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Worst Buy
Cutriss writes "Steve Lynch of Hypothermia has been running a consumer awareness page following of an Internet pricing disagreement between Best Buy and over 2000 angry customers, where Best Buy refused to honor a web-only sale price of a GeForce4 Ti 4600 for $129.99, at a "Special pre-order price". The situation has escalated further - Rod Hill, Store Manager for Best Buy #513 in Tucker/Dekalb County, GA, had a customer arrested on Friday of last week, citing Fraud and Criminal Trespassing. Hill informed police that Abraham Cherian, an Indian American, was trying to rip off the store, the same store that had conceded to give another customer his video card as requested 10 days earlier. Best Buy is now apparently red-flagging inquiring troublemak^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcustomers who attempt to obtain their purchased cards from Best Buy locations." FWIW, if the description of what happened is accurate, Best Buy has entered into a binding contract to sell the cards at the advertised price, and if they don't want to honor it, the people affected should take them to court (or contact their local Attorney General's office, which is what they appear to be doing). It's Best Buy's obligation to make sure their prices are accurate.
You'd think after the Kodak fiasco & another online vendor got the price of an X-Box wrong - and in both cases the customer got it (eventually) at the advertised price they'd just cave in and avoid the bad publicity!
Video Game cheats, hints a
I'm guessing they have a disclaimer on their web site. "We reserve the right to cancel sales in the event of errors" or somewhat. Don't know if it'll hold up in court, but it seems somewhat reasonable to me. It's not like they took the money and didn't give it back. Although I guess it would make a difference if the credit card was charged, and that would be the equivalent of money actually changing hands.
"The Indian was arrested and..."
The police report seems to have an old fashioned Western approach to law and order.
Hill informed police that Abraham Cherian, an Indian American
... and what exactly does that last part matter for?
--- I do not moderate.
now best buy will be dual /.ed. both their site and their stores!
I want 2D games back.
Anyone that spends this much time and effort trying to get away with buying something for what was a pricing mistake is really troubled.
I worked for Best Buy for 5 and a half years. I have never heard of anything like this before. Best Buy should just suck it up and honor the price. It is their mistake. I have seen several customers arrested before, but not for asking for what is reightfully thiers!
Ah, the last peanut -- overflowing with the oil and salt of its departed brothers. -Homer
Alright. I see two lawsuits here:
#1) Class-action lawsuit against Best Buy for fraud and misleading the consumer. Compensatory damages for monies lost. Sounds fair.
#2) False imprisonment! There seems to be grounds for a suit here. And there's of course, the whole racial bias thing going on. Which is 'orrible as is. I see damages for emotional distress. It'd be quickly settled with the right firm... maybe in the range of 200... considering its high profile.
It wasn't enough that we killed their children, stole their land, gave them diseases, slaughtered their food sources, raped their women, and destroyed their once-proud culture, now we won't even let them play Medal of Honor.
The hooligans are loose! The hooligans are loose! What if they become ruffians? -- Bill Hicks
In the UK, at least, there are little pieces of text which say 'E&OE.', which means that even if the advert is wrong, they don't have to sell it at that price. As soon as you agree a price, then it is (afaik) a legally binding contract. For this reason, if they advertise something at a price, they don't necessarly have to honour the price, although most bigger companies will. I was wondering about what would happen if they took the money from your bank account, and then told you that the product was now unavailable for resale. Then, they gave the money back (i.e. refund).I would have thought that this was breach of contract, and hence you could take legal action. However, is legal action really worth it? Legal expenses alone will probably out-weigh the money you might gain. I would have thought that the copany could refuse to sell the products though. (esp. in UK). I'm not confident with US law though. Ny experts? (I'm sure most US magazines will tell you your rights)
Best Buy Did have a disclaimer. Also I am sure the message boards at anandtech have kept the messages from when this first happened. There were a deluge of "lets go for it, and when they don't honor the price, sue thier pants off"
when people go in with that intent, it will not stand up in court.
It seems that since Best Buy is essentially a racist corporation bent on squeezing profits using unethical bait-and-switch tactics, we must respond by boycotting Best Buy.
I also remember somewhere Microsoft owns about ten percent of Best Buy... can anyone confirm or deny this?
It is about $200+ difference, not to mention, if they say it is 129, then that is what they sell it as. No false advertising you know.
Best buy has done stuff like this before, where they accidently show on the website a monorot for like 150$, and they fix the error when it comes to billing the customers credit card.
So now, it seams both sides are being a little more aggressive. And yes, I would be one of them had I seen that card going for that cheap.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
They're going to hell for this one. Back in the day of the bubble, they would be paying people to buy these cards, now they are arresting people for buying the cards at the advertized price.
They seem to do this intentionally. This isn't the first time Best Buy has misguided customers on its website. They purposely mark a product with the wrong price to get everyone's pre-order dollars and then don't ship it and call it a "typo". They then proceed to either refund you or give you a "discounted price" for their "mistake" which is no where near the original price advertised on their website.
It is some kind of cheap ploy to get people to use their website for all of their purchases. This is all to common with e-tailers these days. I for one sincerely hope that Steve and Hypothermia take Best Buy to the cleaners over this one.
FWIW, if the description of what happened is accurate, Best Buy has entered into a binding contract to sell the cards at the advertised price, and if they don't want to honor it, the people affected should take them to court (or contact their local Attorney General's office, which is what they appear to be doing). It's Best Buy's obligation to make sure their prices are accurate.
Oh yeah? What state did you pass the bar in again?
I read this whole thing and it was obviousy a typographical error and these people are trying to get something for nothing. Best Buy should have continued to tell them all to get stuffed.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
It's not that bad... the police sided with the guy, saying the manager shouldn't have done that. Seems like they're doing just what they should, in this case. Best Buy are being assholes about it, and they're getting slapped for it. No news here.
- Free tabletop fantasy gaming! Grey Lotus
Remember reading about this in MaximumPC a month or two ago; Best Buy's stand then was that it was an error/typo and not a legally binding contract -- they said that they would not honor the price... seems that some of the stores have been honoring the price, unbeknownst to corporate management..
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
I work for an educational institution, and one of the doctors that I work for recently had an experience at the local Best Buy.
He had just bought a harddrive and taken it home, only to find that inside the sealed box was a can of tuna. This is something so utterly rediculous, he decided to back up his case. He called the tuna manufacturer and found that the code stamped on the bottom of the can showed that the can had been shipped to the same county as the manufacturer of the harddrive.
So now it is time to go to the store and try to get a replacement. Of course, everyone knows the story. The manager refused to honor the story, even when presented with this amount of evidence.
The next step was for our doctor in question to go to a bigger regional manager and tell the story. When this manager heard the information about the problem and had looked up the purchasing history of this doctor, he immediately had a new harddrive waiting for the doctor.
I have left quite a bit out of this story, including the bit about where the police were almost called and where the doctor notes to the first manager that he makes more in a month than the manager does in a year, but you get the idea.
I ordered the card via the website, got a return notification for my order, along with a confirmation number, and everything. About a week later I received an e-mail saying that all online orders for this item were cancelled.
Two weeks later they sent another email saying that they were providing me with a $20 online credit for future Best Buy purchases... I took it-- if I hadn't, I could have taken them to court to get my card.
::cry::
If what has been reported is true about the Indian American being arrested for trying to get his GF4 at the low price. That is a whole new story. Reading up at Hypothermia and the HardOCP Forums it seems so. After some of my experiences at Best Buy, and all this nonsense over the GF4 they are definately on My List. This story about arresting a guy over what happened is just the icing on the cake.
What exactly happened still seems a bit unclear, and we should probably what for Best Buy's response, but it really doesn't surprise me that Best Buy acted this way. Their company cultrue seems to foster turning employees into assholes. IMHO, of course.
To make up for their screw-up, BestBuy sent everybody a $30 gift-certificate. Obviously, it's not a GF4, but it seemed like a good attempt to correct an obvious misprint.
I'm not sure if it was BestBuy or a different chain superstore, but I seem to remember something about a mis-priced computer product making a big stink about a year ago.
If I am correct and it was Best Buy, there's more to this than a simple typo in an ad!
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with. - Tennessee Williams
Still waiting for mine! ;-)
--
From: onlinestore@bestbuy.com
To: <ajs@ajs.com>
Subject: BestBuy.com Backorder Notice
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 05:32:13 -0600
Message-ID: <EC0250S603avN3qljWw0001d1ed@ec0250s603.xbby.co m>
Dear Aaron Sherman,
Thank you for shopping at BestBuy.com!
Unfortunately, the following item(s) are still unavailable to be shipped, but we hope to be able to ship this item(s) to you soon.
If you prefer to cancel this item from your order, please contact our Customer Care representatives at onlinestore@bestbuy.com or call our Online Store help center toll-free at 1-888-BESTBUY (1-888-237-8289).
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
ORDER NUMBER: 213****
Order Date: Feb 6, 2002
Credit Card Used: ****************
Item Description Type Qty Web Price Total Status
VisionTek Xtasy GeForce4 Ti 46 --- 1 $129.99 $129.99 On Backorder
[................] SNIP!
.. and within minutes the news about the mistake was propagated throughout Usenet.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of people were placing orders KNOWING that the price was a mistake. Look up the archives in Google to see for yourself.
People tried to abuse a mistake on the part of Best Buy. They gambled and lost, but apperantly have a problem with that. I suspect these are the same people that stick lower price tags on products in shops as well, before taking them to the checkout..
Are you insinuating something, Michael?
Quit trying to play the race card. No one gives a flying fuck what race/nationality/sexual preference/whatever the guy is/has. "Indian American" has nothing to do with the reason they had his ass hauled off. The manager made a judgement call. He felt someone was trying to rip off the store, so he did something about it. Plain and simple.
"...the same store that had conceded to give another customer his video card as requested 10 days earlier.
The same store, perhaps. But was the manager notified the first time it happened? Selling one video card at a marked down price is one thing. But when people start coming out of the woodwork, employees start to notice that something isn't right.
"Adequacy.org: Where congenital stupidity is not an option, but a requirement."
Here is the text:
Errors on Our Site
Prices and availability are subject to change without notice. Errors will be corrected where discovered, and Best Buy reserves the right to revoke any stated offer and to correct any errors, inaccuracies or omissions including after an order has been submitted and whether or not the order has been confirmed and your credit card charged. If your credit card has already been charged for the purchase and your order is cancelled, BestBuy.com will issue a credit to your credit card account in the amount of the charge. Individual bank policies will dictate when this amount is credited to your account.
While Best Buy takes steps to ensure the accuracy and completeness of product and third-party services provided, please refer to the originator of information for details, for example the manufacturer for complete product details.
I find it a bit embarrassing that every time a corporation makes an honest mistake, many Slashdot readers begin to chant "BOYCOTT!" Just because they didn't get some goody at an exceptional loss for the company. You can ALWAYS get your money back if you order with a credit card.
But if someone actually thought they would get a GeForce card for $125, then they get what they deserve.
I personally would have assumed it was a typo, and left it at that. And if Best Buy would not sell the card for $125, who cares? Are you any worse off?
There have got to be better things to get pissed off about.
I would suggest a boycott, but somehow I get the impression that not too many /.ers buy their gear from Best Buy, huh?
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
BestBuy needs to think about the future. The people in charge need to realize that in the long run they will make more money by not pissing customers off. My guess would be that none of those 2000 people will ever regularly shop at BestBuy again. However, if they just sold the cards at the advertised price they would have gained 2000 happy customers who would, using word of mouth, tell others to shop there. This would make BestBuy more money in the long run.
JOIN !LINK CLUB!
Buy Comp has done the same thing. I remember back in 1999 they had posted Hitachi 19inch monitors for a crazy low price (its been so long i forget the exact figures). It was so low that that monitor got flagged as the best selling monitor on their site, and then they didn't honor the selling price when it came to shipping time.
you're, it's a contraction for you are, your is poessive example: you're an idiot
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
It's Best Buy's obligation to make sure their prices are accurate.
Once again, Michael posts bullshit that is totally wrong.
Stores are not legally responsible to honor typographical errors. Period. If there is some intentional fraud, then prove that. Otherwise, these people should grow up and live in the real world.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Hmmm ... 2000+ calls may do something about the problem.
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
This statement is 100% correct. The store manager in Dekalb who had that man arrested should in turn be arrested and sued for false arrest. When I worked for The Home Depot a few years back here in Macon, one of our signs for a 24 foot fiberglass ladder (nice ladder) was priced $100 too low. We honored it without any problems. Why? Two reasons: 1) it was our fault, and 2) it's the law.
Companies that don't honor advertised prices (whether it was an honest mistake or not) are obligated to sell the merchandise at that price. This is not '$199.95 or best offer', this is '$199.95'.
Slackware forever. Honestly, what else would you trust when it absolutely positively has to be stable, secure, and easy
I quote from the Best Buy site, for a GEForce4 Ti 4600...
"Not available for delivery at this time. Not available for store pickup."
I used to shop at Best Buy alot, because they always had good sales on things I like to purchase (music, videos, electronics, etc.). I couldn't leave there without something in my hands... I had a problem.
I don't know if its just me or what, but the store quality has declined. I've had rude store employees; I've had stupid store employees; I've been in Best Buy when I've known more about their sales then their employees. And don't get me started on their "Extended Warantee" program (you were just telling me how great this is, and now you're trying to convince me that its crap?)
It's a shame that there is really no other place to go to get "nice" electronic's at reasonable prices (plz. don't mention Circuit "I make stuff up" City...), at least hear on the Easat Coast.
So I guess I'm stuck with going to Best Buy and making sure to do my research before hand and not take any crap from their employees.
Allright, can I have one minute of fame here ?? please :)
They even got my name all wrong, it should be Cherian Abraham, not the other way around..sheesh!
Its true. This all went down last Friday at the Best Buy store at Tucker, GA. I am just gonna repeat what happened word by word. Makes quite an interesting reading. And I would really appreciate if you guys could tell me where I should go from here.
So I went to BB at Tucker,GA last Friday armed with the receipts, my original and the copies I printed from the site. I was dumb enough to trust BB and I didnt have anyone to take along with me for the ride. I know I should have.
There was only one card left on the aisle, so I grabbed with a couple of other things (a 80GB HD and a Platinum Audigy) and went to the counter. There was this customer service lady who told me that six or seven people have been trying to PM with the same receipt there and its not possible. She said that the receipt was a fake, the guy who created it is no longer with BB etc. She asked me if I wanted to talk to the manager, so I said yes.
Out comes the General Manager called Rod, I politely explained why I am there. He asked me to follow him to a separate room. He did not want to discuss further details standing outside, he wanted me to follow him. Neither did he tell me then and there that I should get the heck out of there. I was kinda hesitant at first, but I thought no better of it and followed him. Inside we sat down and started going through the receipts. Then another guy, a sales manager called Paul McKim comes in, and suddenly Rod jumps out and drags him out whispering something. Rod comes back in and we start going through the same shit again. I believed that I would make him see the sense of it if I kept my cool and explained everything . He was giving me all fucked up reasons and all I wanted was a yes or no. He told me "I dont know whether I can pricematch that low, but let me ask my Sales manager".
15 mins later, cops walk in. Then I knew they were stalling me on all the time, that he was just waiting there, making sure I was there till the cops arrive. Anyway I still kept my cool and explained to them the reason why I was there. Half an hour goes by and I am still alone in the room with the cops talking to them. Cops are all the time outside talking to BB and not even bothering to listen to my story.
In comes on of the cops, cuffs me (God that hurts) and then tells me that I was cuffed so that I wouldnt hurt anyone. Yeah right!. So here I am cuffed for the first time of my life and humiliated. Then they told me that I was being arrested for Fraud and that I am being taken to the Dekalb Office and a detective would take it up from there on. They brought me out amidst the whole store, but I kept my head high , because I hadnt done anything wrong and I had nothing to worry about.
Cops took me on a joy ride for half an hour and it was a damn uncomfortable one. Once there, they took me to this holding pen alone and made me wait there. In comes one black lady, who looked far more reasonable and intelligent than all the three cops combined, and she told me that she is going to talk to the BB guy (Paul) first and then myself. I waited there for almost an hour (the whole thing took from 11:30 till 3:30) and then she came in and asked me for my story. I explained her everything. She tells me then that she does not believe BB's story that I forged the receipt. Looks like they first told her that the receipt was a Fraudulent one and that they have proof to that effect, but once we all got to the precinct changed the story saying that they cant prove it anymore. Also they changed the charge from Fraud to Criminal Trespass, though at no time whatsoever they had asked me to leave the store. I work as an Analyst for a firm in Atlanta and I was looking quite respectable in my work clothes. anyway, she told me that BB does not want me as a customer and I told her that I would be happy to take my business elsewhere.
She told me that they had changed their tactics from "Forging the receipt" to "Trespassing - not leaving the store even when I were asked to". I told her that all the time the General manager Rod, wanted to keep me there so that the cops would come in, and never he asked me to leave the store. She sympathised with me and told me that she ended up warning the guy from BestBuy.
So here I am Vindicated, Harassed, Ridiculed. Given up ? Hell no! I guess thats one thing you learn when you are a geek.
Rapid Nirvana
I was going to post exactly the same thing. Congratulations on being quicker to the draw. I was also going to add that there's one problem with that. At least one of the buyers called and confirmed twice that the offer and prices listed were valid. Any legal experts out there know how this will change things?
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Once again, Michael posts bullshit that is totally wrong.
Tell it, brother. Of course, Michael was only following the Slashdot mission statement: 'Post bullshit that is usually totally wrong, and make sure it is done in the most misspelled and grammatically incorrect fashion possible'.
'I'm tired of waltzing for pancakes.' - Gwen Mezzrow
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
Thank god we have Fry's out here on the left coast. I certainly don't go there to get advice on what to buy (their help is very not helpful), but when I know what I want (which is always) Fry's has what I want at good prices generally.
Hell, I just walked out with Dungeon Seige for 29.99, a full 20 bucks off the price I saw it for elsewhere.
... no matter how much best buy would like to think so.
Me: I want to complain...
Manager: You want to complain? Look at these shoes. I only had them three weeks and the heels are worn right through.
Me: Ugh.
Manager: If you complain, nothing happens. You might as well not bother. And I'm sick and tired of this office.
You have no legal sense. You just made up a bunch of crap..
At this point, I would call the local friendly legal professional. I bet he or she would be very happy to pursue a wrongful detention civil suit against Best Buy and its manager. Lawyers love this sort of case, especially when it's a little guy clearly in the right versus a big retailer. You get the chance to teach BB a lesson, see the manager get his ass fired, and you could get a nice little chunk of change for your trouble.
And let us know how it goes. BB deserves the smackdown for this one.
'I'm tired of waltzing for pancakes.' - Gwen Mezzrow
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
Still don't see that waiving any of BB's rights as stated in the disclaimer. It opens them to "false advertising" charges, but those have always seemed pretty anti-free speech to me. Anyone know if false advertising laws have been tested?
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
...state and federal law do not agree with you.
the attorney general believes there is a case here.
Which law is it that says they have to honor the order? They refunded your money because they were unable to complete the order. That is generally considered a fair business practice.
The $20 credit is a bonus, they did not have to do that for ANY reason. That was simply to try to say "Look we messed up, heres 20 bucks off your next purchase."
They don't owe you jack.
Wait. Pretend you own a business. pretend you are building computers for someone. You price it out, but leave out a $500 part by accident. You take the guys money, and start building. A day later you realize your mistake. Are you obligated to provide it all to him? No.
You can give back his money and cancel the transaction.
Jumping to conclusions is a popular pasttime at Slashdot. The fact that the store confirmed the price to multiple people, and even actually sold the card at that price (supposedly) to a few pretty much eliminates any possibility that this was a typographical error on the website. You could argue that it was a general pricing error that somehow spread to all of the stores AND was posted to the website, but it certainly was not a typo.
I also, however, do not believe that Best Buy is legally obligated to honor any price they posted. It's their store, and it seems to me that they can charge whatever they want at any time. (Whether this is morally right or not is irrelevant)
Anti-free speech? Are you NUTS?
Fraud is not protected speech, period. False advertising is a form of fraud, as it is an attempt to "trick" the buying public by promising goods or services in a misleading way.
False advertising is very difficult to prove, however. Errors and unintentional ommisions are protected as just that, accidents. In order to win a false advertising suit you have to prove malicious intent.. and that's very very difficult to do.
I'm not really sure what occured in this case. It seems like Best Buy made a listing error, and then refused to honor. That would put them well within their legal rights.
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
I don't think there are any false advertising issues here. A price was advertised that was wrong. The error was discovered and corrected. Usually, false advertising covers things like lying about features of a product, the actual product sold and the usual bait and switch scams.
Also, remember that an advertised price does not constitute an offer.
-- Ravensfire
"But we decide which is right, and which is an illusion"
but, if you are who you say you are, you should talk to a lawyer before talking to anyone else. There's a reason you hear "no comment" in disputes from parties on advice of their lawyer.
Lawsuit time. Don't worry, it'll never go to court, because the media loves to cover stories like this. You should get a pretty good settlement out of them.
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
Slashdot employees, who have long maintained that correct spelling and grammar was optional for their jobs as editors, have announced that they will now act as paralegals. They have acknowledged that they are at least as qualified to dispense legal advice as they are to edit submissions.
Assuming what you said is true, then best buy did break the law. Its called "bait and switch" and that is illegal. Of course the hard part is proving that they intentionally showed the lower price to get people to come and spend more than that. Its more detailed than that, but the point is its illegal(I think in the US). It happend to me with a mail order place, had a duron w/ main board combo advertised in a magazine. I called them, 2 days after getting the mag, and they said the sale was over. and that by the time the magazine gets to peoples hands the sale is usually over...I said the words "sounds like bait and switch, thats illegal" 15 minutes later my stuff was ordered and on the way.
LinuxWorx
Spelling errors are intentional as are gramatical error
Several months ago I my daughter spent her allowance on a game at best buy. When we got it home I installed the game and found it would not run (crashed on startup). This was on my wife's HP Pavilion (about as generic a consumer computer as you can find). I then tried it on my own computer, a bastard, self-built, multi-booting geek box from hell. Same exact problem, failed on startup.
We went back to the store to exchange it for a different game. No chance. They will not exchange a game unless the media is damage, and then only for another copy of the same game.
I spent far too long arguing with the manager. I pointed out that they would lose a regular customer over a $30 game. He would not budge.
I have not been back to that store since then. So as not to disappoint my daughter, I let her buy another game (from a different store, of course) as it would have been cruel to tell her she lost her allowance.
Unfortunately, this refusal to exchange software is a growing trend. Eventually, I will be forced to pirate all software for testing before I make an actual purchase.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Old, but very similar article on the buy.com story.
About three years ago, I put in an online purchase for a very nice 19" Hitachi monitor for $165. The normal price for that monitor was some $400 higher. About 1,400 other people did the same thing, and a few even recieved their monitors - but the rest had their orders cancelled.
Since the company had selectively not honored many purchases, after putting the hold on their customer's money, a class action law suit was launched. About two years later, I revieved a small settlement check. I feel a bit of shame for playing a small role in continuing the litigious trend in the nation - but hopefully more companies will take closer note of their mistakes, so they have to honor fewer accidental low prices.
Similarly, they had also cancelled between 15,000-19,000 Celeron 300 processors, which was another big part of the story, as many others would likely recall.
:^)
Ryan Fenton
The person who was arrested will get lots of money.
Fight Spammers!
I apologise for the error in the URL in my last post, the correct url for the BestBuy information is http://hypothermia.gamershardware.com/articles/bes tbuy_gf4deal.html
As I stated before, PLEASE read this page before posting.
will StaPle their balls to the wall. she has been the biggest advocate for price laws in Michigan since she took office 4 years ago.
if you are getting screwed and you call her office, in a week that store will have an investigation going on its butt and a lot of the time they get taken to court.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
"It's Best Buy's obligation to make sure their prices are accurate."
Unless they have said something like we do not take any responsibility of typos in prices, blahblah...
n/t
Ahhhh, you've had lots of experience with being handcuffed I take it? Guess you are just jaded with it at this point like all good criminals.
He'd done nothing wrong, so they never should have cuffed him in the first place. It's one thing for the police to cuff someone who actually committed a crime, but it's quite another for them to cuff and publicly arrest an upstanding citizen who's done nothing wrong.
That said, the police were just doing their job--however, the Best Buy manager should never have made that false report in the first place. It should never have happened. It's that simple.
Thier just making the situation worse by not pricematching. I tend not to buy stuff from Best buy anyway unless it something i need now and cant wait for shipping. They do have good deals on new games once and a while i'll admit that.
On an off topic note... i happen to live right across the street from the new best buy HQ. Because of it size they have to redo a nearby bridge to a freeway to accomade the potential traffic.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
I know exactly how that guy feels. Back in high school I used to work for BB (WB - whatever you want to call them shiesters)....
Needless to say after about 2 years of loyal service they canned my ass - claiming I swore to a couple of customers on two different occasions in the course of a one week period.
My guess is because I "insulted" the manager in front of some customers - which was far from the truth.
Best Buy has been screwing customers over with their stupid bait and switch crap for awhile now. And I can't believe what their "disclaimer" says about how they have the right to cancel orders.
That's not what I learned in Buisness law back in college....the "contract" that was entered by Best Buy and the people who purchased the cards BY LAW must be honored - heck, they even went as far as to charge their credit cards! I can't believe that in this day and age companies are still trying to get out of their fuck ups.
Just look at canon and their fiasco with the digital cameras...They ended up selling them for what they advertised in the first place....Why waste a lengthy court battle and just concede that they're wrong and give in. Either way they stand to lose money on the deal, just less if give up a lost cause.....
Not only does Best Buy like to screw over their customers, I'm very sick of their receipt checking policy as well.
I recall reading some time ago that stores cannot legally check your receipt at the door, unless they are acccusing you of stealing. Once purchased, the item becomes your private property, and much like the items contained in a woman's purse, cannot be searched whenever they feel like it.
Now, normally this isn't a problem. When I walk by, I simply ignore the man at the door, or tell them "No, thank you." when they ask for my receipt. One particular time, however, the man at the door simply refused to let me by. We got into a very heated discussion over it, and in the end he simply said "It's my job, I have to do it."
I guess what I'm really asking, is if anyone knows of any resources for laws regarding stores and consumers? I don't want to look through tomes of law books, but I would like to find what the law actually states. I intend to go back to the store, and sit down with the manager and have a discussion regarding their employee and their bag searching policy.
I have had problems with that store as well. That manager, in fact. They must be desparate for ANYONE to work there as a manager to keep that bozo.
I was also accused of attempting to defraud them when I tried to return som RAM that wouldn't work in an IBM Aptiva. (Picky box, Crucial ram worked fine). He told me they didn't even sell the brand I was returning. I had purchased it less than 30 minutes earlier! When I tried to get him to look in the locked case where the ram is so he could SEE THE SAME BRAND, he ordered me out of the store.
I am no longer a customer. I will not EVER be customer again. I go out of my way to tell anyone who will listen to my story just how crappy of a store Best Buy, and the Tucker store in particular is.
I vote for quality business with my money. Best Buy would eventually go out of business if it were not for the hourdes of people willing to tolerate crap for service where they shop.
The accepted usage refers to ethnic groups who were here in the pre-European period, not to people just born here afterwards.
Then you can add in fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, and RICO.
Fight Spammers!
Am I missing something here? This stunt sounds like a standard business 101 loss-leader.
I just contacted their customer service department at 1-888-237-8289 and I encourage you to do the same.
I told them that they have lost a customer and that I will be telling everyone I know about this issue and encouraging them to boycott all BestBuy stores. I told that that I will continue to encourage others to boycott until Best Buy:
1) Offers an immediate and formal apology from the president of their company to Abraham Cherian. It should be prominently displayed on the front page of their website and be accompanied with a press release.
2) Contacts the Tucker/Dekalb county law Public Safety Department responsible for the arrest and instructs them to drop all changes against Abraham Cherian.
3) Properly honor all existing valid orders for the disputed card.
4) Immediately terminate Rod Hill's employment at Best Buy #513
5) Immediately terminate the employment of any manager above Rod Hill who may have instructed employees to take the kind of action Rod Hill took.
I hope that Abraham Cherian has already spoken to an attorney and is perusing both Best Buy and the county for the improper handling of this incident. I suspect he won't need the discount after this series of events.
The thing that really ticks me off about Best Buy, and definately makes me avoid them like the plague is they manner in which they treat their "customers" like criminals.
If you try to walk out of the door, be prepared to be next to strip searched. They post huge bouncer type dudes in front of the door and ransack through people's jackets and clothes before they will let them leave.
They don't do this because they have any probable cause, they simply do it to random people. Even people who just left the cash register 5 feet away from the door with a bag in their hand.
Best Buy's assumption that everyone is a thief and a criminal is so reprehensible that it makes me sick everytime I go in there and see them doing it.
Contact your local TV station. Most have customer help people and love to make examples of companies over the 6:00 newscast. It's great for the because they get a free news story, look good helping the embattled little guy, and can sell a feel-good story in the in-news-advertising. That, and they usually get you just what you wanted.
What is your Slash Rating?
delete the space between the letters s and t in bestbuy
READ the links. The store confirmed the price as $129 and quoted the $200 savings part. On different occasions.
I bought a Sony DVD last year from Good Guys here in San Jose. Then one week later circuit city lowered the price from $399 to $299. I went back to Good Guys and asked them to honor their "double the difference" price guarantee. Of course they decided that they couldn't give me $200 store credit and I argued with them for quite a while. They informed me that I had to give them an add with the price. It didn't matter that this was the new regular price..... They wouldn't even call Circuit City to verify the lower price. So I decided to return the player at Good guys and then I ended up buying it at Circuit City instead. Too bad for them, since now I am looking at setting up my home theatre and I know who I WON'T be buying anything from.
They have been doing this bait and switch for years. Nothing new here.
Personally this spring was the final straw of why I will not do business with them.
They had memory advertised cheap plus a mail in rebate. Bought the memory, and sent in the rebate. Low and behold they "lost or never received" two rebate forms (one for me, one for my fiance) Interesting thing was that was right before memory prices decided to go back up again. So I am "out" $80 because of these thiefs.
Bottom line, Worst Buy is a company to stay far, far away from, and it makes me feel dam good to hear negative publicity against them.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
I wasted about 15 minutes every two days for about two weeks calling to check up on the status of a rain check for a USB Hard Drive about a year ago. I never was able to get it.
Fuck them, I hope you sue them and win big.
These are the two things I keep hearing over and over in the retail business. Store policies are so common now that people think these things are law. They are not.
1) You can return most goods to the store for a full refund (sometimes with stipulations about whether or not it's been opened, unpacked, etc)
- This is false. A merchant is under no obligation to return your money and take back an item, even if it's unopened. A sale is a sale. No law requires this. Stores have policies allowing such returns for good customer relations, not for the law.
The only exception to this is if the goods are sold under false pretenses, or are defective. If it's not what the store said it was, or doens't do what they said it would do, the sale is fraudulent, and they have to return your money.
2) Stores have to honor advertised prices, or mis-labeled prices on items.
No, they do not. Again, most stores do this as a matter of good customer relations, but they are not required to by law. Fraudulent advertising IS illegal, and if you can show they are deliberately doing false advertising, then they can be sued (but that doesn't necessarily mean they have to honor the price)
A grocery store honoring a dollar-too-low advertised price on a pack of noodles may lose some money over the week, but its'a small margin business, and customer loyalty is very important. A couple bucks loss per customer for a day or two is no big deal, and worth it to keep the customer who shops in your store every week for 10 years straight.
A $200 loss per customer IS a big deal, especially in a business with little customer loyalty.
(there, your reputation has now been damaged - feel free to sue Best Buy for false arrest and damaging your reputation)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Let me respond in my native tongue:
OOOOH boo boo boo
OOOOH boo boo boo
OOOOH boo boo boo
Ugh. Heap fast video card offered for little wampum.
Brave's heart sing at $200 clams off GForce4.
Ugh.
Heap bad Best Buy had Indian arrested.
Bad. Very Bad.
Me no smoke peace pipe.
Braves gather. War council convened.
This means war. No cavalry left. Indians run wild like buffalo in mating ritual.
Ooooh boo boo boo
ooooh boo boo boo
ooooh boo boo boo
Subject says it all. I do several thousand dollars worth of business with Best Buy every year. I can't find a good place to send my complaints, so if anyone has one.. I'd like to hear it:)
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
Intentionally lying to the police is a criminal offence. I also suggest hiring a friendly legal professional. Most people/companies behave a differently after they have been served papers.
I have a number of bad experiences with best buy from refusing to honor any kind of warranty of defective goods to bait & switch scams with sales. And even on thanksgiving trying to avoid giving me the sale price on an item because the 45 minuts I spent in line took me past the end of the sale (at noon). The attitude of the management seems to be "Yes we know we're wrong - but you don't have the time or money to sue us".
Heh,
Recently had a bad experience with the local Best Buy in San Diego. The only thing I like about Best Buys are their gigantic bargain bin section, where they put two old (~1999) games in a new box and sell em for 10$. I've bought a couple cheap games that way and have been generally happy with the practice.
Then, over Spring Break, (looking for something to do while all my friends were off doing fun stuff) I buy Deus Ex off the bargain bin section for 10$. It's marked as a "Special Limited Edition", with no explaination of what a special limited edition is, precisely. (I looked.) I figured it meant it didn't come with a manual, or maybe multiplayer.
So I figure 10$ for a game that was supposedly pretty good is a good deal, so I buy it. Take it home. Play it for a while. Get halfway through the game. Splash screen comes up: "Buy Deus Ex, game of the year for 2000! If you buy the real version, you will get to see all these nifty features..."
Bah. Fricken Best Buy sold me a DEMO for 10 dollars!
Maybe I should have guessed that "Special Limited Edition" meant "demo", but all the other games I've bought from their bargain bin have been the real thing. Deceptive as hell.
-Bill Kerney
As always, this does not consitiute formal legal advice, get a lawyer in your jurisdiction for advice.
First off, get a lawyer. Once of the nice ambulence chasing kind. If they like the case, and they probably will, they should do it for a split of the settlement. Of course nothing is ever sure in the court system, but juries are generally sympathetic to cases of consumers suing big corperations for being assholes.
Next, I would talk to your DA about possable criminal charges against the manager. It sounds like he knowling lied to the police to have you arrested, and that's illegal.
Finally continue to do what you are doing now, which is to spread the word. Bad press hurts the company immensly.
I while back my friend had a not so fun run-around with BB. Here is the letter he evetually sent them (kinda long, but so was the ordeal):
Dear Mr. Schulze,
I'm writing to bring your attention to a problem I've had with exchanges and
returns with one of your products. I hope Best Buy will address this problem
to my satisfaction. This incident has left me extremely angry.
Here's my problem: First I should say I hope someone actually reads this.
Given the experience I am about to write about, I doubt it. In case you do,
it is customer service issue #XXXXXXXX.
In September of '97 I bought a big screen TV from Best Buy. At that time I
was told I should buy the extended warranty because of how helpful Best Buy
would be should anything go wrong. One thing I was told was that if
ANYTHING happened to the TV, including something like me dropping it and
breaking it, the company would fix/replace it. Luckily, I did not have to
test this out - but I did read the warranty fairly carefully and I am pretty
sure that if I physically broke that TV your warranty would not cover. This
was a flat out lie that your salesperson told me.
Anyway, near the end of January I began having problems with the televisions
convergence. On January 28th I called and asked what I needed to do to have
it repaired. They sent out someone January 31st. He worked on the TV for a
while, replaced some chips and decided he could not fix the TV. He called
your parts department and ordered some parts. I was told that the parts
would be delivered in a week and the man would come back out and fix the TV.
No problem, if only it was that easy.
February 16th - I had not ever received the parts two weeks later, so I
called your customer service department back and asked where they were. I
was told they had been back order but the I should have them by the end of
the week. Annoying, but understandable.
February 23rd - I never received the parts, so I called back. I was again
told the parts were backordered. I then asked how long the parts would be
on back order. I was told they had no idea. At this point, I asked to
speak to a supervisor. I spoke with Lisa who told me that the parts were
backordered with no expected arrival date. I pointed out that, that could
mean 10 years. She said that she had never heard of any parts taking longer
than one month to deliver. Annoying, but again not anything someone could
easily fix.
March 9th - It had been over a month since the parts were ordered. I called
back your customer service and was told the part was still on back-order
with no expected arrival date. So, I asked to speak with Lisa again. Now,
this upset me: I was told she was not in the office. I explained my
situation to the person I was talking to and that I needed to know
something. I mean between Sony and Best Buy, somebody should have been able
to figure out where the hell these parts were. At this point I was told to
hold on. All of the sudden, Lisa comes on the line. Why did the person who
answered the phone lie to me and say that she was not there?????? Lisa told
me that after our previous conversation she had put in a request to just
have the TV replaced, but the request had been denied. When I asked why she
said she did not know and that there was no direct way to contact the people
who denied the claim. Now, I can understand why you would not directly want
customers dealing with your no lemon dept., but why can't your employees
call them to find out what is going on? Lisa said the only thing I could do
at this point was call the corporate office.
March 9th - Called the corporate office. I spoke to someone there named
Marcus. Marcus put me on hold and came back after a while saying that he
had figured out what the deal was and that if the parts were not in by the
following Tuesday (March 13th) he had given people instructions to just
replace the TV.
March 15th - I never heard anything from anyone about the TV so I called
back to speak to Marcus. I got what I finally have figured out is the
standard response when you ask for someone on a Best Buy phone line that
"they are unaway from (a)their desk or (b)the building." I left Marcus a
voice mail
March 16th - Never heard back from Marcus so I called back. I was again
told that marcus was MIA
March 19th - I called back again. This time I was told Marcus was again
unavailable. I explained my situation and was pretty upset about the whole
thing. I was told someone would get back to me. Finally, I get a call from
Brad Walker telling me that Marcus had gotten my message and tracked him
down.
Now this is when I started to get really really irritated. Brad informed me
that the parts I had been waiting on for well over a month were no longer
available. That would have been OK if what Marcus had told me in the first
place had happened (that they would just replace the TV), but instead Brad
tells me that they have to send a repair man back out to the house. Why did
it take you 6 weeks to tell me that the parts were not and would not ever be
available?!?!
March 20th - Repair man comes back to my house. Him and I have a good laugh
over what he is expected to do. He has been given instructions to try and
repair the TV component by component. The poor guy is replacing individual
resistors on my TV in my living room, that's absurd. Furthermore, he
doesn't even have an oscilliscope to help him out with the repair. Needless
to say, he can't fix the TV.
So, I called Brad back. Originally I was told that they did not think he
was available (surprise!), but when I told them I had the repair man in my
house and we needed to talk to him, they found Brad. Brad talks to the
repair man and informs me that they now need to take my television. I
agree, although I had been told that my waiting was over and the silly thing
was supposed to have been replaced a week earlier. Brad also tells me that
the repair should take 2 weeks and if I don't hear anything to call him
back.
March 22 - They come pick up my TV.
April 5th (Over 2 mos since my first call!!!!!) - I tried to call Brad to
ask him where my TV was. Again, noone can find Brad.
So, I call the corporate office to talk to Marcus, who is also not
available. I finally talk to Sarah explain my whole situation. She tracks
down Marcus who tells her that I should fax over some information and he
will get the TV replaced.
April 6th - I called to speak with Sarah who is of course, unavailable. I
leave a message. I was very surprised that she actually called me back. Of
course, she did tell me that I had not faxed her everything she needed. But
that if I did fax it before noon, I would get a call back before the end of
the day letting me know what to do about my TV. I was a little curious why
she did not tell me the previous day that I had not faxed the correct stuff.
Right before the end of the day, I called and left Marcus a message saying
that I had been told he would call me back and would he please do so.
April 9th - I, of course, never heard anything from anyone. So, I called
back and asked to speak to Sarah, who, of course, was unable to be found. I
will admit that I started to get a little upset at this point, but I asked
the guy who I was talking to if he could try and find her because I was
trying to resolve an over two month old situation and she was the only
person who seemed to know the current status of things.
His response was a pretty rude "I am not going to walk around the building
looking for someone for you." You all had wasted over two months of my
time - I don't think it would have been much of leap to expect this jerk to
put some damn effort into finding the only person who had the information
that could help me. Instead I got transferred to Jason Clark. He told me
that Marcus was not available but he did see notes about my previous calls
and that I should receive a call from Marcus first thing in the morning. He
also said that if I did not receive a call from Marcus I should call him
back at extension 608.
April 10 - I call and leave a few more messages of course, neither Jason nor
Marcus are reachable.
April 11 - I called and said I wanted to speak to someone dammit. Nicole
was luckily helpful, she said I probably could not speak to Marcus or Jason
directly, but to hold on. She finally comes back with the information I
need to replace my TV. So, I went to Best Buy and they let me replace it.
Why did all of this take so long? Why do you guys not return phone calls
when you say you will (ever)?? Why is it impossible to reach people even
when they specifically tell you to call and try and speak with them?
I will note, the times I actually did speak to most of the customer service
people, they were nice and some (esp. Marcus, Lisa, Nicole, Sarah, and Brad)
all seemed like they really were going to try and help me out - but you have
so much crap involved in your system that it is impossible to get anything
resolved.
Finally, I am still really upset over the fact that it took you 6 weeks to
admit that you just could not get the replacement parts. What is the deal
with that? It does not take that long. Why was I told more than once that
the TV would be replaced and then was just given another list of things that
had to happen before it would be replaced? Why even after they got to the
point of realizing they were not going to be able to fix did it still take a
week of calling back to see why noone ever called me - even though I was
told I would receive return calls the same day.
I can understand parts being back ordered and I can understand that there
are some problems with a large company. But this was ridiculuous. The only
reasonable thing I can think of is that you guys figure people will tire of
dealing with you and just give up.
I cannot believe that I am the only person who has had these problems.
Actually, I know I'm not because as I've been relaying this story to others,
a few have told me they had similar experiences with Best Buy.
Here's how you can help: Fire who ever is running your customer service
department. This person needs to be replaced with someone who actually
understands that if people get handled this badly they are not going to ever
buy anything from you again.
Then again, why should that person care. He/she probably has had a
working TV for the past couple months, huh?
"I've never killed any children, stole anyone's land, slaughtered anyone's recources, raped any women or destroyed any culture"
You missed out on all the fun. Better luck next continent.
an advertisement is nothing more than an invitation for an offer from the consumer. best buy has no obligation to sell anything at a particular price.
Somewhat off topic but I thought I'd share with US /.ers
I was really excited when I heard that Best Buy was coming to Canada - finally, someone that could compete with the likes of Future Shop! (Canadian equivalent of Best Buy)
Unfortunately, Future Shop was quite scared of Best Buy and let themselves be bought out. They did have good reason to be afraid: Best Buy has huge buying power and influence over the companies they deal with (or so I've heard).
The point is: I was really hoping that the introduction of Best Buy would mean lower prices, better customer service and better post-sale service. I bet what will happen is continuation of the status quo (barely decent cust service, etc).
With regards to this fiasco, I just really hope this doesn't happen here and that the people working for Best Buy are at least half ways intelligent.
A few years back, buy.com advertised a 19" monitor for sale at a price of $169 (list at the time was in the mid $400s). I saw the ad and ordered a monitor, thinking it was a great deal.
Well, word aparrently got out and buy.com got flooded with orders for the monitor. Buy.com sent out a couple e-mails explaining the typo. They decided the only fair way to award their stock of monitors, was by taking a random pick of all purchasers. I did not end up with a monitor. Buy.com apologised profusely, and for the most part was very responsible in the matter. It was not like the bait and switch that BBY is known to do in the past (don't think for a second that this is the first time they've tried to pull this trick).
I was not really upset over the matter. I was not really looking for a monitor at the time, but the big size and low price appealed to me. Granted, I would not probably order from buy.com ever again, but I was not furious. It's not as if I was charged for a product I did not recieve.
Fast foreward a year and a half. I recieved a letter from a law firm that was handling a class action lawsuit against buy.com in the monitor mishap. The judge in the case found that buy.com was responsible for their typo and awarded the suit a large settlement. Well, after legal feeds were subtracted, each customer in the suit gained somewhere around $300. IANAL, but wouldn't this set some kind of legal presecent to force Best Buy to honor their online price, typo or not?
This comment is brought to you by the drug caffiene, and the number 5.
Best Buy has a great selection but their sales staffs' primary mission is to push those extended warranties. Ignorant salespeople who push extended warranties and give bad advise on expensive purchases are bad for the consumer by wasting their $ and bad for the store by contributing to those long lines you see at the Returns counter. Case in point: bought a Fujitus laptop for the wife. Was assured that it had dedicated video memory. Before we could get away we had to be harangued w/ "these laptops WILL break, you NEED our warranty" and "these things run slow from the factory and our techs will give it a performance increase for $65". Adding to the guy trying to sell me PC100 memory upgrade for a 133 mhz bus computer. Took it home, checked memory, noticed there was 8 megs of the 512 missing (shared video!) and we returned the computer the next day since we found a bad pixel. Took our $, went to Circuit City and bought a Sony VAIO w/ no trouble or sales pitches at all.
That's Insightful...
Mr. Moderator mod as such please.
It looks like somebody might have hit the jackpot. Especially the guy who got arrested. INAL, but lying to the police to get somebody arrested doesn't sound good. All that damage to his reputation, emotional distress, etc.. Talk to some attorneys--fast--and before saying another word to anyone else.
And everyone, please help prevent this sort of thing happening again by reporting your experience to the on-line rating services. Best Buy, if that's the right company has an 8.2 out of 10 rating at BizRate.COM. 2,000 angry customers can fix that. Although at Reseller Ratings they're already at 1.54 out of 10. Not much fixing needed there. For more info, take a look at:
BizRate: Best Buy Rating 8.2
Reseller Ratings: Best Buy Rating 1.54
There are more rating services, but that's a start.
Is it false advertising to put one price on your webstore and another in your physical store? Last summer I went to buy some DVDs from a local DVD specialty store. On the website they were listed for $21 per DVD. When I got there I was charged $24 per DVD instead. I said but on your website it says $21. I was told that he charged more in the store since he had to cover overhead, and with the website there wasn't any overhead. He didn't have to pay someone to be at the Webstore all day. Is this normal or right?
If this happened to me, I'd have a lawyer on their ass so fast it'd make your head spin. Get statements from the arresting officer AND the detective that can be used in court QUICK. You have a well documented story and this should be a no-brainer to win, and a creative lawyer should be able to do a hell of a lot better than "damage to reputation".
Best Buy should get their name in lights for eternity on the web for this. It's a disgrace, and that manager should be arrested for making false claims to the police.
..don't panic
You need to drop the other boot on this one. :)
-- We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of other people. La Rochefoucauld
Just an observation:
Steve Lynch, who runs this site, is a MASTER of motivational speaking. I've read through most of his posted comments, which are littered with phrases like "...you hold the power..." and "...it us US who have the options on our side, not them."
Perhaps he lives "in a van down by the river."
I friend of mine works for best buy. He saw the price and wanted to place an order but the manager of the computer section stopped him saying he "really didn't want to do that" the next day they reneg on the deal......
Sounds fishy to me. he placed to order anyways and has since gotten his card without any major hassle....of course he also works there and had access to certin phone numbers that the rest of us don't. He just had to call someone a bit higher on the food chain who knew that he knew what was going on and that he could blow the whistle so made sure he got the card at said price.
if you want "No More Hiroshimas" then I say "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."
It's kind of funny that after having trouble with this in the past, Buy.com has a "Price Mistake Of The Day" special on their front page everyday.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
I started at the best buy store just the other week , and as the things I have to say are not "in line" with the company , I prefer to remain anon.
Yes , I beleve the whole tyhing as it was played out . I beleve the cust. has a wrongfull incarceration and slande/liable sute that is eceptionaly strong.
The company has come odwn from on high to break Rob's back about "shrink" the retail term for loss and fraud. is that an excuse for hauling off a cistomer in chains ? No , and nothing is. it's apauling as sickening that things like this happen , butr there money is not the geek who will come back time and agian , nor is it the person who knows the law , its the soccer mom who has more time than money .
As salesmen we are told to push the web sight , make shure the warrany is sold , and let someone know if it's not . Is that right ? I dont know.
What I do know is that Rob is not the only manager in the store , and if you wanted to push , the big boss (Sally of Susan I think) Can make recomendations about him to the corprat office. I also kow if i were treeted this way , i wold not be nearly as happy about it as this person seems to be.
I am there and will continue to work there for one simple reason : it's the job i can get. I hope , truly and sincerly that if you do come in I'm he person who helps you , cause I don't knw evrything , i know a hell of alot more than the average tech does there
This is a repost of an AC:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=31635&thre shold=0&commentsort=0&tid=98&mode=thre ad&pid=3403007#3403104
there will be more online retailers trying to pull the same thing.. it was not a 'typo' .. no way can you type in 129.99 from 399.99.. also.. there was the text 'special pre-order savings of $200'.. so that makes no sense.. card didnt cost 599 did it? also.. people including myself called in and asked was that the correct price.. "YES" so.. before you jump the gun and start bashing.. go research this.. i believe they should be held to the agreement.. i,myself, had money reserved on my debit card.. for over a month.. in many attempts to get bestbuy to release the charge got nothing but FORM emails.. even talkin on the phone i was denied.. i contacted my bank and they said the only way to release the charge was for bestbuy to contact them and give them the authorization number..etc..etc.. either by phone or fax... did they? no.. so i was out of that money.. sure.. it was only $138 something.. but still.. its the principle.. if there wasn't a transaction.. then why was their a charge on my debit card... ???
also.. lots of ppl wondering why this just appeared? this has been going on since February. I have contacted local tv stations.. attorney generals..etc.. about this and when the smoke clears.. we will get our cards.. if it takes going to a class action suit.. it will happen... like i said earlier.. if we dont stand up now and stop this.. it will continue... and for those talkin about a 'TOS' (terms of service).. at no time did i see or was i told to read over their TOS during my whole setting up a new account to purchasing to final submitting my order... AND.. if you look at their page and know HTML.. they have their TOS specificaly hidden in a table cell.. and it had a black background.. w/that it doesnt even LOOK like a URL... so i believe that was done intentional..*sp*.. PLUS.. since this has happened.. they have went and re-wrote their TOS to try to protect themselves.. but this wont help.. the TOS was printed and documented along w/all the information.. you can see at Steve's page at Hypothermia..
http://hypothermia.gamershardware.com/articles/bes tbuy_gf4deal.html
thats my 2 cents... like it or not.. things happen beyond some peoples control.. but i have worked in the design business and how could a mistake of this magnitude get skipped by and put online? it just doesnt happen.... and if it does.. they need to honor it..
In my experience, Best Buy has really gone downhill over the last year, absolutely terrible service they have these days.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
you'd realize that most intelligent e-tailers and even catalog's have a cute little line in small print at the bottom: 'We are not responsible for errors or misprints' or 'Price subject to change.'
RTFM idiots or in this case RTFSP
You know, I was wonder how to spend this fine Wednesday evening. I believe the 30 minute drive to Tucker would be time well spent...
Top 10 things to do before shopping at a Best Buys:
10. Put on your running shoes.
9. Contact a bail bondsman
8. Change the batteries in your mini recorder.
7. Program your attorney's phone number into cell phone
6. Change your underwear (it gets nasty after a weekend in jail)
5. Practice being white
.... Ok, I only had 6....
----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
I'm with the guy who suggested that they arrest the manager for falsifying a police report.
customer goes to store, politely asks that best buy honor their binding-by-state-law contractual agreement.
best buy tries to weasel out of their binding-by-state-law obligation.
customer stands their legal ground.
best buy lies to the police to get customer arrested.
best buy lies to the police for a second time when confronted by the police with the fact they have no basis for charges.
best buy is later warned by the police to stop their behaviour.
Here's another data point to consider, a story about how Best Buy gave a customer a hard time, apparently, for buying something besides their top-of-the-line sattelite system.
I know it's going to be years before I make a purchase from Best Buy again...they're going to have go to a very long way to recover my confidence as a customer. Issuing a formal apology to their customers would be a start.
Finding God in a Dog
This is not related to the matter at hand, but one of these days when I were at the Best buy, I saw a notice posted on the Computer Games section which says :
"We cannot take back games or dvds that have been opened for fear of Computer Viruses"
So I guess some one at BB has figured out a way to perch a virus at the tip of every "Write once CDROM" which would effectively wipe out a system.
Fools!
Rapid Nirvana
Back when 8X burners had just entered the market a friend notified me of an outstanding deal in the Sunday paper for a Smart and Friendly 8x SCSI (with card) burner for something like $150 from CompUSA. We knew that they should be around $400 or so, and armed with the flyer marked $150 we hurried to our nearest CompUSA indeed saw that the sticker price was around $400 ($375 or somesuch).
;)
CompUSA honored the flyer price and we walked out of there with 5 8x CD-Rs. Now there's integrity! We checked the paper a week later and noticed the corrected price.
Granted, we only purchased 5 CD-Rs and their markup probably covered their losses for those 5. I bet if we tried to buy 2,000 (like in this case) they'd be less willing to lose a TON of money.
Thanks,
--
Matt
Best Buy advertised the VisionTek Xtasy GeForce4 Ti4600 for preorder at the price of $129.99 (plus applicable sales tax) on their website (bestbuy.com) on Wednesday, February 6, 2002.
Over 2,000 customers placed orders for the card at this special price.
These customers were greeted with confirmation web pages, confirmation e-mail messages, issued order numbers, and some even received backorder confirmation e-mail messages (some even received multiple backorder confirmations).
Within hours, Best Buy pulled the offer, and "corrected" what they later called a "pricing error."
Cancellation e-mails were sent out, and cited a "systems error" for the mistake.
Best Buy issued a press released (only published at news.com) which blamed "human error" for the mistake.
Customers who called Best Buy to inquire about the order cancellation were told that VisionTek would not allow Best Buy to sell the cards at the originally agreed-upon price (Best Buy was falsely accusing VisionTek of illegal price-fixing tactics).
Best Buy does have a disclaimer on their web site in the form of their Terms of Service Agreement.
At no point during the account-creation or order-placing processes are customers required to read or actively agree to these terms (see Specht vs. Netscape; also see the FTC's Advertising and Marketing on the Internet: Rules of the Road).
Best Buy has actually changed their Terms of Service since this entire fiasco began.
Best Buy's Terms of Service do not supercede federal, state, and local consumer protection laws, which (in many cases) specifically outlaw this type of activity.
Best Buy's Terms of Service exist for the sole purpose of tricking customers into surrendering their consumer rights. The way consumer law is written, customers must exercise their rights; if they surrender them, the company in question is not required to adhere to these laws.
"E-tailers" are subject to the same rules, regulations, and laws that apply to their brick-and-mortar cousins. (See the FTC's Dot Com Disclosures)
Best Buy has stated that absolutely no one will be receiving the card at the previously agreed-upon price, yet well over 140 customers have already done so.
Best Buy is ignoring its customers at this point. E-mails go unanswered, and phone calls are greeted with a promise to escalate the call, but the customer must wait for someone to contact them; this, of course, never happens.
At least one person has already taken this to Small Claims Court. He had his first hearing a couple of weeks ago, but Best Buy requested a continuance, which was granted.
A class action lawsuit is still an option, and one that may be used.
There are more facts that are pertinent, but these are the most commonly misunderstood or ignored pieces of information.
So a year or so ago, my roomates and I went to bestbuy to purchase a cd burner for burning and mixing cds.
so, being teh computer geek, I was thinking I would install it and save on some costs...bad idea. when we got home and opened it up, there was nothing inside except one of the oldest cd-rom drives I had ever seen in my life. Think Soundblaster v0.1 Of course we wre outraged by this and immediately went back to the store to complain. the manager looked at us and more or less accused us of switching it and trying to rip them off.
So, my roomate who had some time the next few days got on the phone and started calling and getting names and went up the ladder till he finally got someone with some clout. Once we explained the problem and explained that we were not going be screwed by their supply problems and were not going away, the gu caved and called up the manager at the store and had him give us what we bought. Needless to say we opened that puppy up right there in the store and double checked EVERYTHING in the box.
Moral of the story: Squeaky wheel gets the grease. Luckily we didn't get arrested.
-hommiefro
But it IS possible for a company to accept returns on games. The trick is to track how many games a customer returns, using scanned receipt numbers, etc. Have a policy that you don't accept more than 2 game returns over two months, and you have a reasonably working system. My local Electonics Botique had a system running like that, and it worked wonderfully - they even gave cash back on games, and charged the vendor a penalty for the return.
:^)
Ryan Fenton
We find these truths to be self evident. That all men can play equal. That ping times shall be the same and framerates shall not drop below 50 FPS
John Hancock and company
Unfortunately, it's a tad more complicated. In this case, the "error" was reported by a consumer, and then the "erroneous price" was confirmed to the consumer as being valid. Furthermore, the description that went along with the supposedly incorrect price provided an approximately correct advertisement of the savings they could expect. I'm not sure if the end results change any, but there is certainly some evidence that the error was really intentional.
Also, remember that an advertised price does not constitute an offer.
This is true, but what I'd like to find out from any lawyers out there is whether or not the VERBAL confirmation of the price constitutes an offer.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Talk to Clarke Howard!!! When I used to live in Atlanta, Clarke Howard was the consumer advocate on one of the local TV stations. He always profiled normal people how had been taken advantage of by some company. He would then talk with the company higher ups and get the person some sort of deal for their problems. This means that
1) you will get something out of it
2) All of Atlanta will know to avoid Best Buy like the plague.
You gotta wonder where Best Buy's management is at with all this. Do they:
1. Briskly rub their hands with glee, chortling "mwa-ha-ha-ha! we got away with another misleading advert, and topped it off with a customer in the clink!"
2. Scratch their heads and wonder about that store manager down yonder.
3. Call their attorneys and ask, "Bernie, do ya got us covered on this one? Yeup, no publicity, just make sure we don't sell those units below cost. And prosecute that damned injun kid."
If I were managing that empire, sure I'd be concerned about losing money, but not on one piece of bad advertising. I'd be firing the idiot who made the mistake, offering apologies and a free computer to the kid that got arrested, firing the store manager, and reassuring my other customers that they won't get arrested for asserting their rights under the law.
Best of luck to Abraham Cherian, and contact the ACLU or somebody to burn Best Buy back!
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
While I think Best Buy has been an utter incompetent at handling this situation, I have no sympathy for the people trying to get something for nothing either.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I used to return 2-5 games a month after copying them at EB... I never got asked a question or raised an eyebrow on the staff... some of them knew my name even...
That's crazy, then why don't they just advertise everything as free in the flyer, then when you get to the store say that, oh yeah there's a 'stocking fee' or some such nonsense? Why, because it is illegal! The printed price is not an offer but it does mean something.
Just yesterday I was in Tower Records and I bought a CD, in the store and ON THE CD the sale price of 9.99 was printed, however when I got to the register, they charged it to me as 12.99! I was like what's going on here? They said that they sale had ended or some such nonsence. I know that they as simple button pushers can do nothing about it but it would be nice to have 3 more dollars.
This best buy thing is the same deal, since they offered the price on their WEB SITE and the web site is supposed to be the same as the actual store, aka one price honored at the web site ( when these people preordered it) should be the same price as for the people IN THE STORE!!! BB should just cough up the cards to the people that ordered them from the web site.
My roommate bought a GeForce 3 from CompUSA along with a support contract for like $10. The contract entitled him to upgrade to the GeForce 4 for free when it was released.
From what I understand, once you swap cards you have the opportunity to sign up for another support contract.
Oh, and CompUSA hasn't given the people I know who have done this any grief whatsoever.
Several states, counties, and municipalities have item-pricing laws that give consumers certain rights when the price charged doesn't match the price displayed. In Michigan, for example, "the seller must give you: (1) the difference between the amount charged and the affixed price, plus (2) additional compensation of ten times the difference, with a minimum of $1.00 and a maximum of $5.00 for each different item for which you are overcharged or be subject to a lawsuit. If the seller refuses your request, you may bring a lawsuit to recover actual damages or $250.00, whichever is greater, and reasonable attorney fees not to exceed $300.00. Similar protections can be found in Albany County, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Similarly, the finality of a sales contract varies from place to place. Certain transactions are subject to a "buyer's remorse" period during which the buyer can return the item for a refund. Most auto sales are subject to this protection, for example.
Bottom line: as usual, if lawyers get involved, the situation gets complicated.
-- We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of other people. La Rochefoucauld
In the "Worse than Fry's" contest.
Combine this with their backing of access controlled "silver disks with music" (to use Phillip's term), and we have a new Evil Retailer(tm).
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
What if the typo was made in their centralized mainframe system? Then the wrong price is downloaded to their stores, printers and web site?
Read up on everything Steve has written. BestBuy apparently changed their TOS after they changed the price.
:)
Whether its legal or not, they covered their asses, and I hope someone fucks them for it.
Some time ago IBM also priced some Thinkpads at $100. They later sent an e-mail to each buyer saying they wouldn't deliver. Nothing happened back them.
People who never paid for this "special" pre-order don't have the same rights; they can't force BestBuy to honor the mistake (legally speaking).
Ah yes, the early 90's the glory days of computer shopper. That once was a great magazine/catalog. I remember when it was once 2 inches thick, full of phone book like pages with ads upon ads of obscure little tech companies. I found some great bargans in that magazine.
But alas, I watched as it became slimmer and slimmer each month until it eventually shrivled into a clone of all the other computer magazines out there. Damn you ZD.
It seems that you have a problem with the moderation system itself. Punishing moderators for using functions that were clearly designed to be in the system seems a bit harsh. When I moderate, I probably moderate comments down less than 10% of the time, but sometimes there are trolls that clearly need to be removed, in order to have a semi-intellectual /. experience. (Yes, yes, insert clever "oxymoron" joke here.) Only by using this functionality can the community properly keep trolls in check and the discussion on track. Maybe you long for the days of literary porn and character defamation - I do not.
By the way, how do you guys think the GREAT (Hopefully) Slashdot Blackout is going? I can't say that I've noticed any difference. Have you?
...but there is no binding contract. You can't make a contract with the world.
I bought a HP LaserJet 1200se printer about 4 months ago from a BB in Elk Grove California (in a popular area called Laguna). Anyhow, the staff came up to me and asked me if I needed any help and I told them I saw the HP listed on their site for $429. They helped me find the printer. They even gave me two 500 sheets of LaserJet paper for free! I also purchased a 3-year warranty. Basically what I'm saying is you *can't* say every Best Buy is bad, because I shopped at one that was quite the opposite. I think the receipt you received with "$129.99" was a glitch, instead of the "$329.99". Ecommerce applications are notorious for having bugs.
grep >= ! == $your
This sounds like the kind of thing you usually hear on his show. The local number is (404) 872-0750. I'm sure he'd especially love to hear it straight from the horse's mouth (as opposed to talking to the manager, who is at the other end of the horse).
I would soooooo be contacting Clark Howard. I live in Atlanta as well and have had some bad Best Buy experiences, but none even close to this. Clark is sort of a putz, but he's a huge consumer advocate and can probably get Best Buy by the nuts on this one....
Out of curiosity, the linked article seems to think (on the basis of no evidence they mention) that your ethnicity played a role on this. You don't mention any such thing here. Any idea where that insinuation came from?
Anyway, while I know there are two sides to every story, you seem like a class act and it sounds like you were really treated shabbily. I wouldn't blame you if you sued the pants off Best Buy.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
This is what the ad said:
"VisionTek GeForce4 Ti4600 for Special Pre-Order
Price of $129.00..the savings is a $200.00 Value"
Does that sound like a typo to you? Typo's don't usually go back and restate that you are saving the precise amount after doing typo math. If it was a typo wouldn't the savings value be something different?
That's not a typo., It's an error somewhere else. Whether the error was in the management of giving this card away cheap, communication of how cheap to sell it, or what was to be sold etc, it just doesn't look like typo results to me.
This is my sig. The post is over.
I think that one store arresting the guy just made a lot of people bitter. It really is just starting to sound like it was a stupid, stupid mistake that went too far.
Northlake Ga (Store #513)
4145 Lavista Rd northlake Square
Tucker, GA 30084
Phone: 770-939-7660
Hours: Mon-Sat 10:00am-9:00pm
Sun 11:00am-6:00pm
Those of us whom weren't affected can speak our voice directly! yay!
A few years ago I ordered a GeForce 2 card from some online outfit in California (I'm in Austin, Tx) on my Amex card. The video card arrives and dosent function correctly so I return it and ask for a refund. At this time I'm told that the market price of the card has dropped during the week and they would ONLY be refunding me what the card current sells for. I'm livid at this point and waste my time trying to explain to them they are ripping me off, all to no avail.
My next call is to Amex where I explain my story in full. Amex was NOT amused and promptly called the company in question and explained to them they WOULD be refund the entire purchase cost.
Moral of the story: Get an evil company like Amex on YOUR side and the little evil people of the world shit their pants. Amex rocks.
I've been around people with Craftsman tools that broke and who were going to throw them away.
I'd say "Hey, don't throw that out. It's got a lifetime warranty. Just walk into Sears with it and they'll give you a new one. No receipt needed."
They'd be like "I don't have the time. I'll just replace it with a Snap-On when the man comes around."
I'd then take the broken tool, toss it in the trunk and then the next time I went to Sears I'd take it to hardware and have it replaced.
I've gotten a 1/2 inch ratchet, 2 adjustable wrenches and numerous box-end wrenches and sockets and screwdrivers this way.
About a month ago I was in a Best Buy, browsing the XBox games section. I remembered I needed another controller so I grabbed one off the shelf. I noticed a few new titles when one of the patrons purusing the section wanted to get my feedback on the Xbox. I told them that it was a nice console but the current amount of games and the pricing of games was high. They asked me if it was worth buying and I told them sure, if you have the funds. But I told them to go buy the console from EB. Basically EB offers a 15-day exchange/refund whereas BB only offers an exchange for the same item, and ONLY if your item proves to be broken.
grep >= ! == $your
Because Best Buy owns Musicland, they support the CBDTPA.
Another reason to avoid shopping there.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
Who can get the largest search result out of bestbuy.com?
I ended up finding a price of $40 for a 4-port hub/switch that looked pretty quality. They were out of stock on that one, so I found a $60 version that had some electronics I didn't need, but I was ready to buy. I call over the sales guy. The exchange goes like this:
Me: I'm looking for a hub to use in my dorm room because my network jack is broken. Do you have any of these in the back (I point to the shelf label)? I'm also considering this other one, but don't want to have to pay if I don't need to.
The Sales Guy: Well it doesn't matter if you buy the more expensive one- you're just going to return it anyway once your jack is fixed.
I have not shopped at Best Buy since.
BTW, I won't shop at Circut City either because they ripped me off a few years ago when I bought a Stealth II Graphics Card that didn't work with my motherboard and charged me a 15% restocking fee when I returned it. But I digress...
This is not exactly 'on topic', but recently our
credit card was stolen, and the thief had a real
field day, going into the same Best Buy repeatedly
and buying things.
This in spite of the fact that the signature
strip on the back of the card has:
ASK FOR I.D.!!
written on it in big red letters instead of a
signature.
another great BB idea.
DivX
Maybe a little O/T, but everyone please notice that the police in this instance behaved completely properly throughout the situation, to the point of empathizing with this gentleman.
With the cops, when they fsck up, everyone's on their back. Nobody notices when the system works, and it appears to be working well here.
As for Best Buy, get a good lawyer who'll work for a split of the rewards for such harrassing behavior, and drain them dry.
Make sure you get your GeForce4 out of it, too. Make that manager hand it to you himself.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
Best Buy not only gave a verbal confirmation of the price, they accepted the order and CHARGED IT to the credit card. IANAL, but I can't imagine any twist to law where this _wasn't_ a valid contract. Generally, a sales contract is made when one party makes an offer to buy or sell at a certain price and the other accepts. More generally, contracts are made when there is "a meeting of minds". The advertising wasn't a valid offer (too many ways advertising can get screwed up, OTOH if there are a lot of such "errors" the state AG should conclude that they weren't errors and prosecute for bait-and-switch). The verbal confirmation of price was an offer, although it might not be possible to prove it really happened. But all that doesn't matter, because if the seller didn't make an offer, then placing the order for such and such at $129 was an offer by the _buyer_, and the seller accepted it by taking the order and the money. About the only way out of that is to claim that it is impossible to fulfill the order due to circumstances beyond your control (you don't have stock, and can't get it), and pretty clearly this isn't the case when stores all over the country have the item...
;-)
So what is BB's real defense here? Maybe, "there couldn't have been a meeting of minds because we are mindless"?
Just a little thing for us Canadians to remember. Best Buy bought Future Shop last August (http://www.thestandard.com/wire/0,2231,23724,00.h tml)c 3516.html).
and completed the deal in November (http://www.newswire.ca/releases/November2001/05/
Read the report.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
The lifetime warranty only applies to hand tools, non-powered tools like wrenches and screwdrivers. The Craftsman power drills, saws, sanders, etc. all have a limited warranty- don't remember how long but it's pretty standard.
Of course, I don't abuse my power tools, but break enough screwdrivers to make buying at Sears worthwhile.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
I buy often at Best Buy. Why? Because the people working the floor there, at least at the local one, don't spew lines of bullshit at me when I buy computer-related things.
Like when I bought my laptop. I pointed out my distaste for Win XP. The guy noted it'd have to be custom-ordered to get something else on it, and at the least, XP included a bit better security than, say, 98. Which indeed it does. He didn't go on a long spew about the virtues of Microsoft, he didn't confuse Ram and CPU, and he didn't do any of the countless things I've seen done by people in Circuit City, Boscov's, and elsewhere.
Above all, you know, I got a damned good price on it.
At any rate, wtf is the problem here? Are people stupid? Do they think a GF4 of that quality is going to sell for that low? My freakin' MX cost more than that.
Do people not realize mistakes get made? Do people not realize when looking at a price that's too good to be true, it usually is?
Do people not read the fscking lines that say, "Not responsible for typos, etc., rights to cancel orders, etc."?
Jesus H. Christ.
Dont complain until you've been disabled by this testicular bad experience involving a digital camera. This poor sod has been making a worldwide search for his balls since 1997 AD. http://www.angelfire.com/il/AteMyBalls/bestbuy.htm l
This is not ANYWHERE NEAR false advertising. False advertising is when you try to take someone's money and scam them. As far as I understand, Best Buy promptly returned the customers' money, and made no attempt to keep it. The only thing they did is cancel a few people's orders. As far as I know, that is perfectly legal. For example, many web shops or mail order places will not honor orders when they are out of stock. I haven't seen anyone bitch and moan about that, so why is everyone bitching and moaning about this??
Grow up, people.
Something I remember from my law school days: an advertisement is just an "offer to sell" it does not create any sort of legally binding obligation at all. Get over it. Merchants make errors all the time. Now, if they want to avoid bad publicity, they usually honor it, but that's a business decision. There are no "laws" being broken and they have not breached any sort of contract.
Jesus. What a bunch of bitching about nothing.
Best Buy does not make much money on video cards at all. Those video cards wholesale very close to the retail amount. If they had shipped 2000 cards at even a $200 loss, we are talking about $400000. I know though that they don't even make that much on those cards.
I have to agree though that they should have shipped those cards to the customers, at least at a discount so they wouldn't have lost as much money, but could have at least kept most of the buyers happy.
Bah. Of course it was a typo. It says the card is listed at $139, for a savings of $200. Show me where in heck you see a geforce4-ti4600 listed for $339? it would be more like $250-300 savings if this were legit. It was a mistake made by best buy, they corrected it.. and now a whole bunch of dirty criminals are finding screen shots of the mistake and trying to commit fraud with it. It is BS. Its a good card, if you can't afford to buy it, then don't. But quit trying to cheat your way into getting a cheaper one.
A disclaimer is a statement of the rights and reponsibilities the company believes it has & doesn't have. It is not a statement of law. Just because a person or institution claims they have a right to do something doesn't mean they have the right to do it. I could "reserve the right" to kill anyone who steps on my property on sight, but I'm still a murderer liable to be punished if I actually do it.
In pretty much all states there are laws against false advertising. Exceptions have been made for "obvious mistakes", but as has been shown by other info here, Best Buy was not commiting an error, but trying to backtrack on a special offer that got a little too much attention. It appears they probably did mean to honor this deal, but had changed their minds when it got too pricey for them.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
When you call, say, Best Buy.com's customer service number, you're talking to employees of Best Buy, right?
*WRONG*!!! You're calling employees of a contracted customer service provider. These people are sitting in a tiny cubicle in a call center in Phoenix, Arizona or Gary, Indiana and provide sales and customer service for several different companies. They are provided with scripts and access to the advertising copy and price database for each company they're supporting. If you ask them a question about a price on the advertising copy, guess what they do -- they read it right off the web site right back at you! At least, until somebody notices that hey, we're getting a lot of inquiries about this product, it's time to push this inquiry upstream to actual Best Buy employees.
Now, of course this is shitty customer service. The fact that it is standard industry practice doesn't make it any less shitty. Frankly, I do not buy from Best Buy, and in fact have a one-sentence statement on my web site saying, "Shopping at Worst Buy is the worst thing you can do". But the point is that an employee of a 3rd party contract firm reading mistaken advertising copy back to you does not make the mistaken advertising copy any less mistaken.
And yes, if I'm going by the nearby Krispy Kreme and see them advertising a dozen donuts for 12 cents, I'll go in and ask them about it. If they sell me the donuts for 12 cents, great. If they say, "Whoops! Bad sign!" and hurriedly rush out and change it to say "$1.20", I'd happily pay $1.20 for a dozen Krispy Kremes (of course, the real price is more like $6 for a dozen of those sinful but utterly delicious things, but that's another story :-( ).
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Contact Best Buy NOW
and let them know what you think of them. Tell them you read it on
Years ago, I sent 10 letters to every address I could find at Intuit to complain about their crappy software and customer service, 6 months later I received a handwritten letter of apology and a free copy of the software. I bet many people got their ass whipped for not giving a shit before it got the the Prez of Customer Service...
there's no place like ~
Does anybody remember the uproar that occurred a few years ago with buy.com? They "accidentally" posted an incorrect price for 21" monitors. They refused to honor the price and were taken to court. They had to pay everyone's money back plus $20 - 50 a piece. Although I got money out of the deal, I was pretty pissed.
I have been screwed by these folks, but never as badly as this fellow. But just to add to the friendly Best-Buy bashing going on, here's the short version of my worst Best Buy experience:
1. Purchased open-box Viewsonic PF700 at a $150 savings. Lovely monitor, and there was a big sticker on the box that says Best Buy will uphold the manufacturer's warranty since the box was open.
2. 3 months later, monitor fails. Looks really awful-- blurry, hand-sized dark splotches, distortion.
3. Take monitor to Best Buy for warranty service/replacement-- am asked if I degaussed the monitor. I say "yes, several times" but am ignored. Monitor is degaussed in my presence once with degauss button (no help) and once with external degaussing tool. (also no help-- big surprise)
4. Best Buy tells me they don't service these monitors, and to go pick out a replacement.
5. I go to monitor section, but apparently BB does not carry this monitor anymore. In fact, they don't carry ANY MONITORS at this time that meet the PF790's dot pitch/resolution/refresh rate specs. NONE.
6. I ask for a refund.
7. Denied. Store credit only.
8. I email corporate and ask for a refund.
9. Denied.
10. Repeat steps 8 and 9 several times.
11. Took home KDS monitor that is best equivalent. Now I'm out the price of the monitor and have an inferior product thanks to the wonderful customer service of best buy.
At the time, I was in college and could not afford a lawsuit. I do not shop their anymore-- but I do hope that another person screwed by their awful service sues them and wins.
It's interesting you bring this story up!
I had a situation happen to me some years back that's similar. When the v.90 56K modems were brand new, I went to the local Best Buy store and purchased a Zoom internal.
After I got home and opened it (shrink-wrapped and all), I found a no-name brand 2400 baud internal modem in the box.
I immediately went back to the store and complained to customer service. Of course, everyone acted like I was making it up, trying to scam them out of a new modem. Finally, the store manager agreed to give me another modem - but I was treated like a criminal the whole time. Even as I walked out the door, everyone behind the counter was glaring at me and whispering things to each other.
I called corporate HQ and complained about my situation and treatment, but the lady on the phone actually laughed at me - and obviously blew me off.
At least I got a little satisfaction eventually, because not too long after this happened to me, that store got shut down by corporate. (It was a store located in Florissant, Missouri - and it made the national news when they became the subject of a fraud investigation. Turns out almost all the employees were working together to steal products from the store over a 1 year + period of time. They had to fire everyone and bring in new employees from corporate to run the place for a while, until it was shut down.)
Do a Google search. Type in Best Buy Ate my Balls. Best Buy actually threatened him in his guestbook. This poor guy has been seriously stressed out & BALLESS since 1997 and Anglefire have taken down his homepage but ya can still get it off Google. Or try typing the url in on the WAYBACK machine...Cheers GeriatricGeek
I thought the law said that they can only charge your credit card when the item is shipped... I may be remembering incorrectly, but if it's true, it seems that they are charging the cards before shipping...
You need a civil suit against Best Buy, and you might be able to file charges against the manager.
A couple of years ago a similar thing happned at United Airlines.
4 0. html
Basically, a technical glitch in the United Airlines internet reservation system is reported to have allowed 120 customers to obtain round-trip tickets between Chicago and Bombay for between USD$139 and USD$179. The tickets would usually have cost more than USD$999.
After bitching about it for a while, United gave in to customer demands. That's what I call a good fair company!
http://news.airwise.com/stories/2001/08/9985673
IOException - Can't Speak
As a resident of the Atlanta, GA metro area, I used to frequent the Best Buy stores quite a bit. After they lied (on multiple points) to me about what was covered on an extended warrantee, then not covering what they 'verbally' told me, I stopped doing business with them. I was able to recover some of my money - around $250. I still lost about $90 in the deal. I never persued it any further. I should have read the fine print and ignored the sales rep, who was probably purposefully misinformed. However, knowing the stores in the area, this does not surprise me at all.
Maybe I will go up to that Best Buy and ask them about this one! I'd love to get their response and post a follow-up.
rhadc
Of course nothing is ever sure in the court system, but juries are generally sympathetic to cases of consumers suing big corperations for being assholes.
This is a common misconception about cases like this. From what you read and hear, it does seem like you say, but the real fact is that it's exactly the opposite at the appellate level and all those cases you hear of people suing for huge damages from corporations get tossed out or massively reduced during the appeal. It's actually pretty harse and unfair, and we never hear about it because the cases aren't news anymore when it happens!
Go here to send a note to Best Buy .com.
Go here to send a note to Best Buy stores.
Adding a link or a sample of the stories told here might not be a bad idea.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
"Every time goods are bought and sold, a sales contract is created: the buyer agrees to pay, and the seller agrees to accept, a certain price in exchange for a certain item or number of items." ...
t m
"Implied warranties come in two general types: merchantability and fitness. An implied warranty of merchantability is an unwritten and unspoken guarantee to the buyer that goods purchased conform to ordinary standards of care and that they are of the same average grade, quality, and value as similar goods sold under similar circumstances. In other words, merchantable goods are goods fit for the ordinary purposes for which they are to be used. "
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to apply to software.
See:
http://www.wld.com/conbus/weal/wimpwarr.h
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
Rep's first name is [XXXXX]'ed out. Otherwise, this is untouched;
----------
Thank you for contacting Best Buy about this store shopping experience. I'm
[XXXX] with Customer Care.
We understand that hearing a statement like this can be difficult.
To accurately respond to your e-mail, we have forwarded your message to the
Best Buy Consumer Relations department. Our Consumer Relations
Representatives are specially trained to resolve any questions or concerns
you may have about shopping at a Best Buy retail store along with many of
the services Best Buy offers. You may expect to receive a response from your
Consumer Relations Representative shortly.
Thank you for sharing your comments with Best Buy. Please do not hesitate to
contact us with additional questions or concerns.
Best wishes from Best Buy,
[xxxx] and the Customer Care Team
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Let the Buyer Beware. The law states that the buyer makes an offer to buy a product, and the seller then has the right to accept or refuse that offer. When the seller says "I'll sell this item for $100" and the buyer says "Yes". The contract is only half completed. The buyer at this point has made an offer to purchase the item for $100 and the seller still has to accept that offer. Once the seller accepts the buyer's offer, then the contract is completed.
I've found Circuit City to be worse, much worse. They've refused to accept perfectly good checks, take back merchandise under warranty, and been out of stock. I'm trying to think of other things, but can't off-hand. A Best Buy just opened here, and I had a better experience.
I'd be willing to bet that the spelling and grammatical errors in the original post were intentional. It's possible - easy, actually - to determine patterns in speech and writing, and to identify people based on these patterns... Not as damning as a fingerprint, but pretty close; people have been tried and convicted based on this sort of forensic analysis. If it's strong enough evidence to send someone to jail, it's strong enough evidence to get someone fired.
If I were going to post something that my boss wasn't going to be happy about, you can bet I'd mask my writing style as well.
This reminds me of a few years ago when Buy.com had the 19" Hitachi montitors posted for $164.50 and thousands of people ordered, but they only shipped to a couple hundred people. I never got mine, but someone filed a class action lawsuit against them and anyone that ordered a monitor was automatically added to it. Then like 3 years later I received for a check for like ~$40.00
, 00 . tml
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,17803
I made Best Buy honor a price that rang up at $50 more at the register than the item (a portable MP3 player) was clearly and plainly marked on the store's shelves. They immediately pulled all remaining quantity of this item off the shelf along with the bigger-than-dallas price tag, tossed them into a basket and carried them off to the service desk area, never to be seen again. The sales drone and the store manager were both pissed off at me for discovering their screw-up, but I did leave the store with my happily purchased (for $49 instead of $99) new MP3 player. They took down my name, but have not retaliated against me in any way, in fact I've returned to the store on many occasions and have bought several hundred dollars worth of other merchandise from them since then.... have never seen that particular model of MP3 player on their shelves again however :-)
Not too long ago, Dell wrongfully advertised their Dimension 8100 1.5 Ghz system in a magazine at about half the price that it was really worth... (some 1250 euros instead of 2500 euros). Because they advertised at that price, they are obliged to sell at that price... i'm posting from one now. After about 2 or 3 days, they refused to sell more, and they called in a law that prohibits them to sell with a loss... they cannot sell at a price lower than what it costs them to make it. I still got mine though ;-)
The store manager actually mislead the police and had the guy arrested claiming his online receipt was false. This is an absolute outrage. On top of this he got done for criminal trespass for being in a store! This is sickening. I hope this guy get's a good lawyer and sues the store and the manager. How low can a company sink?
643 Comments. Nice blackout, fucktards!
"You're just scared like a little white pussy. I'll fuck you till you love me, you faggot!"
If they do what this store did, there would be an excellent case against the store for wrongful imprisonment - courts (and juries) tend to award huge damages for that - tens of thousands of dollars and more.
The wrongful imprisonment here appears to be present in two places - it looks like the store held the guy for a while, and it looks like they pressured the cops to take him downtown (you can still sue the store for this even though it's not the store doing it, if they pressured the cops to do it)
IANALY,TINLA
I worked in a BB as a third-party vendor rep.
I couldn't believe it. People would drive 4,5,6 hours to this BB, wide-eyed and excited, all ready to buy their first computer. Most of these customers knew absolutely nothing about PCs, only that "BB was the place to get one."
Now, in an utopian society, knowledgable experts would be on hand to get them the best computer for their needs.
Then again, we're talking about BB.
BB sales reps and myself were repeatedly instructed to try and sell the most expensive models available. Plus, if you weren't able to tack on the extra hundreds of dollars from the service plan on top of every PC sale, you weren't trying hard enough. The worst part was the bullfertilizer some manager told me to tell the customers about the peripherals. Instead of selling a USB cable that cost 10 bucks everywhere else, the customers should buy the new, gold-plated USB cable that was 40 bucks instead. Seems that the gold plating on the cable helped boost data transfer rates.
I just don't get it. BB is in a position that if they provided good information and helped their customers make intelligent decisions, they'd have huge market share and the respect of a lot of people. But instead, $$ and squeezing the last buck out of every computer newbie is the order of the day. How sad!
No, no, no. This is not a sig.
I already said that under certain circumstances they have to take the item back, meaning exactly this.
If it's not fit for sale or up to standard or sold under false preteses, they must take the item back.
This is NOT the kind of return I meant. A great many people think they have some legal right to return anything for any reason if it's unopened or otherwise recently purchased, just because they don't like it, or the color doesn't match, or whatever. That's what I was talking about.
Somebody mod #3404197 up? It will cut a lot of the wasted commentary.
Imagine if I'm setting up a web site for a car dealership and I accidently put down "$147.50" instead of "$14,750.00" for a brand new car. Yes, but if I walk in and hand you $147.50 for the new Ford Escort AND YOU TAKE IT, you just made a sale. I made an offer, and you accepted it. That's all that is needed to create a contract. Hand me the keys or you're in breach...
Since BB were taking the orders, and charging the credit cards in many cases, same principle.
Now, I wouldn't expect to actually get the car unless the business owner himself took the money and signed a receipt, because $147.50 is so low for a new car that it's obviously an error and not a proper "exchange of consideration", and the car dealer could reasonably claim that a salesman who made that deal exceeded his authority. However, considering the deep discounts we often see in web and mail order stores, $129 for a $329 or $400 card is not clearly an error or lack of consideration, and Best Buy would have a hell of a job claiming that their sales people weren't authorized to sell the card at this price after their computers accepted the order and billed the credit card. The only way they could get away with this is if people don't find it worthwhile taking them to court. And that doesn't work when enough people join the class action suit.
Although it might be more fun for each of those several thousand people to go into small claims court instead, forcing bestbuy.com to send a representative to each and every hearing...
Some posts have claimed that BB has made pricing "errors" like this in their printed and online catalogs quite often. That would make a case that the "errors" are indeed intentional, and also subject BB to prosecution for bait and switch.
Disclaimer: IANAL, etc.
Store gives you a much higher price on that item, when you arrive there.
This is not a missing digit or misplaced decimal point, but is an intentional act. The point of multiple or punitive damages is to discourage future acts of a similar nature.
Usually there is no insurance available for a store committing fraud.
Fight Spammers!
Correct.
An ad constitutes a solicitation for offers.
An order is an offer.
Charging (or delivery, btw) of the goods constitues acceptance of that offer.
I'm running out of places to shop. I haven't shopped at Circuit City since the DivX fiasco. It wasn't just because of the fact that it was a horrible product, but because their salespeople actually flat-out lied to me about the product. Now, after this bullshit that Best Buy is pulling, I won't shop there either. Not unless they honor the price they advertised and pay some restitution to the guy they had arrested. Guess I'll have to be shopping online only now. There aren't any other similar stores in my city, so I don't have much choice.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
If the police now agree that he not only commited no crime, but that the manager shouldn't have called them in to arrest him for fraud, then when was the manager arrested for making a false police report and false arrest? (The manager's detainment of the individual, not the police taking custody.)
Talk is cheap. If they really think the manager was totally out of line, they should arrest the asshole to send a clear message to the other managers in town that detaining a shoplifter is one thing, detaining someone asking difficult questions is an entirely different thing.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I was curious about this so I decided to call Best Buy.
First I called 1-888-BESTBUY and connected to customer relations. I told her I have a news mailing list and was interested in a comment with regards to this. I asked her about the incident and she said she didn't know anything. She suggested I call the store or corporate headquarters's PR department.
I called corporate headquarters, 952-947-2000. They closed at 5PM CDT.
I called the store at 770-939-7660 and connected to customer service. I mentioned my mailing list and the arrest and she asked if I wanted background information and I said yes. She came back in a minute and told me that she couldn't comment and that I'd have to call corporate PR.
With the store directing people to corporate PR, and customer relations not knowing anything, I guess people interested in writing news items about this will have to wait until tomorrow morning to get a response from Best Buy's corporate PR department.
Have they already decided not to press forward with fraud/trespass charges? I guess I'll find out tomorrow.
I dunno about you but I am furious about this. These bast#rds actually changed their charge from fraud or trespass after the fact. So they have him arrested telling the cops he has a fraudulent receipt, then they later have the charge changed to trespass claiming he refused to leave, which is a transparent fabrication.
Buy from best buy and have them throw a series of trumped up charges at you. God I hope this guy gets a good lawyer and sues them for false arrest. Damn, I'm FURIOUS at this, the dirty SOBs, I hope they arrest the damned store manager for perjury and perverting the course of justice.
why is the original post mentioning the fellow's race? seems entirely beside the point to me.
btw, best buy is a horrible chain; it has been that way for years. doesn't everyone know that by now? just shop somewhere else. you might just as well whine about how crappy GM cars are... or you could just shut up and go buy a honda.
A big problem with the web is that a company can make a quick change of a web page, and claim it was that way all along. I've seen this happen before- a web special being offered, which then mysteriously disappears. Or a change in some fine print, a cutomer agreement, a license, terms of service, etc.
I'm not sure what we can do to protect ourselves against this. Saving web pages? Having third parties (like Alexa) keep archives of corporate sites? It's an interesting problem.
I know because I got a check as part of the class-action settlement. Still have the stub somewhere...it was for like $50, but it was an actual check, not 'store credit' or 'Buy.com dollars' or anything like that. Didn't get the monitor, tho, and it took over two years for the suit to be settled. But they did get sued, did settle, and had to pay out money to make it right. Sometimes going to court is the right thing to do.
I'll tell you what the 'effect' is! It's pissing me off!
I've also had my problems with Best Buy, and I have decided never to do business with them again. Luckily, my problem was small, but the way it was handled removed any confidence I have that Best Buy can handle legitimate customer service issues.
I bought a simple and cheap ($19.95) home layout CAD program. My computer was listed as meeting the requirements of the program. The program would not run on my computer. I attempted to exchange the program for a different (and more expensive, with me paying the difference) program. The Best Buy employees told me that software can only be exchanged for a new copy of the same program. I explained again that the program was defective (either it was actually defective, or the system requirements on the packaging were defective) and that it would not work on my computer.
To make a long story shorter, I never received a satisfactory solution. I asked to talk to the manager, but there was "no manager in the store", I wrote to customer service, but twice received canned replies that didn't address the problem. I finally gave up because the amount was so small.
The bottom line: I lost $20, Best Buy lost a lot more. Since my problems with them I've bought thousands of dollars worth of merchandise that Best Buys sells. They didn't even enter into consideration as a vendor. I won't get burnt twice by them.
They put a 200$ motherboard up for 21 bucks on monday.
Dual P3 with built in RAID.
I jumped on it, and got one. After I ordered, the price was put back up to 229.00. Luckily, the good people at Insight held up their end of it, and shipped the board. These people will be getting a LOT more business from me. This is the kind of customer service that really shows they value me, even when I get the better of them. Goodbye Best Buy, Hello Insight!
-------------------------------------------------
Rod Hill, Store Manager for Best Buy... informed police that Abraham Cherian, an Indian American, was trying to rip off the store...
Indian American? What race was the store manager? Or do we not need to know that for some reason?
Now, some have claimed that Best Buy did this on purpose in order to get more people to shop there. This is indeed an illegal bait and switch, but only if you can show that they did it intentionally. Hope this clears things up.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Just made a petition to boycott Best Buy. Sign it here and let them know this is not acceptable!
http://www.petitiononline.com/BBBC/petition.html
Basically, it is impossible to legislate when lying "should" be illegal. I would rather have people be forced to be more skeptical, than limit speech.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
You'll be able to get the cards for $29 !
$100 profit for best buy, per awkward customer !
Nice one, Best Buy !
Opposite situation: buyer misinterprets the true features of the product and purchases it for more than he would have spent had he been informed. Sure, the store may have a return policy, but I don't believe it is required to. I have definitely bought new products "as is" (RAM, e.g.). AFAIK, Best Buy doesn't require its customers to give it a product-back guarantee or anything, so assuming the customers didn't decide out of the goodness of their hearts (or to beat out competing customers?) to give the store some kind of warranty, I don't see how Best Buy has a leg to stand on.
Lesson to retailers: precharging is evil. Don't do it. And if you do, be prepared to deal with it when you fuck up.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
It's not a bug, it's a feature. ;)
slashdot!=valid HTML
Best Buy has entered into a binding contract to sell the cards at the advertised price, and if they don't want to honor it, the people affected should take them to court (or contact their local Attorney General's office, which is what they appear to be doing).
Well, crucial.com states several times when purchasing memory that it is NOT a binding contract. I'm sure most web retailers have it in their TOS that a purchase is not a contract until it's approved or something like that - so they can't be liable in situations like this.
When I got home, I checked in the store ads and online, and found that the speaker set and reciever were NOT not supposed to be sold together, and that I should have paid double for what I got in total.
I wonder how Best Buy stays in business when the employees are complete morons like I dealt with. I'm not saying ALL Best Buy employees are morons, but it seems like quite a few don't really care about anything except selling the extended warranty from what I've experienced, and what I've heard from others.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
The store manager, Rod Hill, committed a malicious
act of fraud against the State of Georgia, when he knowingly lied to the police.
Furthermore, because the victim was a minority, Rod Hill committed a hate crime, because he lied to police in order to cause direct harm to the victim.
Call for the arrest and prosecution of one Rod Hill. Forget Best Buy -- they made an honest mistake. Send Rod Hill to the penetentiary for 25 years to life for his racist hate crimes, if you want justice.
At any rate, if you think of their name not in terms of "This is the Best Buy" but rather "You'd Best Buy", you start to get a clearer picture of their mission.
Perhaps this is off the topic of Best Buy... but it deals with corporate shenanigans nevertheless.
Two years ago, when I had AOL, I subscribed under the Bring Your Own Access $10/mo. plan. When I received one of the very last bills from them, my statement reflected a change that I did not want.... I had been moved to the $10/5hrs/month plan. My original plan was unlimited, the new only allowed for 5 hours of usage a month. You can probably see where this is leading.
The total for the previous month came to a whopping $160, which I knew must be a mistake. Hoping to clear it up with AOL, I called and explained the situation.
Unfortunately, they didn't think of it as a problem.
I talked to three regular-level customer support reps, plus a supervisor, all with the same result... being stuck paying $160 for a change that I had not initiated.
AOL persistently insisted that I had changed the information myself, and their fraud department refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing.
Frustrated, I called my credit card company and explained the situation... I was not going to let AOL essentially steal $150 from me ($160 - $10 = $150.)
To my avail, the credit card company promptly shut down my old card/account plus blocked any attempts for AOL to charge against it. They then established a new card/account, and finally prohibited AOL from charging to the new in the case that they obtained my new information!
Say what you want about me having AOL at the time, but I stress two things: first, it was not my primary ISP. Second, more importantly, they tried to screw me. With the help of my bank, I fought back.
I just bought a Playstation 2 from Best Buy, and when i got it all set up i found that it was not only defective, it was also USED. There was a game stuck inside the unit!! I paid full price for this and was completely outraged. When i went back to return it, the guy says "What game was stuck in it?" Puzzled, i answered, "Tony Hawk 3." He yells to the other employee, "Hey, so-and-so, is this yours or mine?" The two spent the next few minutes arguing over whose game it was, which shows that the employees are sitting around playing on the Playstations then selling them as new!! F*ck Best Buy.
My DDR Ram story
Here is my story. I was putting off getting a couple sticks of DDR RAM until after the MPX motherboards were ready to ship. Prices started to skyrocket - thinking they would come down again I waited another week. That next week, Best Buy ran an add for 256 stick of crucial DDR RAM for $25 (after $10 rebate on one) when the market was closer to $50. I went to the store and sure enough, it was stripped clean. On-line, however, it showed in stock so I picked up some for in-store pickup.
Order Date: Dec 10, 2001
In-store Pick-up Items:
Crucial Technologies 256MB PC2 --- 2 $34.99 $69.
It looked good. No problems. The store was near by, so I stopped in and checked. We should have another shipment any day now.... Then the email...
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001
From: onlinestore@bestbuy.com
To: xxx
Subject: BestBuy.com Order Cancellation Notice
Dear (sucker-my-name-here),
Thank you for shopping at BestBuy.com.
One or more of the items that you've recently ordered have cancelled. Please take a moment
to contact our Customer Care representatives by replying to this e-mail or by calling us
toll-free at 1-888-BEST BUY (1-888-237-8289) for further assistance.
I called the customer service people, and they said that if the item was offered again, they would honor the price. Early January, I saw the RAM was listed on the website again. I called the CS department before I ordered and asked for the details. They said if the item was exactly the same skew number, they would honor the price and ship it to me free this time. Call back with the order number. I ordered, called with the info, and got the item....
Order Date: Jan 10, 2002
Shipped Items:
Crucial Technology 256MB PC210 --- 2 $89.99 $179.98 Shipped on Jan 11,
2002
As one may guess, getting the credit was less than easy. Turns out after I took shipment they tell me - ah, well the credit is not automatic. OK... They will forward it to another department for review.. Gha! Well, after many phone calls and showing up in person (something about working a few blocks away may help) they relented and gave me the full credit promised. The email was not clear, but eventually the credits came.
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002
From: BestBuy.com Customer Care
Subject: Shipping Credit Applied
Greetings from BestBuy.Com,
This email is regarding the recent order you placed on www.BestBuy.com for
In-Store Pick-up. Because our store did not have the product(s) you ordered
in-stock, we are providing you with free shipping to your home.
Your credit card statement will show that you were charged the price of the
product(s) plus applicable taxes and shipping costs. The billing statement
will also show a credit to your account that reflects the cost of shipping
and handling. There may also be a credit for any applicable tax difference
and difference in the price of the product(s). Your credit card bank will
receive notice of this credit within the next 24-48 hours, however, it may
take up to 2-3 billing cycles for the credit to appear on your billing
statement. If you have questions regarding this credit please contact your
credit card bank for more information.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you and we hope that you
will continue to shop www.BestBuy.com for all of your future entertainment
needs.
It gets worse.... One of my friends ordered for normal delivery. They decided not to give her the credit, but were gracious enough to take the unopened package back and refund all the cost involved. The lameness filter here sucks - but the twists and turns it took to do both were insane.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
When I lived in NYC, I went to both EB and Toys'R'Us to buy a DreamCast when they came out.
Toys'R'Us would sell me one for the declared retail price of USD199 (IIRC), but EB stated that they could only sell one to me for USD229 - a price which included an EB extended warranty. Even better, they argued that this was mandated by Sega, and that it was not possible to buy a DreamCast without it.
Needless to say, I bought the DC from TRU... but went back in to the EB on Broadway (to buy a game that TRU didn't have) and loudly gave the manager a hard time about it, on a packed Saturday afternoon.
This sig left unintentionally blank.
Lots of room for manuvering.. especially anytime the word "resonable" is used. Usually posting a rediculously low price would cause people to rush into your store, then you sell them other things, I know CompUSA was doing this with those 50 packs of blank CD-R media for $9.99 last year, at least they let you buy them for that price when they got you into the store.
What the hell is an "Indian American" and what does it have to do with anything???
a few years ago i bought several monitors from buy.com at an obviously erroneous price. buy.bom refused to honor most of the purchases and yada yada yada ... after 3 years and absolutely no work on my part i got a nice check for a little over $30 from some class-action lawsuit against buy.com.
best buy might be a bunch of chumps but it seems like they were trying to cover their asses without breaking their balls
For the last time.. The agreement you agreed to when you registered for their site clearly explains that they reserve the right to cancel any order for any reason they want. Furthermore it explicity stated that prices are subject to change without notification.
Duh. If it's too good to be true, it's probably not true. Besides.. IT'S A DAMNED VIDEO CARD. If it was life saving surgery, or a flying car, it might be worth getting pissed over. But as long as you got your money back, then it's certainly not worth getting pissed over.
Anyone else upset they didn't catch onto this when it happened? A GeForce 4 card for that much...man I'm bumin' now
Our fellow slashdotter has gone in to all this trouble over creating a petition against BB over this incident and others.
l
Please show your solidarity by signing the petition.
http://www.petitiononline.com/BBBC/petition.htm
Rapid Nirvana
I don't know whether to be sick or thoroughly pissed off. The man ought to be suing for more than 90k over that BS. Just like Cherian should be suing the crap out of them over his abuse at their hands.
I've been following the whole sordid GeForce debacle because a close friend of mine was one of the thousands that they've screwed. The more I see, the more apalled I am at them, and the "Better Business Bureau".
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The comments following the post render legal advice, which may not be correct for all jurisdictions.
Is the post an attorney? Has the bar in affected jurisdictions been able to examine the poster for his qualifications to give this advice?
You forgot the obligatory IANAL.
...when the veracity of the individual comes into question. I know I'd be at least inclined to throw that one out if accused of trying to steal things, i.e. I'm trying to defraud them. At that stage, yes, it's not much good, but there's often times little to salvage at that point.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Is anyom^Hne getting tri^H^Hired of this crap^H^H^H^H over use of a stupid^H^H^H^H^H^H once was funny joke? Damn, give it a rest... it's not *THAT* amusing. Seems like half of the posts and repeated^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H stories these days use it.
I guess Best Buy policy is not to help customers, but rather to mock them.
I design user interfaces for a free network management application,
Last year when the Sopranos second season arrived on DVD I checked it out on Best Buy's website. They ran a special which was basically: purchase season one and season two together for $114..... when I went to see the price of season two alone (I already owned season one), I was astonished to see the price listed as $57. I went to a local store to purchase it at this price but they had it for $79 so I just went home and bought it over the net for $57 and chose the "In store pickup" method of delivery. These guys seem to chronically have trouble with getting things right with there site.
Lets not make assumptions about how much they spend on their Xmas party, based on numbers you get from yahoo.com. /. reader. And do you really think that every person who has heard of this fiasco will boycott Best Buy? Unlikely. I bet you yourself will be buying from them again. I know that if they have the best price on something I'm in the market for, they will get my business at that time.
It's true that the negative exposure they are receiving may cost a small amount of sales.
Best Buy caters more to the average consumer, not the average
It's possible that BBY will lose some value in the market, as negative media tends to affect the market sharply. However, they are currently valued at close to their high point for this year at $75.49 per share. That is a pretty good testament to consumer confidence.
It's sad that those people will most likely win their cases, based on so-called fraud. It's plainly obvious they are only trying to take advantage of a mistake. $129 per is probably less than what Best Buy paid for the cards.
Whatever the case, the bottom line is that people are greedy poop factories and it will be a rather lovely day when as a species we remove ourselves from existence.
NO!!!!!!!!
Don't send him THERE! I don't want to keep getting screwed over by not getting enough pickles or just a yellow dot for mustard, while he's trying to convince me to buy the fries. Why ruin a half-way decent fast food joint with that shithead.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
yes, indeed. You put enormous amounts of energy in, and all you do is produce copious amounts of poop, carbon dioxide, and various other gases of dubious value.
And then you whine, and whine, and whine.
Here's an idea: Why don't you become self-sufficient? Yes that would be lovely, perhaps you could run a tube from your anus (poop dispenser) to your mouth.
I haven't shopped at Worst Buy for about 8 years, since i was falsely accused of stealing from the store.
I'd been shopping for a walkman, spent 20 minutes in the store trying to decipher the display with no luck. There were models out that weren't in stock, no prices, and piles of boxed models with no info at all, and not a salesperson in sight. I walked out the door, only to have some guy follow me across the street and ask me for my ID. He said i looked like a guy who had stolen something in the past month.
The visit before that was about a year before, when it had taken 45 minutes to get them to honor an "instant rebate" that included free CDs (i was buying a CD deck). The sale price wasn't automatically rung up at the register (as the signs had indicated), and i had to go through 2 more checkouts to get full credit back.
Needless to say, i don't shop there any more.
If that isn't bad enough, here in the Twin Cities, they are building a new headquarters building. They lobbied the 'lucky' suburb to evict and tear down a decades-old car dealership in the process. bleah.
They're evil! I'll stick to online shopping - they might also be idiots, but at least i don't have to talk to them.
Here's a snip from BB.com's new TOS (entitled "A Few Words from Our Attorneys")
..."
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"Errors on Our Site
Prices and availability are subject to change without notice. Errors will be corrected where discovered, and Best Buy reserves the right to revoke any stated offer and to correct any errors, inaccuracies or omissions including after an order has been submitted and whether or not the order has been confirmed and your credit card charged. If your credit card has already been charged for the purchase and your order is cancelled, BestBuy.com will issue a credit to your credit card account in the amount of the charge. Individual bank policies will dictate when this amount is credited to your account.
The full TOS can be found here (http://www.bestbuy.com/InfoCenter/Policies/TOSLe
- If we aren't supposed to eat animals, then why are they made out of meat? - Steven Wright
Tomorrow! Maybe they'll arrest me for being too polite as well and I can sue the unholy shit out of them. I'd take the money, open up a non-profit shop next door to them, and slowly grind them into submission.
My own "Best Buy" story is pretty pathetic comparatively... =) They advertised an "Oni" soundtrack CD to be included with the game. After the third visit to the store over a month-long period, and getting yet another smiling salesperson telling me that "Oh yeah, they'll be in next week", I finally realized that I wasn't getting my CD. (I left my number several times, never got 1 call from them)
I get the impression that Best Buy does this kind of deception regularly, and has no qualms about it. Of course, a promotional soundtrack isn't all that big of a deal, I doubt I'd have thought about it again if I hadn't read this.
I use Windows... like a two dollar wh.. why don't I just go ahead and not finish that sentence.
Settling out of court can be OK ... IF you refuse to sign any agreement containing a non-disclosure clause ... and if the amount is sufficient to sting. Remember, they are trying to save their reputation and legal expenses. You should get a portion of that. A BIG portion. This case could easily cost THEM $500,000 if it goes all the way to court.
And definitely do not agree to any change of jurisdiction. Keep it right there in Georgia.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Actually, there's a point. This fellow was not injured in any way. I fact, he's drawing more attention to himself with all the press (which I personally would find even more humiliating). The cops pretty much admit he was wronged by a representative of Best Buy so why doesn't he press charges against the individual? I'll tell you why; because he wouldn't get a dime.
Lawsuits should be reserved for real offences against ones self. It *should not* be like the lottery. Otherwise one day when every one gets sick of frivolous lawsuits it'll be diluted to the point that you'll be a cripple, the lawyer will paint you as a grredy SOB, and you'll lose. Think it can't happen? The motions in congress regarding caps on settlements and "frivolous lawsuits" are a result of this lottery-like mentality.
If it was myself I'd be telling my friends over beers about how I got arrested and not telling the press I was devastated because my wrists were chaffed from handcuffs and I was humiliated. I guarentee you that when I stubbed my toe last week it hurt worse. As for being humiliated, sorry buddy but there's more humiliating shit that can happen to you in this reality and you're not exempt from them happening to you. There are serious wrongs commited every day and I feel this guy's story is just bullshit.
There are different types of fraud. I was specifically refering to "fradulent use of financial instrument," e.g., using stolen checks. Depending on your state you may hit a felony at $100-500, with a 5- or even 10-year prison sentence. If it's a "three-strikes" state that doesn't specify violent felonies, you may be talking about a life sentence without parole.
The store manager filing a false police report isn't usually considered "fraud" since the purpose is clearly to harass another person, not to get unwarranted financial compensation.
(But IANAL - we're talking about fine enough details here that you should consult a local attorney, etc.)
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Because Goatse wins....again.
You don't know where EB's been...
Nope, what you're talking about is basic "agency" and the original party *is* usually responsible for the misstatements of its agents. (It also has an obligation to monitor the agent's work, has the authority to terminate the agent if it's not doing an acceptable job, etc.) If the original party doesn't like it, it can't back out of contracts due to the action of its agent, it has to seek compensation from its agents.
As a concrete example, imagine that you are selling your house. You know that it is an old house that has some lead-based paint, and you tell your real estate agent that. But the agent lies to the buyers, and they're legitimately pissed to have a huge bill to make the house safe for their very young children. They sue you, and they'll win. You have to sue your real estate agent (or his employer) for damages caused by their misrepresentation.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
They have to get the full price to pay for their giagantic new headquarters that they are building in Richfield, Minnesota (suburb of Minneapolis/St. Paul) Anybody from Minnesota thats seen it will know what I am talking about.
I think CompUSA has the worst pricing structure of any of them. They will advertise a price thats "onsale" for more than it was the week before, then next week offer a "rebate" on it, and the next week have it the original price. It seems to cycle.
> The only thing you can do in the case of 'False Advertising' is get a Cease & Desist order to stop the advertising, but you don't get to sue their pants off.
/.'ed onto my "do no visit" list wasn't worth the loss.
Um, Intentionally false or misleading advertising are violations at law, and subject to fine and various other process. And, a finable offense can be complained by an individual. "Typos" and "errors" are one thing, intentional deception is another. "Sue their pants off"? Well, no, you can sue for damages and that is, usually, not worth the legal costs. And almost never worth the political risk that DA might face for getting involved. But big cases have come about, and businesses have been put a risk for the practice.
"Bait and switch" (advertising a good price, but only for one item) can be fined, first offense. Mostly because it is easy to prove.
All ads must be made in "good faith".
The trouble here is proving "bad faith". An employee mistake, or publisher's typo, does not bad faith make. But, if you can demonstrate it, every case of false advertisement is a fraud.
The advertisment differs from an "offer" in that it is limited in liablity. If you ad apples at $.10 each you must have a "reasonable" amount on hand at that price to meet expected demand (or stipulate limited supply). If demand exceeds your "reasonable" expectation, you can turn away further takers (Thus it couldn't have been an offer). You can not, however, adjust your price to $.50 when you notice a long line of pie bakers forming outside your door, or tell a lone taker that you have no apples at that price.
Of course, you could post a nice note saying the price is $.50 and the ad was a typo. You can be sued, dragged through discovery, etc. etc. and might be found out. You might also make a whole bunch of really ticked off customers.
Best Buy should have honered all orders for which they processed a credit card. Being
Anyway, an Internet sales site is a tricky thing. There is what might be considered an "ad" portion, and a "sale" portion. In my opinion, that "sale" portion raises the bar of responsiblity beyond that of a simple "ad" to that of a "store". Nothing different than if their cash register was mis-programmed to reflect that $129 price, there was offer-and-acceptance.
Yep, the title says it all.
I bought a pair of 64MB DIMMs there once, got home and there was a mismatched pair of 4MB Dimms in the bag.
They exchanged it without question - I was most certainly worried that they were going to accuse me of swapping the ram myself though.
"It doesn't make sense that people should be able to lose their jobs and that kind of money over a misprint of a price, even if it wasn't caught immediately."
Why the fuck not?
If somebody breaks into my house, slips, falls, and busts their head open on my kitchen floor, I can loose "that kind of money" through a lawsuit and THAT would be through no screw up on my part AT ALL. I don't even need to be at home at the time!
If anyone can afford to loose "that kind of money" Best Buy sure as hell can. Besides, I'm sure their insured for that kind of stuff anyway.
It's that same mentality that allows these big corporations to suck off of the government "welfare tit" while the "regular working guy" has to work an extra 4 hours every week to pay for 24 our medical surveilance for the president to make sure he doesn't choke on a fucking pretzel.
I ALWAYS take PDFs of any web-receipts/TOS/policies etc (Acrobat 5). This way, I save on binders and papers, and have the proofs reasonably safe (even back-up to CDRs once in a while). Everyone may not have Acrobat, but I suggest you do atleast an HTML save for electronic soft copy.
Apparently not many other people like Best Buy either: they are rated at 1.54 out of 10. Check out more comments at www.resellerratings.com snoslayer
They came to an "out-of-court settlement". I can just imagine the corporate lawyers at Best Buy thinking "You fucking morons."
Back to the situational morality. I guess it's apparently ok in your mind if a big company gets screwed. What if this was a small family owned business that sells on the web? A mistake like this could easily wipe out their business, throwing them into bankruptcy and wiping out their life savings. Would if bo ok in that situation too?
Even when Best Buy gets screwed, the losses are passed on to other people. Retail stores aren't doing that well in the current economy. To absorb this loss along with the weak sales they may raise prices on other items some, but that doesn't work well in a bad economy. That means they're likely to lay people off, or just not hire people to fill positions as people leave. This means normal, average people don't have jobs. Maybe they don't have to lay people off. Maybe things are better than I think and they can just reduce their dividends to their shareholders. Of course those shareholders include a lot of retirement plans, so it's taking money from people's parents and gradnparents who are relying on the money to get them through their later years. The situational morality crap only justifies itself if you don't think about it too hard.
IIRC, the federal law is that they can charge if the order will be shipped within 30 days. I don't quite see the logic behind that -- since 99% of mail & internet order businesses don't control the manufacturing of their products, the only way they can be _sure_ they'll be able to ship in 30 days is if the product is already in their hands -- so they'll be shipping immediately. If you don't charge until the shipment is in the box, then you don't get into screw-ups like this, or the much more common screw-up of charging the card, then finding out that you're out of stock.
Well, we all know why the law is tilted towards businesses over consumers. Consumers just vote, businesses pay b^r^i^b^e^s^campaign contributions. What I don't understand is why so many businesses adopt policies sure to result in p-o-ed customers? Now and then you can inflate the profits for a quarter by screwing your customers, go through a merger based on the inflated stock price, and then try to repeat the process under a new name, but how many times can this work?
Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot it was our job to subsidize bad business.
Please, if you think that what happened to Cherian was wrong, and Best Buy should have to own up to their mistakes, take the time to go by
l
http://www.petitiononline.com/BBBC/petition.htm
and sign the petition created on Cherian's behalf. Please let Best Buy know that we won't stand for letting them arrest innocent consumers.
Sincerely,
Eric Johnson
This reminds me of my experience about 2 years ago with Best Buy's web site. I saw a DVD advertized for $.02. Yes, that's two cents! I didn't even like the title, but figured, "what the heck, for two cents, let's get it!" I ordered the DVD, and a day or so later I received an email stating that my order had been cancelled due to a pricing error along with some appologies. I emailed customer service and said that it was wrong that they had canceled my order because they had advertized the price, and I was purchasing the product under the understanding that the pricing on the web site is correct. I asked how they would remedy the situation so as not to lose a customer.
They responded by giving me a $20.00 gift certificate code to be used on future orders. Needless to say, I was most pleased.
Of course, the issue at hand is of greater scope, but my point is that it can't hurt to stand up for yourself when a company screws you.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Should anyone working for one of these companies read this, please forward to the appropriate parties.
www.eFax.com are spammers
I'm not suggesting you subsidize anyone. If you don't like Best Buy, don't buy from them.
and bestbuy is one of them.
- no w - I had dsl through them that was so broken and so down that I smashed the modem to bits and called them up to tell them to stop billing me. I refuse to consider dsl from them ever again and am hesitant to ever use dsl again - it worked great for a few months, then broke heavily, and they refused to do anything about it (and had a min of 3 hour wait times for customer service - then when you spoke with them, they were too stupid to know what to do, so they would claim an issue on my end... right)
one of my friends went through a two month ordeal with them over a large sony wega and finally got it all resolved and has vowed to never shop there again. I refuse to even go to the website and/or step foot in their store. although I do currently use netflix even though they sell their videos via a link to bestbuy, but I never buy them, just rent them.
other bad companies on my list:
Sprint (PCS wireless - the worst cell phone service I've ever experienced, and truly the worst customer service ever)
AT&T (any division - they lie about bills - are getting sued over that know - they pad bills, then remove it later, they them randomly charge you for things - and then if you confront them on any of this, they deny it all and if you refuse to pay it, they send you to a collection agency - I had to "settle" it with them where instead of the $200 they wanted from me - even though I had three customer service people tell me that I was all paid up in the computer - they would just take $30 and call it even - I paid the $30 and now refuse to use anything they are invovled in... although mediaone getting bought out by them threw a wrench into that here in Cambridge/Somerville.)
buy.com (you would think I or they would have taken away some lesson from my 15 failed orders with them earlier on in the process - their customer service is incredibly stupid as well)
MBNA (credit card company - they repeatedly charge me for a service that I never signed up for and repeatedly specifically asked to be removed from - their shopper's advantage program at a $60 a year fee)
mindspring/earthlink/whatever-the-hell-they-are
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Are you nuts? You present a cookie-cutter pseudo free-market analysis of the effects opf this company's screw-up, and nowhere do you mention the essential (good) corrective that may result from this situation: the company's management could well have to accept responsibility for the screw-up, and then they'll have to get their act together or be replaced by competent people.
You sound like a typical Microsoft apologist, always claiming that doing things in compliance with ethical and legal standards will ultimately hurt the consumer! What a crock.
To go along with this, while I don't use a credit card for these purchases, I do use my Visa Check Card from my bank. It's a check card with Visa protection. Find a bank that offers such a card because it will afford you all the protections that come along with the Visa symbol and it will work like a credit card.
I think the idea is that almost always, the company can count on being able to ship within 30 days. The few times when they're wrong, they pay a nominal fee ($2 or something) to refund the customer's credit card. So businesses that regularly precharge are ones to whom the immediate availability of capital is more beneficial than a few extra dollars would be. It's not surprising that this practice is more common in smaller Internet stores that are looking for growth than in larger, established businesses.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Of course, if you notice it, they are happy to give you the right price. The Tower situation is absurd and unprofessional, but, as you say, what can you do.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
I suppose you are right that retailers are not required to honor a price that was misprinted. Legally anyway.
However practilly, most retailers will honor the listed price if possibal. I know several people who got a $60 phone for $30 when a $40 phone was on sale, but they put the wrong picture in the ad. Just the picture of the more epensive phone (the text listed the model # and features of the cheaper phone) was enough that they would take the loss on the more expensive phone.
I'm willing to bet that if any of *YOU* accidentally put the wrong price on an item that you put in your local classified ads, you would inform the people that called you that the price was incorrect and tell them the correct price.
Furthermore, if you called about an ad in the classifieds and the person told you that it was a typo, you'd just say "Damn, I was hoping I had found a great deal."
However, when a business is involved, everyone sharpens their claws and tries to figure out how they can use the law to help them rip off the retail store. If you don't like Best Buy, don't shop there, but don't pretend this is any more than a thinly veiled attempt to try and "get yours". So damned obvious it's stupid.
Let them know how you feel! Make their phones ring non-stop! Be calm and collected and professional!
Northlake Ga (Store #513)
4145 Lavista Rd northlake Square
Tucker, GA 30084
Phone: 770-939-7660
Hours: Mon-Sat 10:00am-9:00pm
Sun 11:00am-6:00pm
Don't support such a lazy, disservice oriented company. Prod's at BBUy don't care about you or your dollar because they don't get commission - but their managers and supervisors do....
read www.bestbuysux.org for reasonss why this company sucks @$$. -LAKORAI
It's so entertaining to read posts on /. - where
The proper typographical representation of an em dash is "--" and not "-".
the supposedly "intellectual elite" who are smart enough to use *nix OS's
The "'s" suffix is a posessive, not a pluralisation. The above would properly be spelled as OSes, assuming the nominalisation of the abbreviation "O.S.".
, and they can't even spell a simple word like "receipt"...even
Ellipses (...) should be followed by at least one single space.
more so when they use cute constructs lile "IANAL".
"lile"?
He even spelled "contractual" correctly, but totally whiffled on "receit"
Maybe he was trying to say "conceit" because he knew you'd be replying to his post.
may-b they're just 2 31337 to spel rite. ScottKin - doing as James Tiberius Kirk said: "...I'm LAUGHING at the 'Superior Intellect'..."
Maybe you should suspend your laughter -- you're not smart enough to warrant being that sardonic. In the meanwhile, keep your self-aggrandising verbal diarrhoea to yourself.
False arrest is ALSO when someone calls the cops and intentional makes false accusations to mislead the cops to arresting you.
He should take them to Judge Mathis. I know there's only a $5000 limit, but Judge Mathis is one sneeky Mofo who knows how to get the truth out of people.
Don't let his Ghetto Justice fool you, Judge Mathis is a brilliant man.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
And those Windows users that don't have full Acrobat can do this for free by creating a PostScript printer on FILE:. That's what I do when I want a copy of a web receipt but don't want to defeat the purpose of shopping electronically by generating ten sheets of paper in the process.