Motorcycle gear: $275 Ducati Dainese suit

If anyone trolls Ducati boards you might have seen threads about Ducati having a clearance sale on Dainese 1 piece suits. Normal retail is $1800. Friday morning for a brief time they had them for $275 + shipping.
http://forums.13x.com/showthread.php?t=288277
http://www.ducati.ms/forums/11-ducati-motorcycle-chat/114641-ducati-corse-2009-1-piece-leather-race-suit-275-a.html

Like several people that realized it was a goof on their website, I ordered one. $302 with shipping. Ducati will likely lose hundreds per suit (although I don't know their true cost it almost certainly is more than $275)

Like everyone else apparently, we received order confirmation numbers. After about 2 hours they corrected the price to over $1500.

Now the question is what they will do. Their policies page seems to give them an out as they state prices and specs can change without notice. But several people already have confirmation. No one has been cancelled, and apparently no one has been charged to their CC yet either.

It will be curious to see how Ducati handles this. they still have the suit on the site for sale (at the higher price), so to say the supply is gone is also not going to fly.

 

It gets a little bit more interesting. A couple of people have received order cancellations.

I emailed shopatron (who handles Ducati's e-commerce in this case). I asked them whether they were going to honor the order I had placed for thar price or cancel the order. I fully expected to receive an order cancellation. But instead I received an email reply from them a few hours later.

So they will honor the order at the low price assuming they find one in my size.

The thing is the size is still listed on the site as available, I am fairly certain after Friday they know exactly how many more suits and in what sizes are out there. Same part number, same description, the same suit. Just now with a much higher price, probably what they intended all along.
http://store.ducatiusa.com/product/365120/98152400/_/Ducati_Corse_2009_1_Piece_Leather_Race_Suit_-_Save_15%25

So now the question becomes what to do if they cancel the order and yet I can confirm suits are available.

I understand the newspaper ad laws and that made sense when a business would provide the information and a paper would then create or print the ad, in large part the business was out of control what was actually on the page and they might be held responsible. It would be interesting to see what has changed today considering a website can be proofread and changed instantly as soon as a descrepancy is found.

 

That is certainly not an uncommon perspective.

One reason I emailed them soon after placing the order (but after they corrected the price) was basically to ask them if they would honor the order. Instead of the expected cancellation, which was completely within their perogataive given the terms of the site, I received confirmation that if one can be found the order will be honored.

Do I expect the suit to actually arrive? No. Did I order it thinking what the hell why not let's see what happens? Yes. Apparently several other people had this same thought process.

This is not to justify my actions, but markup on these items is absolutely enormous. For example, just two weeks ago I bought a brand new with tags Teknic textile jacket from a site called motorcyclecloseouts.com. Like this suit it was on clearance. Original price: $229, my price: $35. That is 85% off, just like this suit. Also you can buy competition legal leather 1-piece suits w/armor for under $400, even less if you catch a clearance. Now they don't say Dainese or have Valentino Rossi modelling them, but they are 1.4mm top grain and truth be told would provide similar protection.

I can only guess what the suits actually cost Ducati, but I would assume they stand to lose a couple of hundred bucks per suit if they ship at the lower price. So far no one has indicated that Ducati has actually shipped any suits.

 

I received an email today saying that they have been unable to locate a suit in the size I ordered (yet it is still shown as being available for order). They encouraged me to cancel the order through the website.

I am trying to understand why they want me to cancel when given the disclaimers on the site they have an out to cancel the order themselves. Curious.