Was wondering what the legal position is on companies which continue to list products on their website which are not longer in stock.

Google shopping searches (for mountain bike stuff) often bring up very low prices on products and when you click through you find the product has been out of stock for months.

Quite a number of companies also list products in stock when their not.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve ordered (and been charged for) goods only to receive a ‘sorry this is not longer in stock’ email.

This looks very deliberate as it generates traffic to their site. I wonder if Trading Standards are onto this.

I think Google Shopping might be interested in hearing about this too. It certainly used to be one of the conditions of use that the case that items had to be in stock.

+1 for this but difficult/impossible to police I imagine

There are at least two medium-sized online bike stores that openly admit they don’t carry much stock and many items are tagged ‘normally despatched in 2-7 days’ translation: if you order it and if we can get it from the distributors you could get it in 2-7 days