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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.
http://www.bestbuy.com/infoCenter/Policies/Deliver y.asp#2
Best Buy may, at its own discretion, limit or cancel quantities purchased per person, per household or per order. These restrictions may include orders placed by the same BestBuy.com account, credit card, and also orders which use the same billing and/or shipping address. Notification will be sent to the e-mail and/or billing address provided should such change occur. We reserve the right to limit the quantities sold, including the right to limit or prohibit sales to dealers.
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.
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.
Putting a disclaimer on a page doesn't either make it true or enforcable. Many things can override silly disclaimers. (Like laws conserning advertising fairness). They're usually there to scare people off from actually following through when harmed. Because if it's in a disclaimer, it must be true.
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.
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!
They've had customers arrested for comparison shopping.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Sure they have a disclaimer, but is the disclaimer legal? They're basically telling you that they can change the price of a product at any time, regardless of when the purchase was made. That sounds rather fishy to me. One would think that Best Buy has a decent legal team, but if it's anything like the team of people in their stores...well, most people here know what I mean.
So the question now (probably) becomes : Does Best Buy really have the right to arbitrarily change the price on any item you purchase, just because the disclaimer says so?
I would expect the incident report would refer to the "suspect" by his name, after all they have identified him, right? Instead, they make repeated comments to his skin color as if that has any bearing to the case.
"He's not white, so he must be guilty your honor!"
I'm "white," but I do like it when officers that are required to uphold the law know what are important facts from the details. Sometimes police scare me. That guy shouldn't have made it past the interviews for a "security guard," not to mention a police officer. Sounds racist to me if I have seen it.
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
You're on crack.
If the price read "129.99" instead of "329.99," that's a typo.
"SPECIAL PRE-ORDER! 129.99 $200 SAVINGS!!" is most obviously not a typo.
In addition, if it's a typo, then you don't honor it. You don't honor it for some people, turn other people away, and have other people arrested for trying to get what they ordered at the price they ordered it at.
I used to work at Incredible Universe, an electronics store where the television department alone was roughly the size of a Best Buy. All the ones that made money were bought out by Fry's, and I was at one of the ones that made money. The way it was always explained to me was that we actually weren't responsible for the physical price tags on the items on the self; people could switch those, alter those, and so forth. We also weren't responsible for misprints or out-of-stocks on the newspaper ads; the ads are run for the whole country, and so long as one of the stores has the item in stock, it's a legal ad and not bait-and-switch. Misprints, of course, are the responsibility of the printer.
So people'd buy an item, take it to the register, and the clerk'd scan the UPC. We were responsible for the price the item scans at the register, and if it was wrong, tough titty, we'd have to sell it anyway. We'd change the price in the system pretty damned fast, but we'd at least have to sell it to that guy.
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)
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
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.
(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.
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.
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.
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).
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."
He said, "Kid, we only got one question. Have you ever been arrested?"
And I proceeded to tell him the story of the Best Buy incident, with full orchestration and five part harmony and stuff like that and all the phenome... - and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, did you ever go to court?"
And I proceeded to tell him the story of the Best Buy ad and the twenty seven gazillion polygons per second with the textures and blitters and the paragraph beside the ad, explainin' what each feature was, and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, I want you to go and sit down on that bench that says Group B. Now, kid!"
And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group B's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the company after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Shoplifters. Receipt forgers. Receipt lifters! Receipt lifters sitting right there on the bench next to me! And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest receipt lifter of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly 'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me and said, "Kid, whad'ya get?" I said, "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay $50 and didn't get the Geforce." He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?" And I said, "Defrauding a corporation." And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "And refusing to leave the store." And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, shop forging, receipt lifting, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench. And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of things, until the HR director came over, had some paper in his hand, held it up and said:
and talked for forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said, but we had fun filling out the forms and playing with the pencils on the bench there, and I filled out the incident with the four part harmony, and wrote it down there, just like it was, and everything was fine and I put down the pencil, and I turned over the piece of paper, and there, there on the other side, in the middle of the other side, away from everything else on the other side, in parentheses, capital letters, quotated, read the following words:I went over to the HR director, said, "Director, you got a lot a damn gall to ask me if I've rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I'm sittin' here on the bench, I mean I'm sittin here on the Group B bench 'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough join your company, fake accounting reports, forge requisitions, and lie to customers, after bein' arrested for trying to trick Best Buy about a video card price." He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Corporate."
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
No, no, no. This is not a sig.
The worst part of this all is that the "new" price of $399 is horrible. They are also trying to shirk with a $30 coupon. Link below.
:
i teria=item_criteria_here]
l
1 . tml Worst Buy Highway Robbery Inc. Trying to give only $30 bucks for mistake.
s tbuy_gf4deal.html
_ arrest.html
3 .
Here are a few links to show you how to find a deal on this card, Vision Tek part number 30001522
Pricewatch Search for 30001522
Tip on searching Pricewatch (my favorite); the url format is: [http://brook.pricewatch.com/search/search.asp?cr
Streetprices Search for 30001522
Pricegrabber Search, I don't like Price-grabber, but its here to show that even a crappy Shylock engine is better than Worst Buy ©(TM)®.
BEST BUY charged with FRAUD:
Best Buy & HRS Credit Insurance Fraud to their customers. Big Ripoff Scam!
Story also covered here:
http://www.theinquirer.net/10020202.htm
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/24005.htm
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/19176/
http://courses.wcupa.edu/jredingt/BestBuy.htm
http://www.hardocp.com/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/2404
http://hypothermia.gamershardware.com/
http://hypothermia.gamershardware.com/articles/be
http://hypothermia.gamershardware.com/articles/bb
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/24/11357/303
I have had horrible experience with them as well. I won't even go into it, but they tried to do something fraudulent and were obstinate about owning up to it.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.