Introduction of the Contract formation and laws

The term “law” can be defined as the set of the rules which are decided by the specific state and it is generated for the purpose of the maintaining the peace and security in the society. The courts and police of the countries are enforcing the people to follow the laws and rules which are by the Government of the country (Open Edu, 2018). The term laws is basically refer to the rules which are defined by the government and regime of the for keeping the peace in society and protecting the citizens from several particular issues and these all rules are sent for the welfare of the human beings to providing them a safe and secure environment in the society (Open Edu, 2018).

The legal definition of the law can be defined as the law which is unhampered as to time, and it can be applied on the subject of the entire region for the legislative power which is enacted it. This law can be applied to the all persons of the same class.  It means rules are the same for all peoples. The law is defined as the rarely out of news which is often focusing on the fictional drama (Open Edu, 2018). It refers to something which is touching the lives of the human beings on daily basis and it also provides the rules governance for what we can do or do not. The major purpose of the law is to settle the disputes for punishing as well as to governing. The laws can be accepted widely but there are few laws which are generating the controversy between the human being. In political social and economic life laws play a central role (Open Edu, 2018).

Law about the formation of a contract

There are two main elements of the formation of the contract but there many other elements which are used as the formation of the contract.

Two main elements of the formation of a contract

 Agreement-Offer of the Contract formation and laws

The agreement offers can be defined as the statement which is provided by one person to another person by demonstrating his willingness for entering the contractual relations according to the certain terms and conditions which defined between them (Open Edu, 2018). The scope of the Agreement offer is referred to as the single offer which can be made by the different individuals. The central requirement of the offer can be suspected by an offer which is used to indicating the willingness for bounding the proposed contract. This agreement offer can be terminated by the rejection, death of the offeree, revocation, Failure of condition precedent and lapse of time (Open Edu, 2018).

Agreement –Acceptance of the Contract formation and laws

This term can be defined as the unequivocal statement which is provided by agreeing on the offeree for the offer of the offeror. The central requirement of the agreement acceptance it must correspond with the offer exactly, it must be unequivocal and communicated by the offeree for the offeror (Law teacher Net, 2018).  

Consideration of the Contract formation and laws

The consideration can be defined under the bargain theory of the consideration as for the bearance of the one party on the promise the price will pay for that for which the promise is bought. The central requirement of the considerations is it must be a connection among the promise and considerations which is required to supporting.  It can be move from the promise but it doesn’t necessarily for the promisor. It needs to be adequate and sufficient. It says the previous consideration cannot be good considerations (Law teacher Net, 2018).

There are many other elements which are used as the formation of the contract and these elements can be;

Capacity

Formality

The intention of creating the legal relations

The above given elements are most important for the formation of the contract and it provides vast information while creating the contract between the offree and offeror. These elements discuss the capacity of the contract according to the formality and it also describes the particular intentions for creating the legal relations of the contract (Uio No Studie, 2018).

Objectives of the Formation of the contract

It is used to understanding the major terminology which is related to the contract formation (Law teacher Net, 2018)

It is used to identifying about the formation of contract such as when the contract has been formed (Law teacher Net, 2018)

To identify the issues of the contractor's formation with acceptance, offer, consideration and certainty intention (Law teacher Net, 2018)

Goals of the formation of the contract

There are few major goals of the formation contraction which are;

To understand the formation of the contract

To understanding all core concepts of the contract

To understand the relationship among the core concept of the contract

Discussion of the Contract formation and laws

The discussion section deals with the analysis of the provided case. The case provides legal issues and feasible analysis defines the rules and regulations to solve the issues. The court of law in consonance is associated with the contracts and laws. The analysis of the laws is based on the Sultanate of Oman.  Ahmed is a young boy of 17 years old age and he was found of internet surfing. He was browsing the World Wide Web to find the prices of the all the products, devices, and gadgets.  He found a low price of MacBook Pro laptop at the very low price of OMR67. He was well aware of the actual retail price of the product that was about OMR 670. He thought that the low prices of the product on the website was due to some sort of error. He thought that after purchasing the 10 MacBook at lower prices he can sale them to make more profits. He used the credit card of his mother and the supplementary card was given to purchase the items online. The order was confirmed and buying gone through, the system of websites approved the sale of 10 laptops and the total price of 10 products was deducted as OMR 670. On the delivery date, Ahmed was waiting for the laptops to be delivered from the location of the shop.

Legal Issues of the Contract formation and laws

The present case was about the error of the price on the website and the customer tried to take advantage and to purchase the laptops on lower prices. The business conducting the sales of the products and items on the internet should provide inevitable prices without pricing errors. The websites sometimes use the strategies to set low pricing of products in order to catch the customers (Digital. law. Washington. edu, 2004). The pricing errors may induce impact on the contracts and can result in the financial loss. In order to reduce the errors of the binding contracts and the erroneous prices of the products the retailers should consider the protective methods to prevent the losses and for the formation of the contracts (Digital. law. washington. edu, 2004).

The Sultanate of Oman provides the consumer protection law (PACP) that provides the opportunities for the distributors as well as importers to deal with issues related to the online services, policy making process, stakeholder interests and potential clients (Export. gov, 2018). According to the rules and regulations of Sultanate of Oman the companies can advertise the products but the permission for distribution of the flyers should be taken from the Muscat Municipality. The pricing issues can be resolved by the appropriate implementation of rules and regulations of government in the Sultanate of Oman (Export. gov, 2018).  

There are different key legal issues that must be considered by the online service providers. The marketing of the new products is extremely beneficial for the business. The process consolidates the relation between the existing clients and the new clients (Digital. law. washington. edu, 2004). The present work deals with two key legal issues for online services regarding the potential customers as well as contacting customers. The legal areas include the rules and regulations of the FTC and the certain other protection bodies of the consumers and intellectual issues related to the services in the Sultanate of Oman (Digital. law. washington. edu, 2004).

The legal issues considered for the intellectual properties are associated with the copyright conditions and the trademark conditions. The online service providers should ensure infringes related to the intellectual properties.  The trademark of the products provides exclusive rights to the customers for the specified connections and the services. In the Sultanate of Oman trademark databases provide a plan for the marketing and the categories (Research-repository. Griffith. edu. au, 2009).

The copyrights for the services are required to be related with the original work. The implementation of the rule requires complete analysis for the proposed branding and registration of the product along with the price tags. The terms of services are expected for the adjustment of intellectual property (Digital. law. washington. edu, 2004).

The federal trade commission (FTC) provides a complete domain related to the marketing, privacy considerations, advertising truths and the anti-spam legislation (Neilpatel. com, 2018). The anti-spam legislation considers the unfair effect on the behavior and the decision of the services in the Sultanate of Oman. The deceptive advertisement and mistakes of the pricing are prohibited under the law (Research-repository. giffith. edu. au, 2009).

The companies are liable for the recovery of customer interest in case of any pricing mistakes. The relevant information for the product and services should be provided to the customers and it must be related to the consumer interest. The comparative advertisement and pricing of the product should be fairly transparent and based on the standards (Research-repository. giffith. edu. au, 2009). The regulations induce impact on the process of advertisement and the pricing process and are under the rule of Advertisement Self regulations council. The advertisement of natural review board should be for the accurate pricing and values of the services and the products (Research-repository. giffith. edu. au, 2009).

 In the Sultanate of Oman the anti-spam law is known as CAN-SPAM and enforces the guidance of the issues and the FTC enforcement. CAN-SPAM deals with the misleading heading information about the services, deceptive subject lines, identification of the message and conformation ways, recipient locations, receiving of the present as well as the future emails about the services, delivery process, and the shipping of goods to the customers (Digital. law. washington. edu, 2004). The rule of CAN-SPAM deals with the honor pricing and the opt-out requests. The monitoring process provides checklist and guideline for the marking and incorporation of the business (Neilpatel. com, 2018). The present case deals with the legislation and rules for the delivery of products that are purchased through online services in the Sultanate of Oman. The customers should be provided by the authentic prices and cost of products (Digital. law. washington. edu, 2004).          

 A number of risks are associated with the pricing errors. The mistake of pricing includes the harmful impact on the online retailers. It may result due to the problems and misusage of software and probability of the risk increases with the increase of online cyber-attacks. The internet and information technology spreads to recognize the issues and compound harms (Digital. law. washington. edu, 2004). Previously some online shopping services experienced the same issues and these services include MySimon.com, shopping bots, and Shopping.com. The error that replaced the actual price with the lower prices can result in the flood of orders and retailer becomes able to recognize the issue and can correct the mistake. Besides the facts described in the case, some other online services faced the same issues due to the mistake of price tags (Digital. law. washington. edu, 2004). For instance, in 2001, the online services of Kodak offered some digital camera of $329 at the price of $100 and the legal experts argued with the service providers for the automatic confirmation email and as a result of the issue,, the company decided to provide honor to the sales. Due to the incidence, Kodak Company faced the loss of about $ 2 million (Digital. law. washington. edu, 2004). In case of another instance, the online service provider buy.com agreed for the settlement with the 7000 customers at the price of $575,000 and they refused to honor the orders. The incidence occurred for the price mistake of Hitachi monitors that was original $ 588 and mistakenly placed as $164. The protection levels of the online services are increased and the online retailers successfully considered terms and conditions that avoids any kind of honoring prices errors (Digital. law. washington. edu, 2004).

The legal pages are provided on the websites that provide disclaimers for the reserving of rights and the pricing errors of the products. The websites provide a list of pricing policy that is under the conditions of use. The Amazon states best practices for the stated prices and the discretion (Digital. law. washington. edu, 2004). The terms and conditions ensure the online retailer to consider the balances and the objectives of marketing on the legal perspectives. The terms and conditions are posted on the websites and are often named as browse wrap. The agreement ensures the customers for manifest all sort of assents (Digital. law. washington. edu, 2004).

In the present case, Ahmed is waiting for the products and MacBook to be delivered at his mentioned places. The previous analysis of the errors and how the companies honored the prices (Digital. law. washington. edu, 2004). The situation depends on the numbers of orders that are placed by different customers and margin of the prices. The original price of MacBook was OMR 670 while due to error it was mentioned as OMR 67. Ahmed ordered 10 MacBook to get more profit. Even in the case of single customer the loss is lower but depends on the decision of service providers and retailers. The service providers decide wither to honor the price or to deny. Still, at the end of the case, there is no evidence about if the product will be delivered to Ahmed or not.

In order to avoid the error of pricing, the formation of the sales contracts provides more secure models. The final webpage before the completion of the online order should provide a specified button saying “Place your order”. After placing the order, the acknowledging email is sent to the customer as receipt of order (Digital. law. washington. edu, 2004). According to the contracts, the item cannot be delivered to the customers without the confirmation notifications. The buyer first communicates with the service provider and proceed the further process for the shopping cart system. The retailer should be more careful with the confirmation emails either they are automatic or the confirmed (Digital. law. washington. edu, 2004). The proceeding process for the retailers depends on the confirmation and then the order should be dispatched. In the present case, there was no email sent to Ahmed for the confirmation. If the confirmation emails are explicitly sent then the services can be arguable. The confirmation email detects the pricing errors and provides the original information about the cost and products (Digital. law. washington. edu, 2004).

In the case of an online retailer, the pricing mistakes can generate more and huge losses and the opportunistic benefits are considered to the unilateral mistake. The contracts are developed for the establishing of adverse conditions (Digital. law. washington. edu, 2004). The effect of the pricing errors and mistakes can result in the enforcement of contracts. The fault of error and prices cause mistakes in the dealings. The mechanical ways are used for the prediction of magnitude and the pricing errors. The adverse effect is on the retailers that enforce unconscionable loss (Digital. law. washington. edu, 2004).

In order to avoid the losses that are caused by the pricing errors, the inexpensive methods are used by the companies to protect the business. The statement of terms and conditions reserves the right for the cancelation of order along with the explanation of the issues. The dispatching of product initiates after charging the prices of products through the credit card (Digital. law. washington. edu, 2004). In the case, Ahmed was using a credit card to pay for the 10 MacBook at the price of OMR 670. In case of additional insurance, Ahmed clicked on the button of terms saying “I Accept” during the whole process for the checkout. The successful completion of all the steps for the online order ensures the confirmation and availability of the shipping and delivery of MacBook at the cost of OMR 670.                    

In order to avoid the errors, the customer should accept the terms and conditions designed by the company. The terms and conditions consider the acknowledgment of online purchase through email. The automated email response system states the acceptance and rejection of orders (Digital. law. washington. edu, 2004). The system of automated tracking for the trends of sales and prices should be used by the companies to reduce the chances of errors and wrong authentications. The companies are required for the honoring of price errors that induce gestures of goodwill and fostering of the loyalty of the customers (Digital. law. washington. edu, 2004).    

Conclusion of the Contract formation and laws

The case provided in the present analysis was associated with the issues of online pricing errors and cost issues for the products. The customer placed an order for MacBook on the online service providers and the cost error was significant because customer purchased 10 MacBook at the same price of the single product. The online transaction by the credit card was used for the payment process. The service providers were not using any sort of confirmation methods such as the services were not sending a confirmation email to the customers. The confirmation email by the service providers are auto generated and delivered but can be used for the identification of any error. Because there was no detection of the error and the unexpected loss was acknowledged in the case. The customer was waiting for the delivery because no information was shared with him about the cancelation and acceptance of the order. The legal issues associated with the case are considered to determine the impact of errors on the profits and delivery services of the online service providers.   

References of the Contract formation and laws