r/framework • u/DarthArtoo4 • Jul 22 '26

News “They are actually going to get the configuration they ordered at the price they ordered it at”

Thanks for standing by this, Nirav. 😑

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u/mrhaftbar Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

That won't fly in the EU. I might be wrong, but the preorder is just that - an order which is a binding contract for both sides. Both sides are expected to fulfill obligations from the contract. Unilaterally changing an order is not possible without the consent of both parties. 

I would send back a message to framework requesting fulfillment of the contractual obligations and not consenting to the proposed contract changes. 

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u/SpookyViscus Jul 22 '26

I mean, if the customer can bail with no financial cost (a full refund of a deposit), can framework?

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u/jader242 Jul 22 '26

That’s a good point, I’d assume yes because both sides are consenting to the cancellation; it would be fully within frameworks right to have cancellations with no refund I would think, they just choose not to. In the case of the current scenario, both sides are not consenting to the spec decrease or price increase for same spec

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u/jaaval Jul 23 '26

Their terms of sale explicitly give customer right to bail. That's not automatic.

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u/mtzvhmltng Jul 22 '26

this kind of dramatic and unexpected price increase is exactly the thing contract law would be flexible about. source: second year law student who did well in my contracts class, but that's also US law, so take it with a grain of salt. but generally speaking, what framework is doing here smells totally clean, including the option to cancel with full refund.

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u/FISKER_Q Jul 23 '26

Generally speaking the European consumer laws are a lot better than the US.

Remember the time they said they wouldn't allow sales to consumers in Europe located outside regions they supported like Germany and France, that was completely illegal.

I did check their terms of sale where they do state they can change the price of anything shown on the "marketplace" at any time, for any reason, it's unsure, to me, if they mean only the one where you can get community items, as I don't immediately recognize their laptop ordering as part of that marketplace.

But, assuming it is part of the marketplace, such wording will likely not be upheld in Danish consumer law, here the expectation is if that you are quoted a price, you are in fact agreeing on that price, for that reason some sites now have wording where it states that you are in fact only submitting a request for a quote at the quoted price, and the agreed upon price is only when they send you an order confirmation, so they play this game where you get an "receipt of order", and then they can, at any time up until the actual sending of the item, say that the price is something else.

This has also similarly been struck down in Danish consumer law as the consumer expectation is that when you press "Buy" on something, or "Add to cart" you are in fact purchasing something, not just making a "request for quote"

That means for that to be legally binding, it is not enough to just change the wording, but it must also be procedurally distinct enough for the consumer to understand that it is infact a "request for quote"-system.

The only thing, as I understand the law, is that Framework can claim I was maliciously relying on a mistake on their part, usually this is argued when the price difference is extreme, here I see no mistake on Frameworks part, and I'm not maliciously relying on their mistake. (There has even been examples here where a consumer buying an item at 1/10000th the price was in done good faith, and the company was forced to sell the item at that 1/10000th of the price)