Shoppers bag £200 off Samsung tablet after Very.co.uk bungle

The site had picked up on the US tradition of offering big discounts on electronics on the last Friday in November (see our Cheap Tablets and Cheap iPads guides for the best deals).

But many customers were left up in arms after Very initially refused to uphold a huge discount on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1, which had peviously been sold for £329. (See our Consumer Rights guide if you think you've had a bad deal lately.)

For 90 minutes on Friday, the tablet was discounted to £129.99 instead of £269.99 due to an "inputting error", which saw Very display the price of the 7-inch tablet instead of the 10-inch model.

After realising its mistake, Very offered £20 off the £269.99 price to customers who bought the tablet at the incorrect price, but that meant shoppers would have to cough up an extra £120.

MoneySavingExpert.com received complaints from angry customers and we've seen many reporting gripes on forums and Twitter. An online petition calling for Very to honour the price was even started.

One disapponted customer wrote on Very's Facebook page: "I am very unhappy with Very due to the Black Friday deal, and now they are trying to say I'll get £20 off. This is not acceptable."

But Very has relented, and will now honour the incorrect price of £129.99 for one item per customer. It won't say how many customers were affected.

Customers who asked to cancel their order at the weekend because they didn't want to pay £249.99 will still get their tablet, and will be charged £129.99 for it.

Affected customers should allow up to eight days from today to receive the tablet. They'll also be offered £20 off orders made by the end of January.

Very's retail director Jon Owen says: "After talking to our customers over the weekend, we have decided to honour the incorrect price."

Do retailers have to honour mis-priced orders?

MoneySavingExpert.com's money analyst Helen Saxon says: "Whether you're online or in a shop doesn't matter – a retailer cannot be made to sell something for far below its value because of an error. Yet after the contract is completed, it's a valid transaction. "In a shop, that comes once you've paid for it at the till. But online, that usually works at the point of dispatch. Until then, the retailer can always choose to say it won't honour it, unless its terms and conditions say it can't. "But if a shop is deliberately mispricing, for example, you tell it of an error and it doesn't fix it in order to whip up interest, then that's a criminal offence so report it to Trading Standards."