Black Friday and Cyber Monday were all about great deals.
But one of the best deals — for a $79 Sony PlayStation 5 — turned out to be too good to be true, as one Cincinnati man learned.
Brandon Hagedorn of Price Hill was doing some Black Friday shopping on his phone when he stumbled upon a Sony PS5 bundle at an incredible price.
"$79.99," he said. "You can't beat that, right?"
So he clicked the buy button, and the order processed onto his credit card.
"I ran in the other room to tell my wife, and said 'you won't believe the deal I just found online,'" he said.
The PlayStation bundle even included two popular games: Madden 2 and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3.
Hagedorn printed the receipt showing the order went through, just in case there was any problem.
A couple of days later, there was.
"I got this 'sorry it is out of stock' email and we are going to refund your money,'" Hagedorn said. "But it wasn't out of stock, that's the thing."
He found it still for sale, but at the real Black Friday price of $499, not $79. It was all a website pricing error.
Do stores have to honor web errors?
Unfortunately for shoppers who find an error like this, many retailers now have fine print on their website saying they don't have to honor the deal.
Among them: Kohl's.
On a page called Pricing and Product Information, Kohl's states: "In the event that an item is listed at an incorrect price or with incorrect information, Kohl's shall have the right, in its sole discretion, to refuse or cancel any orders placed for that item. If your credit card has been charged, Kohl's will issue a credit to your credit card."
That is exactly what the store did.
Car dealerships have similar disclaimers, in case they accidentally list $30,000 cars for $3,000, with lawyers saying that if a price does not appear to be reasonable, they are not required to honor it.
On X (formerly known as Twitter) and other social media sites, other gamers have posted similar screenshots of the $79 deal, with some people saying they placed several orders. But they say Kohl's had canceled theirs, too.
Hagedorn thinks they should honor the price.
"Anything you do in life, if you make a mistake you have to pay for it" he said. "You have to own up to your mistake one way or another."
We reached out to Kohl's media relations department, asking if they could do something for Hagedorn, but have yet to hear back.
Meantime, If a store ever cancels your order due to a misprint, contact their customer service chat line, and ask if there is anything they can do to keep you a customer.
That way you don't waste your money.
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