Honour orders or offer alternative sofas

Current understanding of web-based transactions is based almost solely on a collective belief of how such transactions should progress from lawyers – it has not been legislated for by Parliament, nor tested before the courts. It is generally accepted that an advert on a website of an item for sale at a certain price is the invitation to treat and the process of filling out the order form and passing over personal details such as credit information by the customer is the offer. Following this to its logical conclusion, the next communication from the retailer is the acceptance of the offer, at which point the contract is formed and the retailer is therefore under a legal duty to perform.