Slashdot Mirror
Best Buy Confirms 'Secret' Version of its Website
Iberian writes "The Courant site confirms an oft-rumoured possibility: Best Buy does indeed maintain a second website for what one could assume is for the purpose of defrauding its customers. State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal ordered the investigation into Best Buy's practices on Feb. 9 after columnist George Gombossy disclosed the website and showed how employees at two Connecticut stores used it to deny customers a $150 discount on a computer advertised on BestBuy.com. Says Gombossy, 'What is more troubling to me, and to some Best Buy customers, is that even when one informs a salesperson of the Internet price, customers have been shown the intranet site, which looks identical to the Internet site, but does not always show the lowest price. [State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal] said that because of the fuzzy responses from Best Buy, he has yet to figure out the real motivation behind the intranet site and whether sales people are encouraged to use it to cheat customers.'"
Seems to me there are too good solutions for the customer:
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I highly doubt sales people would be in on such a conspiracy. A company like Best Buy has sales people coming and going all the time. If someone got pissed because they were fired, the first thing they'd do would be blow the whistle on this. If these price differences are even deliberate, it's done strictly by the people managing the two websites. The sales reps would be told to sell at the intranet website's price, and are probably unaware of the fact that there's a different version of bestbuy.com at work than there is at home, let alone that the prices are different in order to screw the consumer. It may be a conspiracy, but it's not involving every sales rep at every Best Buy in the country.
It pissed me off enough that I actually walked out of the store, drove home, ordered it online and used the pick-up-in-store option.
It pissed you off enough that you purchased from bestbuy.com?
Man, that's sticking it to 'em.
I bet there's no dark plot here. You really think they could purposefully implement systems requiring dozens of staff with deliberate fraudulent intent and not have someone blow the whistle??
I bet this is nothing more than just your standard run of the mill incompetence.
I imagine they have an intranet site which has some information which is for internal use mixed with information that is meant to be the same as the online content. Due to the incompetence of those implementing these systems their intranet and extra-net sites are getting out of sync with each other.
Guess what the result is?
Every time the price difference is to the advantage of the customer there's not a peep to be heard.
As soon as the price difference is to the customer's disadvantage! All hell breaks loose, they go into the store go "WHAT ITS NOT THAT MUCH". Pissed off, they refuse to buy it, go home, check the price again... boom major shit and fan action.