Reference no: EM133197979

Question: On the issue of payment to Acme Advertising, no contract for the flyers was established. They offered to mail flyers to potential customers and place them at grocery stores for $10,000. However, I counter-offered for $7,000. They did not respond. Therefore, they did not accept my offer, and no contract was established. Acme published the flyers, mailed them, and placed them in the stores independently, without an agreement from Noice. I do not believe we are liable for the $8,000.

With that said, the ad was an outstanding success, and we sold out of our product, which has caused some additional issues, but I will discuss that in a minute. I believe the ethical act from our side would be to offer them the $7,000 again for their services rendered and explain why we are disputing the $8,000 invoice. However, if they demand $8,000, I propose countering with a $7,500 payment. We are still appreciative of their efforts. But, if they do not take our counter and demand the $8,000, we should pay them, not because of contractual obligation, but out of ethical consideration.

An explanation should accompany any payment that we are submitting only out of our company's ethical belief in the fair treatment of our partners and our appreciation of the successful campaign. However, any future business between Acme and Noice must be via a bilateral contract only.

There should be no legal standing for customers threatening to sue the store because there was not adequate store stock, and they would not provide rainchecks. Legally, the ads solicit offers or are invitations to make offers (Clarke, 2018). Once the stores ran out of stock, they could no longer accept offers. The ad did not guarantee store stock levels nor the granting of rainchecks. However, it appears that rerunning this promotion would be a wise move on our part after we are confident we are in a position to maintain store stock better. We may also want to include verbiage in the ad stating that stock may be limited and stores will not grant rainchecks. Keeping our consumers and stores happy would seem the ethical thing to do.

Lastly, regarding the stores' position for suing Noice, I would have to refer to our distribution agreements as to whether those contracts have any elements that were violated by not maintaining store stock levels during a manufacturer promotion.