what constitutes an agreement (should be, but might not be).

You could try suing the company to get a court order requiring them to send the goods for the agreed on price ("specific performance", but the courts are unlikely to do that, instead they will order "compensation", i.e. a refund. You can read up on Chinese contract law here, to see how your situation is addressed.

Answer 2

No, but …

You probably didn’t have a contract. The terms of most online shops is that there is no contract until they physically ship the order - your order, payment and their acknowledgment does not create a contract. This is all nice and legal and explicitly what you agreed to when you ticked the “I agree to the Terms of Service” checkbox, which, like most of us, you never actually read.

Even if you do have a contract, the cost of enforcing it is not worth it. As a general rule of thumb, for an international dispute, the amount in question needs at least 6 figures. For China, 8 because Chinese courts are not foreigner friendly.

If they refund your money, great. If they don’t, you can lodge a dispute with your card company.