Man buys Cartier earrings for P749 instead of P749,000 due to website error
A man who bought a pair of incorrectly priced earrings for $13 (P749)—instead of $13,000 (P749,000)—from Cartier’s website won a case against the jewelry brand after it tried to cancel his order and compensate with other items.
CBS News reported that Rogelio Villarreal, a Mexican doctor, was idly browsing Instagram when he saw the shockingly low-priced pair of gold and diamond earrings.
Villarreal purchased the item, but Cartier tried to cancel his order as they offered him a bottle of champagne and a leather cardholder.
The man rejected it and instead raised the issue with Mexico’s federal consumer protection agency.
He told CBS MoneyWatch that the company reasoned that the earrings were mispriced by accident and that they were out of stock.
That was when he said their response rubbed him the wrong way. "Their reasoning was difficult to understand," he said.
Cartier eventually fulfilled Villarreal’s order of two pairs of earrings, one for himself and another for his mother.
On X, he shared a photo of two small wrapped boxes with Cartier’s signature wax stamp. “Once upon a December,” he wrote.
He also shared a photo of himself wearing the earrings on Instagram. "#Cartier what's good?!" he captioned his post.
Villarreal said the arrival of the earrings doesn’t only represent a purchase.
"I was familiar with my rights as a consumer, but not everyone is,” he said. “So this case helps make Mexican people aware of their basic rights, including those protected by consumer law."