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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.'"
.....err, never mind.
The GeekSquad charges a $29 Software Installation fee to let you use the "real" internet inside BestBuy so this lady would have only saved $121.00 anyway.
I checked a price online last week, went in, and they checked and it was different.
Wait for the flood of OMG CORPORATIONS posts to follow...
-- pupkick
Companies will go to great lengths to price discriminate (i.e. sell to different customers at different prices). If intentional, this particularly dirty trick might have the following reasoning: A customer sees a price online, but wants the item more quickly. So the customer heads to the local Best Buy, where the prices are supposed to be the same as what's online (unless specifically marked as an online-only special). By this time, the customer has demonstrated his or her willingness to buy the product and invested the time and energy required to get to the store. At this point it's likely that they are willing to pay more than the online listed price, and buy the item anyway.
Another possibility is just that Best Buy doesn't want to market online prices as "online only" and that people who walk into the store and pay a higher price won't notice unless they look for the same item online (which most presumably don't).
This reminds me of the whole amazon.com pricing PR disaster from a few years back. IIRC, it involved people who were logged in seeing a different price than those who were just surfing casually. By knowing your previous purchasing history, amazon.com could reasonably mark up items it thought you might be willing to pay more for. I don't know what happened to the program, I thought it just went away because of the PR nightmare.
It'd be interesting to know just what's legal and what's not with some of these new tactics. Not all price discrimination is illegal; consider "student" or "senior" discounts, for example. Of course, avoiding a PR mess is probably enough to keep most companies from trying legal but dirty tactics.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
yea used to work in the Big Blue and I remember that... To put a little foot forward for at least my store and me, I figured out that the intranet site listed store prices after the second person complained to me. After that I used one of our laptops with wireless to get onto the internet site.
Honestly, I think it's not a management plan to rip people off, they just like to keep the internet best buy and store best buy separate so when a rep logs onto the computer you see your store's price... and reps' ignorance ends up screwing people over.
Anyway my $.02 to try and throw out some facts and before everyone replies I know it was/is still a bad idea just throwing the facts out as I heard them
Best Buy to Outsource IT to Accenture
Best Buy reassesses IT Needs
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
This happened to me a year or two ago when I went to buy a digital camera at BB. The camera was cheaper online and when I told the salesman he tried to verify it and it wasn't there. I ended up going across the street to Circuit City which has full internet access...ordered the camera from bestbuy.com with in store pickup, went back to bestbuy and picked it up for that internet price.
Annoying though, and I hope they get a lot of heat for it (was also in CT btw)
Accenture was formerly Andersen Consulting, which split from Arthur Andersen in 1989, and it apparently wasn't exactly a friendly split. To my knowledge, most of the accounting problems regarding Enron and Arthur Andersen happened in the 1990s.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
I'm not positive, but this seems very similar to me to "bait and switch," which is illegal. In that scheme, the store would advertise an exceptionally low price on an object...but only had 3 in stock. Then, when you come to the store as the 100th person looking for that item, they say, "sorry we ran out... but since you came, we can offer you a "good deal" on this other similar item for only a slightly higher [and much more profitable] price!"
This is similar, except the low price draws customers to the store, and then...where's the low price? That's fraudulant. Also--it's especially bad because it involves deceiving the consumer: "You say you saw a lower price on the internet? Why don't we look at the site right now..." Outright deception is rarely legal.
So your comparison of Best Buy to Enron because of Enron's affiliation with Arthur Andersen (and BB's current affiliation with Accenture) is completely false.
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.
Why do people continue to shop at a Retailer who is known for treating customers like E-Tards and continually abuses them and lies to them and most likely commits bait-n-switch?
...to never shop at Best Buy.
I have a domain that I bought on ebay for a dollar. It's misspelled but it's also extremely handy. Each time I have to go register on a web site some where, I register as (nameofwebsite)@mydomain.com. Then if I start getting spam, I know who sold me out. I bought something on-line from Best Buy's web site and so of course I register as bestbuy@mydomain.com. Lo and behold, I start getting a ton of spam addressed to bestbuy@mydomain.com. My first missive was polite, asking why they're sending me these emails. When I contact them about it, I'm told that it can't possibly be coming from them.
When I write them the second time, I'm still polite and explain that they must be sending them because that's the only place I've used this particular email address. They write back and insist quite rudely that I must have used this email address to register somewhere else. Furthermore, they're quite rude in insisting that they're not spamming me and asked me why I was so stupid as to think that they were. "Surely you realize that a reputable company like Best Buy wouldn't spam you."
My third missive wasn't polite at all. I rather pointedly asked them if they were mentally deficient or inbred, since they seemed to be too slow to pick up on the fact that they were corresponding with me at the email address of bestbuy@mydomain.com. And as I pointed out to them, I am not likely to be using this anywhere else. It has be used in one place and one place only and that is their web site. I also tell them that they don't get my email address back from people that they have so rudely, and in violation of their own privacy policy, ho'd it out to, that I'll be doing some spamming of my own. Groups like the State Attorney General's office, FCC, UseNet, anyone and everyone else I can think of that might be remotely interested.
Finally I got a letter back from Best Buy claiming that a security breach had "liberated my email address". I called the person that sent me the letter. He was rather nicer than the nimrods I'd been dealing with. When I asked if they had filed the proper disclosure, which is required in several states in which Best Buy operates, I got a long awkward pause and he finally admitted that one of their employees had been busted selling email addresses harvested by the web site. When I asked if they were at least terminating the miscreant, I was told that they were not. That was the last time I ever purchased anything in a Best Buy.
2 cents,
QueenB.
HDGary secures my bank
Anyway, I was an employee at BBY when they started this switch, and, embarrasingly enough, I didn't notice the switch for over 2 months - and I was a customer service senior. They never even bothered to tell us!! (and i worked at Richfield, MN - just across the street from corporate HQ) - they were most probably thinking that we would deny the price match out of ignorance.
But, in my stores defense, once we found out of the switch we checked through the internet website and even went as far as printing it off if they had to go to another store to pick up the item.
Basically, with any corporation you will have great stores and horrible stores - it all depends on who the GM is. I've had good ones that make a great customer atmosphere and horrible GM's that make me deny price matches and basically be a bitch to the customer. But one thing I've found to be true no matter what GM I have is that the customer initiatives at the corporate level are in the right place - which is much more than I can say for most other Fortune 500 companies out there.
Slash-for-Thought
I found out the other day that my hosting company, DailyRazor.com, pulls a cute little trick - they have these offers that say you get x number of months of free hosting with y number of months pre-paid. So you buy the account thinking that as long as you've paid by the deadline, you're ok. It so happens that if you didn't enter a specific "coupon code" when you signed up, you forfeit the free hosting. At the bottom of their sign up form, it says, "Have a coupone? Enter it here..." - when I think of a "coupon" I think of a piece of paper that I might have received in the mail, or seen in a magazine. I didn't have either of these, so I didn't enter anything. I didn't give it a second thought until I saw that they issued my second invoice two months early. I have been going back and forth with them over this, and as of yet, they have refused to make any concessions. If you need servlet-based hosting, avoid the hassle and look for another company.
This is another great example of the resurgence of reputation as a means of social pressure. Before we had the web, advertising could completely drown out the occasional TV report from your local consumer affairs reporter. Today though, anyone who cares about getting what they pay for can trivially check up on the vendor in question.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
First of all, I didn't know this was a "secret". I've seen it myself. It may have the same color scheme, but it looks noticeably different (no "top 10 tips to buy a new TV" or big flashy mini-ads or any of that crap). The purpose? If a customer wants to buy something that's out of stock or internet-only or something, the employee takes the customer's information and logs in using his employee ID. I've never used this part, but the customer supposedly pays in-store, then the employee puts the confirmation number into the site, and the item is either shipped to the customer or the store.
(CompUSA has a similar site, though in their case the customer (usually business account customers) can access it too -- http://compusabusiness.com/ )
Now, I'm interested in seeing what the result of the investigation is, but this doesn't seem to scream conspiracy. Maybe there was a discrepancy, and the employee pointed to that site because, well, that's the site he always uses. I make a best buy purchase every couple weeks, and always check the site first (mostly because best buy's stock sucks, and I have to figure out which of the 2 stores in town has what I need), and I have never seen a price discrepancy between bestbuy.com and in-store.
there has to be a comment with an "i work for best buy" in here. well, i do. and it's ironic that this comes up at such a time as today. At work earlier today, I actually saved some customers several hundred dollars by ordering off of our "secret" internal intranet .com site rather than off of the regular internet. The customer in question wanted to order a laptop and have it shipped to a friend in California, and I noted that when i used our Clearwire internet terminal, the price came out to 1,049, but when i used the internal site, it matched our store savings down to 899.99. And the same with another laptop we are running on sale. I'm not sure how well the awareness of this internal site has been spread throughout the company ranks, but at my store at least, we are always up to honor a .com price, and we have non-intranet connected computers on our Verizon Wireless and Clearwire kiosks that allow us (and our customers) to verify a .com price against the internal website.
I recently bought a DVD recorder... I did exactly this, and checked prices online. I wanted a specific model (Pye PY90DG) and Circuit City had it. When I got to the store, it was about $9 more. I asked the guy at the returns counter (nobody there) if they matched their online price, and he said they didn't because they were different systems (or something like that). For $9... I was just going to buy it and pay the extra, but he could see it wasn't sitting well with me. It was only $9, but the price was around $90. That is a considerable percentage! He took me over to one of their net-connected PCs, and let me order it online for in-store pickup. Then I went and took one off the shelf, walked it over to his register, and picked it up. He said they do it all the time, because their online prices are lower than the store prices quite often, and they didn't think that was very fair. I was very happy with my purchase, and would go back there for that reason.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Pay online, and do an in-store pickup.
blah@gmail.com
I can also use:
blah+BestBuySucks@gmail.com
This works automatically. No setup is needed for gmail and many other email systems. Unfortunately, a lot of website developers think that "+" is invalid wherever it is used in an email address and will not allow such email addresses in registrations.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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.
I bought a plasma TV in October when they were doing a zero-interest deal. They rang it up for the store price of $1,739, so I told them that the website was showing $1,619 as the price. The clerk went over to talk to the manager and, sure enough, they gave me the $1,619 price without protest.
A week later the print ad showed the TV at $1,499 and they happily gave me a price adjustment when I asked for one. Fun times.
You cannot possibly be a Best Buy employee because you know what the difference between an intranet and the Internet is.
Needless to say, I'm not a big fan of Best Buy, so am glad someone is calling them publicly on this intranet pricing thing (potential scam).
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
The old (for computers) addage goes: "The difference between a used car salesman and a computer salesman is that a used car salesman knows when he's lying".
I imagine, as far as most of the sales people goes, this is probably the case here. I doubt most of them even knew that the prices were different.
On the other hand, I have a Yahoo! email account of the form xx2000xxx@yahoo.com and I have never received a single spam in that account whatsoever. It was registered in 2000 and used for communicating with a certain well-known online auction site.
Never received a single spam in my inbox or in my junk email folder. So I have concluded that 1) nobody's doing dictionary spamming that complex, and also 2) ebay hasn't shared their customer email list with spammers (yet).
So if you really want to be sure, register as bestbuy2007@example.com and you probably can be sure when they start spamming you that somehow, that address got onto the spammers' lists.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
I work for a Verizon Wireless retailer.
Once had a customer come in and accuse us of selling his (physical) address information to spammers. Every time he applies for a service, he uses a different middle initial for his name, and keeps a record of what initial he used for what service. Said he used the middle initial 'K' when applying for our service, and soon starting receiving junk mail (of the snail variety) addressed to "John" K. "Doe."
As you may or may not know, customer privacy is something Verizon takes very seriously (being one of the only wireless providers that didn't hand over call records to the NSA, for instance). Every customer is automatically enrolled in the Do Not Call registry, etc.
Well, we investigated the matter, and eventually found out what happened.
The handsets we sold at the time used vendor-issued mail-in rebates, which, of course, require you to fill out and mail in a form with your name and address... and, naturally, this guy used the same middle initial for the rebate submission as he did when he established wireless service, not making a distinction between the two (can't blame him). Investigation found the vendor (or the rebate company they employed) was the one "sharing" the customer info.
We have since abandoned vendor rebates and now Verizon handles the rebates in-house.
A piece of advice: Use a unique e-mail or middle initial for any rebates you submit than you do for making a purchase or establishing service. The responsible party may not be who you think it is, nor may they be aware it's even happening.
In fact, it is very common for businesses to charge different amounts based on location, age, sex, and willingness to pay.
...) legislators to exempt and shield them.
-Many websites require you to locate yourself before presenting different prices for your area.
-DVDs are region coded, and are priced differently based where you buy them.
-Gas prices are based on what the locals are willing to pay.
-Public transportation charges lower prices for old rich people, and higher prices for the young and poor.
Sometimes it's just economics, and sometimes it's just unfair, but it's not illegal due to special intrest groups that can "convince" (kickback, bigotry,
Honesty is honesty.
Reminds me of that movie, Miracle on 24th street (I think), where Santa -- the real Santa -- is employed as a Mall Santa. He sits in the mall, and kids come up and tell him what they want, and the management has given him a list of all the Macey's products that he's supposed to be pushing on the parents -- which he then ignores, and tells the parents where to find exactly what the kid wants, at the best price in town.
At first, the managers are enraged, but then they realize that they've just built up a shitload of customer loyalty. Moms are walking out with bags and bags of stuff, just because they love Macey's so much for having such a great Santa.
Now, of course, the Managers have the ulterior motive here, and Santa is pure. But does it really matter whether Santa is pure or not?
In fact, I honestly don't give a damn what's going through the salesman's head. If it actually does mean I'm getting a better deal, and if they consistently try to build brand loyalty in a way which actually benefits me, I win, whether it's out of the goodness of their hearts or because they're planning to rip me off sometime down the road.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
"Oh crap. I shouldn't have said it was a website.
Oh crap! I shouldn't have said it was a secret!
Oh crap! I CERTAINLY shouldn't have said... it was ILLEGAL!"
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
You have just stumbled upon the greatest trick of deception. It's called "plausible deniability".
This happened to me, I argued to death with the sales rep, the manager, etc.... all claimed the price must have been updated from the time I left home until the time I got to the store... BS. They knew what they were doing.
The Intranet version of the BestBuy website is well-known on the DVDTalk bargains forum.
That's because it lists the "in store" prices and there is a whole slew of anime DVDs for which the "in store" price is super-discounted compared to anywhere else, including the extranet version of the same website.
The common link seems to be that these anime dvds are either out of print or nearing out of print status. So even though the "in store" prices are really great, very few stores actually have them in stock. But, BBY's warehouse still has many of them in stock. So to exploit the situation, people have taken to using the in-store kiosks to place orders that are shipped directly from the warehouse to their home. If they were to place the same order using the BBY website from home, the cost would be 3x-4x as much.
For a while there I poked around BBY's DNS and neighboring IP numbers in the hope of finding a way to access the intranet version from the internet and thus skip the trip to the instore kiosk. I don't remember the specifics, but I think we were able to identify the ip address and name of the intranet server (somebody used an in-store system to resolve www.bestbuy.com and compared it to what it resolves to for everyone else on the regular internet), but even though it was pingable, and in the same class-c subnet as the main internet website, it would not accept connections coming in from the regular internet.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I can understand wanting to show up the 16 year old salespeople at the store that has your merchandise hostage. I can understand taking a few extra steps to get what you want for a good price too. What I cant understand is why people keep shopping at stores like CC and BB. I have had a similar version of all of these related experiences happen to me as well. The day I buy something from these crooks again will be a cold day in hell. When a company's "system" is flawed to the degree they cant offer their customers the best/promised price with no thwarting on the customers part, they dont deserve to be in business.
I might also offer some advice, never buy online at a public terminal...thats just silly.
If they show it to the customer, it's no longer secret or is it?
A shorter path exists, using the search function on the www.state.mn.us website, but might change. Bonus points for anyone who (using this starting point) figures out how to get (a) a full fledged IE window with address bar (b) a command prompt (c) system level privileges and/or (d) a way to reinstall the hard drive with Linux from the kiosk environment. Changing the kiosk webbrowser home to CircuitCity.com would be another nice hack in several senses of the word.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.