Dutch IT news site Tweakers.net confirmed Nokia N900 will be released in Netherlands end October, and wrote again some basic background about the specifications of the device. Quite nice, free advertising, and so on.

On the bottom of the article there is some information I had not read yet. Apparently Nokia made a mistake in their Nokia N900 offering on the Dutch online Nokia shop as can be seen from this screenshot:



Problem is customers asked Nokia for clarification, and received confirmation the offer was correct. A few days later Nokia e-mailed again and stated the information was incorrect, allowing customers to receive a full refund.

Arnoud Engelfriet, an IT lawyer from Netherlands specialized in internet law has blogged on the item and believes customers have big chance getting what was offered in the initial offer because Nokia employees confirmed the offer as correct. His blog post is here (NL) (Google Translate (EN)). At least 4 customers are affected, and a civil lawsuit is being considered where mr. Engelfriet is interested presenting customers pro-bono.

My take: while 3 Bluetooth headsets is clearly a mistake because its unreasonable 3 of such is included. An official reply from Nokia stating offer is correct is what makes this case different from other jurisprudence. I'm personally not affected by this, but from a legal point of view its interesting to follow. I'm also glad end of october 2009 is still target release date.

That looks like someone mixed up the compatible devices list & in package list...

Too bad they didn't provide internal research microSD card with 32GB capactiy :P

So 4 customers are affected and already a lawsuit considered?
Sorry, but this is ridicilous.

This trend of "a-ha! you said it so it must be true!" lawsuits is ridiculous. It is leveraging the legal system to obtain undeserved benefits. It is parasitical.

You have no right to any product or service. Once you pay, you must either receive what you paid for, or be fully refunded.

Well, the jurisprudence here is that if the ad is 'unreasonable' (like a LCD TV of 99 EUR; the famous 'Otto case') the customer could have reasonably known it is probably a mistake.

But in this case, Nokia confirmed the advertisement to be correct.

The number of people affected is not relevant in relation to whether one of them can sue or not. It'd be a civil lawsuit, which is filed on individual basis, so one customer could start such for themselves.

The lawyer involved I believe is rather interested in creating jurisprudence which, even though we don't have common law, is nevertheless interesting.

As stated anyone can consider a civil lawsuit for anything. The fact someone is getting sued in a (civil) lawsuit says nothing about guilt or innocence.

I'm not sure whether they already paid, but given the response of allowing full refund, I'd say so.

Nokia apologizes for the mistake and gives every customer who was affected a free 16 GB MicroSD card (Source: Tweakers.net in Dutch, try Google Translate yourself it didn't work for me).