Strong Accepts Then Cancels Order to Raise Price

[Steve Kraus]

This morning I ordered a Ushio UXL-20SC Lamp off their web page. Paid for by credit card. Everything went through and I received confirming emails.

Later I received an email saying they were canceling my order because they were raising the price and I would be receive a refund in a couple of days.

Is this even legal? I'm in IL; they are in NE.

[Leo Enticknap]

This is what Claude thinks:

Usually, yes, it's legal — even though it feels like a bait-and-switch. A few reasons:

• "Confirmation" isn't always "acceptance." Most retailers' terms of sale (often buried in checkout terms or an FAQ) state that an order confirmation email just means they received the order, not that a contract has been formed. The actual "acceptance" of the offer often happens at the point of shipment. Courts have generally upheld this distinction in online retail — a famous example is Kodak-related and various "pricing error" cases where retailers charged then canceled after publicly advertised pricing mistakes; courts sided with sellers when the seller's own terms reserved the right to cancel.
• Charging the card isn't the same as accepting the contract. Under the UCC (which both Illinois and Nebraska have adopted, since it's nearly universal in the US), a seller can make a "definite and seasonable expression of acceptance," but if the seller's own terms explicitly reserve a right to cancel or correct pricing errors, that reservation usually controls. Authorizing/capturing a credit card charge is often treated as a normal part of processing the order, not necessarily binding acceptance — though this is genuinely a gray area and has been litigated both ways depending on the specific terms of service and what representations were made.
• Pricing errors specifically get extra leeway. If Strong made a genuine pricing error (rather than just deciding to raise the price after the fact for other reasons), many courts and the FTC's general guidance treat unilateral cancellation + refund as an acceptable remedy, especially when the seller promptly refunds and doesn't just keep the money.
• State-specific consumer protection laws vary. Illinois has its own Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act, but it mostly targets deceptive/misleading conduct, not a straightforward "we made a pricing mistake, here's your money back" scenario. Nebraska's consumer protection laws would apply if Strong is based there and their terms designate Nebraska law/venue (which is common in a seller's terms of sale).

Practical bottom line: If Strong genuinely refunds the full amount promptly and their checkout terms had a clause reserving the right to cancel/correct pricing, this is very likely legal, if annoying. If they keep any money, delay the refund unreasonably, or if this looks like a pattern of deceptive "bait pricing" to induce sign-ups or repeat customers, that's a different story and could cross into deceptive trade practices.

If the amount is meaningful, the buyer could look at Strong's actual terms of sale (check their checkout page or invoice) to see if they explicitly reserved cancellation rights — that's the crux of whether this is legally solid or not. Since I'm not a lawyer, if there's real money at stake, a quick call to an Illinois consumer protection attorney or the IL Attorney General's consumer fraud hotline could clarify the specifics.

So the bottom line is that yes, they probably can do that, but at a cost to their reputation, obviously.

Complete speculation here, but I would guess that they thought they had that model in stock, discovered that they didn't when you placed the order, and realized that they'd have to pay a tariff to get hold of one for you. This happened to us a couple of times (though never, to my knowledge, after we'd accepted payment): we had something in stock and gave a customer a quote for it, they came back wanting to buy a significant amount of time later (as in, weeks), by that point we'd sold it, and had to pay a tariff to replace our inventory. So we had to tell the customer sorry, but we've sold the item we gave you a quote for, and the cost of it has now gone up.

BTW, sorry in advance for the sales pitch, but if you didn't place an order with Strong at the new price, feel free to ask us for a quote - (714) 751-7998 or sales [at] movingimagetech.com . I'm 99% sure that we don't have 20SCs in stock, but we can get most Ushio models overnighted if they have inventory in the US.

[Steve Guttag]

I'll bet that they just got the new "Tungsten surcharge." There is a shortage on the rare-earth metal of Tungsten that is really jacking up the price of xenon lamps. Ushio's price increase went into effect this month. The surcharge is proportional to the size of the electrodes, naturally.

[Leo Enticknap]

If they can recycle the tungsten, that, plus their xenon recovery process, likely explains why LTI are not only willing to accept any used lamps offered to them for free, but also to pick up the tab for shipping.

[Steve Guttag]

That and they want to snatch any customers as they only offer "store credit" for the returned lamps.

[Harold Hallikainen]

On pricing errors, there was an oscilloscope on Amazon for something like $3. Lots of people ordered it. It turns out, that was the price for the power cord. They refunded everyone.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I think this is generally known as "a dick move", but perfectly legal in most jurisdictions. As long as they haven't shipped it to you yet, the sale wasn't closed and they're still in their right to cancel the order. The question is whether or not it's a good move to do so. I've had multiple cases were a customer was slow to decide and the quoted price of the hardware had meanwhile gone up in price. In many cases, I decided to "eat the cost" myself, even though I was in my right to cancel the deal and demand extra.

I remember there was an interesting case with a large local retailer over here, where they sold a bunch of TVs for a very low price via their website. They shipped out hundreds or even thousands of orders, but then demanded the customers to pay up even after they already received their TVs at home. I'm not sure if this ever went to court, but I remember that the generic consensus was that after those TVs were sent out and received by the customer, the sale was a done deal and non-reversible, unless the customer itself agreed to reversing the deal.

[Jim Cassedy]

Another 'gotcha' phrase to be careful of is "overnight shipping", which I got tripped up by
a few years ago. I paid extra on an item for "overnight shipping", on a part I needed ASAP.
But, as I learned, that didn't mean that I was going to have my item in 24hrs. All it meant
was that once they took the order, and sent it to their warehouse to have the the item
picked out of their stock and then sent it to their shipping department, it would then be
shipped overnight. However 'processing' the order for shipping took almost 3 days.
It's partly, if not entirely, my fault for not reading the fine print, but now I've learned the
difference between "overnight shipping" and "overnight delivery".

[Steve Guttag]

JBL will get you ont that one. If they have a part in Mexico...the Overnight part doesn't start until it is in the US.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Out of country shipping has always been that way because it can easily take an extra day to get through customs. Even longer to clear if it's a large order. Using a customs broker can greatly speed that up.

[Leo Enticknap]

I remember there was an interesting case with a large local retailer over here, where they sold a bunch of TVs for a very low price via their website. They shipped out hundreds or even thousands of orders, but then demanded the customers to pay up even after they already received their TVs at home. I'm not sure if this ever went to court, but I remember that the generic consensus was that after those TVs were sent out and received by the customer, the sale was a done deal and non-reversible, unless the customer itself agreed to reversing the deal.

By the same token, a few years ago there was an airline (I've now forgotten which) that accidentally sold transatlantic first class round trips for $500 thanks to a data entry error by someone. They'd sold several hundred by the time the error was caught, but did honor those tickets already issued. I remember thinking at the time that the positive PR generated by this decision would likely benefit them more in the long term than they would have in the short term if they'd canceled those tickets, refunded the passengers who'd bought them, and then resold them for 10-20 times that figure.

[Steve Guttag]

Yeah Mark...for those parts you knew were out of Country. JBL would present the items as "in-stock" but meaning in-stock in Mexico. Traditionally, JBL was stocked (and made) in the US.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Nah, had that happen at Claco a few times when I was working there, in fact, one of them was a JBL driver, and to be honest... do not remember if it was from the USA or Mexico. It happened two other times while I was working at sites where it should have been there next day, but ended up taking an extra day. And that was 15+ years ago. In those last two cases it was a part that had to be added to a module before it could be shipped... But hey... Nothing better than spending an extra day in Cody,, WY, or the Bear tooth Mtns.

[Hong Sung Hyeok]

https://ams-osram.com/news/press-rel...le-of-eni-2025

Did you say goodbye to Osram Phillips?

Now Ushio has a monopoly on the industry by himself.
The price of the lamp depends on Ushio's mind.


To think about another reason, the U.S.- China tariffs and the trade war led to China's suspension of exports of rare earth minerals.

[Steve Guttag]

LTI remains available as well as ASL, to the best of my knowledge. In fact, in the US, LTI is reasonably well covered. They also have a used lamp buy-back to reclaim the valuable tungsten.