You bought a price error. Now what?

Most of the time the order gets cancelled and you get your money back. Sometimes it ships. Here's what each store's own terms say, and how to handle the wait.

The short version

US retailers generally write their terms so they can cancel orders placed at a mistaken price, and many of them say this applies even after you get an order confirmation. That's the starting assumption. Whether a specific store actually cancels a specific order depends on things you can't see, like how big the error was, how many people ordered, and whether the item already left the warehouse.

Legally, a store usually isn't forced to honor an honest pricing mistake, especially if a reasonable shopper would have known the price was wrong. Washington's Attorney General has a plain explainer on this (linked below). I'm not a lawyer, so treat this as background rather than legal advice.

What each store's terms say

Walmart

Walmart's Terms of Use say it can cancel orders that contain pricing or availability errors, and that this applies even after you've received an order confirmation or a shipping notice. So a shipping email from Walmart doesn't mean the order is safe.

Target

Target's terms say that if it finds inaccuracies in its product information, it will cancel the order and notify you by email. Target's price match policy also excludes prices caused by typographical errors, so you can't use a price error to get a match on another order.

Best Buy

Best Buy's terms reserve the right to correct errors and revoke stated offers, and say that if it cancels all or part of an order you've already been charged for, it refunds the full amount. Best Buy has a long public history of cancelling large pricing mistakes, including a widely reported $9.99 TV listing in 2009.

Amazon

Amazon's Conditions of Use say that if the correct price of an item sold by Amazon is higher than the listed price, Amazon decides what happens next. In practice that means it may contact you before shipping to ask how you want to proceed, or cancel the order and notify you. This covers items sold by Amazon. Items from third party sellers on Amazon depend on the seller.

eBay sellers

eBay works differently because you're buying from an individual seller, and eBay's cancellation policy doesn't list "pricing error" as an allowed reason for a seller to cancel. The reasons it lists are the buyer not paying in time, the buyer giving a wrong address, and the item being out of stock. A seller who cancels as out of stock takes a transaction defect against their account, and eBay says using an incorrect reason to avoid a defect isn't allowed.

What usually happens instead is the seller messages you and asks you to cancel. You aren't required to. Being reasonable about it tends to go better for everyone, especially with small sellers who made an honest typo. If the seller cancels, eBay says you get a full refund to your original payment method when you paid through eBay checkout.

How long to wait

There isn't a published timeline at any of these stores. Based on how these orders tend to play out:

Cancellations often arrive within a day or two of ordering
Some arrive after a shipping notice, which Walmart's terms explicitly allow
An order that's actually delivered is rarely reversed, though a store can still contact you

Until the item is in your hands, assume it might not come. Don't cancel a regular-price order for the same thing yet.

Refunds

When a store cancels before charging, many cards show a pending authorization that drops off on its own, usually within several business days depending on your bank
When a store cancels after charging, the stores above say they refund to the original payment method
Gift card and store credit payments usually come back as the same, which is one reason to use a regular card for price errors

Staying polite helps

If a store cancels, you can ask once whether they'll honor the price or offer something for the trouble. Some customer service teams give a small credit, especially when the cancellation came late. Arguing or threatening rarely changes the outcome, and my understanding is that repeated disputes over price errors can get an account flagged at some stores.

A few habits that keep things simple:

Order a normal quantity, since large orders are the first to be cancelled
Don't open a credit card dispute just because a mistaken order was cancelled
Screenshot the listing and keep the confirmation email
Don't resell an item before it arrives

How we handle price errors

We label price errors separately from regular deep discounts in every alert, so you know which ones carry this risk. Some of the stores we cover don't allow price errors to be shared on social media, so you'll only see those on the site and in the email. More background in our guide to what price errors are.