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Best Buy Accused of Overcharging
An anonymous reader writes "Connecticut's Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has accused Best Buy of overcharging its customers. His accusation is that customers see one price on Best Buy's website, in stores salespeople would show them a different internal site from a kiosk. Best Buy denies the charges. 'Previously, the company confirmed that store employees have access to an internal Web site that looks nearly identical to the public BestBuy.com site, but the company's policy is always to offer customers the lowest quoted price unless it's specifically identified as a deal available only to online shoppers. Jerry Farrell Jr., Connecticut's consumer protection commissioner, said the lawsuit should be a warning to companies to be more transparent in their business practices.'"
If you're worried about getting the lowest possible price, why are you shopping at best buy ANYWAY?
I went in to a best buy a few years ago for some laptop memory that was quoted as a 512 mb SODIMM for 90 bucks or so and stated nothing about being an online special. When I got to the store they tried to sell me first a 1 gb SODIMM than the higher quality 512 mb memory, and it took me asking a manager to get them to show me the memory I came in for which was almost 2x the price quoted online. Luckily I brought a printout or I would never have gotten the price quoted online. I thought something was fishy, and I'm glad some AG is doing something about it.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Busch, Best Buy's spokeswoman, said the company intends to vigorously defend itself in court.
"The future of our company depends on our ability to build trusted relationships with our customers," Busch said.
Would that be with or without an extended warranty?
Isn't this old? BestBuy changed their kiosks because of this a while back.
I was in BB at least 2 months ago and the in-store kiosks said in big bright yellow words "REFLECTS INSTORE PRICING ONLY"
I thought this was common knowledge but besides that I don't see a problem. There is cost associated with getting a production from distribution center to store and of course store overhead -- why not pay more. I was at Performance Bike store the other day and noticed the item at the store was about 5% more than online, and seems reasonable.
Biggest laugh of the day: "The future of our company depends on our ability to build trusted relationships with our customers," Busch said.
I guess it's a form of trust when you trust Best Buy to always try to stick it to you.
we will end no whine before its time
Shouldn't this be obvious? No one in their right mind shops at Best Buy unless they've been stuck with a $50 gift card (that'll get you a 2-pack of AA batteries). I once saw two copies of the same movie being sold for $10 difference (one was title "Leon", the other, "The Professional"). I moved copies of the (still overpriced) cheaper version over to the more expensive version.
http://www.google.com/search?q=best+buy+internal+w ebsite&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-U S:official&client=firefox-a
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From Feb 2007
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070209/124307.
March 2007
http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-watchdog0302
Sort of a repost, no?
It's Connecticut, so we can expect the same quality level of computer experts that we saw in the Julie Amero case.
A few years ago, I went to Best Buy intending to buy a digital camera, only to find it cost 20% more than the price advertised on the web site. So I bought it elsewhere. I'm fine with web-only specials, but this was not identified as one.
I don't think anybody buys stuff online from big brick and mortar chains anyway. If I go to Best Buy or CompUSA's website, it's because I want something fast and I want to make sure they have what I want at a reasonable price before driving across town. Once I learned Best Buy's website does not reflect Best Buy's in-store prices, any reason I had for going there evaporated.
Slightly off-topic, but this reminds me of a story that a boss I had once told me. She was at a Best Buy with her kid, it was hectic, and there was just a ton going on. The cashier, some 17-year-old as I recall, surreptitiously copied down all her credit card info and then later went on a shopping spree. Included in the items he bought was about $1000 worth of baseball cards, and the total spree was 2-3 thousand dollars or so. He wasn't very smart about it, and was caught within a couple of days, and my boss got all her money back.
But I guess you could say she was significantly overcharged too.
u-bend
My father bought a 17" LCD from BB for $400 3 years back and they charged him $80 for a special extended warranty on top of it. I told him the warranty was not worth it, and it was a hassle getting that money back the next day until I threatened to return the whole unit.
Now, I just bought a nice KDS 22" widescreen LCD for $250 off of pricewatch with shipping included and no tax.
BB is not a place you go to for anything - service, product selection, etc. I'd rather take the limited selection of Costco for something big like a TV, or just get it online.
I don't mind anyone making money, but BB is just predatory.
I went to by a monitor not that long ago for the 350 their website listed it as. So when I showed up the employees pulled up the internal website that listed it as 400. I had to go back home print out their own website that listed it as 350 in order to get the correct price, but I don't think the emplyees even knew what was going on.
To be fair to best buy though once I had the print out it took them about 15 seconds to give me the monitor for the 350, but it would have been nice if I hadn't had to have diven back home to get it for the right price.
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
Circuit City tried to pull that shit with me. Luckily, I was smart enough to go to their laptop/mobile wireless display and use their real website, order what I wanted for in store pickup and then watch the same sales guy who wouldn't give me the lower price walk over, pick the product up, and take it to the front desk, where I promply showed them my credit card I used for the purchase. Took a bit longer, and was absurd, but that's what you get for giving me free internet in your store.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Essentially this is what the court case will ultimately decide, but I don't necessarily think that's wholly fair. While I'm almost certain there are Best Buy stores out there who had webmasters or managers who intentionally left good deals off of their internal website to produce more profit in their store when a lot of unknowing customers paid more. I'm also sure that there are stores that the management or webmasters simply forgot to update the deals on the internal website, and savvy consumers who were shopping around for the best possible price immediately noticed that something was wrong which got lumped into the "bad" group. If the world were perfect the stores would be tried individually, but because it's not, I hope the courts try to determine the number of stores practicing such devious business.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
I remember reading they have codes for which customers they will help and which ones they just want to get out their store based on nothing but appearances.
c le/2005/08/16/AR2005081601906.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
I don't want to have to dress up in a suit just to get some help from a dork in a blue shirt.
Now it looks like they may give different prices too.
If you find a discrepancy, file a complaint.
Now how do we go about charging AG's with "oversuing"? Somebody can either buy the product or not buy the product. Best Buy forces nobody to buy anything. It's always in absolutely every single case a *voluntary* transaction. Best Buy loses business if they mislead and word gets out. How many lawyers graduate per year these days? How many doctors? How many engineers? This is a ridiculous waste of taxpayer resources. FREEDOM means the right to sell or buy something for any price whatsoever, and to change your mind or change the price at any time whatsoever. No exchange ever occurs unless both parties agree to the exchange. By definition both parties to the exchange *profit* from that exchange, in absolutely every single case.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
Richard Blumenthal doesn't screw around. He's not doing this for political grandstanding or anything of that sort. He takes his job seriously, he refuses to step up to a more "prestigious" position, and he sees EVERYTHING through. I would HATE to get on his bad side, but as a Connecticut resident, I LOVE having him as our Attorney General.
Let's stop dilly-dallying and just change "-1: Overrated" to "-1: Disagree" or "-1: Doesn't Subscribe to Groupthink".
In my several years at Circuit City, the company never operated a "intranet" version of our site. Going on any of our terminals, our customers found the start page set to the public circuitcity.com website, and were in no way prohibited (apart from websense restriction on adult-oriented content) from browsing the internet and checking prices at competitor stores, and even e-commerce outlets. You must've been in a Best Buy store.
Now, what we did have on our site were prices with a line through them saying "add to cart to view sale price," because of the BS vendors liked to pull with their "minimum advertised sale price." Same reason some items in the newspaper insert on Sunday would say "$199 before $30 instant savings."
I don't like the senior management in Circuit City, I think they've abandoned their commitment to employees and customers alike, but we need to check our facts when we go into specifics regarding an improper business practice.
and www.tigerdirect.com price was about $50 less then bestbuy for a psu.
Why would they even have an internal/external distinction if not to cheat customers out of an advertised price?
If "Best Buy" has something for 29.95 on their website, then I expect "Best Buy" to have it for 29.95 in store. The only exceptions to this would be refurbs or other odd items that are not available in-store at all. If they want separate pricing, then they should be using separate names.
What can I do to get some attention on this? If you go to borders.com, the prices are drastically cheaper than in the store. I declare shenanigans!
This is the dupe from the 02nd of March.
l
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/03/03/0423239.shtm
Best buy already fessed up on this.
I like muppets.
...I just heard from a friend who purchased an HP printer from Best Buy. She'd recently bought a laptop (Vista infected) and wanted a printer that was compatible with it. So, the friendly assistant pointed out two models that were. (It still took a download from the HP site to actually get the printer to work anyway.) So, she wanted to be sure that she'd bought everything she needed just so's she can get to printing, asked the assistant if there was anything else she'd need. Oh boy. "Yes," says the assistant pointing at the only USB cable sited near the printer she'd purchased, "you'll need this." And, not knowing any better, she bought the cable too. Now, sure, the printer she'd chosen didn't come with a USB cable, and she did need one, but the only one on show that the assistant pointed out cost her $31.99 - I have a scan of the receipt. In real terms, that's $32. And translating that into UKP (I'm in the UK), that'd be close to twice the price. I can get a USB cable for £2 - or around about $4. Am I shocked? Yes. I'm absolutely stunned.
I was going to go and get a 2GB microSD card for my cellphone. They were the only place in the area that had it. I saved the page URL in my cellphone browser and went to the store. It was posted at almost 2x the web price, and the page was not marked "online or web only". The salesman scanned it in and the store priced popped up. I then tried to correct him and he balked. Then I pulled up the page, on the cellphone, and showed him. He then entered a code and the web price came up. Hmmm... Then he started asking questions about how I pulled up the page on my cellphone. This gets even better, he was dressed in a white shirt, black pants and a black tie......
I'm surprised Bestbuy is still open.
Between offering extended 3-4 year on-site warranties for ink cartridges and offering trial subscriptions for every magazine under the sun at checkout, they sure know how to build trust with their clients. Not to mention their incompetent PC staff:
The usual conversation goes a little something like this :
Customer: Which laptops do you have available for sale?
Bestbuy employee (stops talking with girl unpacking printers. he has a strange, annoyed look on his face now)
: How can I help you today?
Customer: I already told you, which laptops do you have available for sale?
Bestbuy: Check the computer section it's in the back. We also have a fine selection of printers available.
Customer: *thinks to himself* (Go fuck yourself idiot.)
: Thanks for all the help.
"The future of our company depends on our ability to milk the customer out of every last penny via sponsorships, affiliations, and false advertising as well as hiring and refusing to train our staff in an effort to continually hassle our customers through guerilla marketing," Busch said.
He later added "don't forget our holiday specials, where we give away free unicorns".
There, changed it for you.
Are you actually suggesting that each Best Buy location runs their own internal independent websites?
Online prices and selection generally match our retail stores, but may vary. Prices and offers are subject to change.
© 2003-2007 Best Buy. All rights reserved. Best Buy, BestBuy.com and the tag design are trademarks of Best Buy. For personal, noncommercial use only.
a similer disclaimer is also on their print ads... and they arent the only ones...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Seriously, if they believe a printout that you created with your own printer, what's to stop you from using photoshop...or just saving off the page as "web page complete", editing the price in the (now) client-side HTML file, firing up your browser, and printing the result. You would just need to make sure that your browser wasn't printing the URL in the header to avoid the "file" (vs. "http") protocol from appearing...although one could produce the appropriate version with header without requiring the reapplication of antiperspirant.
Seems to me that they would want access to their actual web site from an in-store kiosk to verify such claims...rather than relying on a customer-provided printout. Bizarre.
The service plan is actually worth it for certain expensive and frequently updated devices. I bought a third generation iPod there years ago for like $400. I spend $40 on the service plan. It died once and I took it in; they had stopped selling that model (maybe 20 gig? I don't recall) but had one at about that price point with a bigger hard drive. They couldn't fix it, so they gave me the newer model; I got an upgrade essentially for $40. Another year passed and I was having problems with this one - nothing major, but the software was messed up enough to be annoying. I took it in and explained the problem. They didn't even try to fix it; they just pulled a brand new top model 4th gen off the shelf and gave it to me. That was about a year or so ago; the ipod is still working fine but I am seriously thinking of plugging the firewire cord in the wrong way by accident and then taking it in for an upgrade again; at this point I ought to be able to get an 80 gig 5th gen ipod...
No way, standard 6' power cords really cost $30 each.
The in store price should match the online price. Don't tell me it's ok to charge more in store because of store overhead. What about the online overhead? The website expenses, warehouse expenses, labor, etc?
I was looking for advantage for our cats, and found petsmart had it for a similar price as other online vendors--so I drove down to the local petsmart and it was almost twice the cost! I showed them the printout and asked why it was so much more--they just said they don't honor their website prices in store. So I went back home and ordered it online from a different vendor.
Same thing happened at Circuit City. So I don't shop there anymore either.
The best way to vote is with your wallet. Don't give your money to places with deceptive practices like that. Even if something is on sale--give your business to a company that has good customer service--it's worth paying a little extra for it.
There was a time when we were lucky to have a Best Buy near us, which was cheaper and had a better selection of electronics... however that time has passed. They now are over priced, and only carry a very few brands.
I try to avoid shopping at Best Buy whenever possible.
The company's policy... that was never explicitly given to any sales member. We just sort of were set out with the tools in front of us; naturally we would use the tools we had. We didn't have an official Internet connected employee computer (I tricked the kiosk into giving me Google though), and only really checked the real BestBuy.com when the customer was annoying enough to make us search for a display model with working wifi. We weren't briefed on sales advertised on BB.C either.
... he says they make you do the same amount of work now too, with a third of the staff!), etc. They're seeing what I saw: lack of business ethics.
I left that company long ago. I go back to talk to the eternal drones, the employees that have been there for 5 years... they tell me they're noticing the company is shady, it reports good earnings during down times by cutting labor massively (truth; fulltime = 28 hours, part time = 4 hours, january... and fire as many part timers as possible
It's not enough to ride a legal case on, you need hard evidence that shows that yes all this "shady business" is really shady business and yes it's violating actual laws. The SEC and attorney generals and everyone are starting to find that evidence. BestBuy is starting to crumble, and if it doesn't shape up it will fall. If we could dump everything bad about BestBuy into the open right now, the SEC would come by and inform them they have to STOP ALL TRADE until further investigation (i.e. death).
that are obsessed with new being untouched? I used to buy my CD's from a shop that opened them and let you listen, a lot of people I knew wouldn't shop at places like that because they wanted the disk to be absolutely new.
Likewise, when I shop for computer gear I always use a place like Fry's because they have such a reasonable return policy. I've never really blanched at something having been opened that I bought (so long as it's undamaged and works as expected).
That said, the mentioned hard drives might make me a little nervous if they'd been removed from the static bag (and presumably plugged in). But I think that has more to do with the mechanical parts and the fact that I'd have to wipe and reformat the drive (work) for my own peace of mind.
Clam-shells are over rated.
Quack, quack.
Well that pretty much says it. Yes I'm the /.'er who continually finds himself slamming the company he used to love over and over here lately... but I have decided they deserve it.
Best Buy works on the entire notion of 'plausible denial'. The corporate level is the face of Best Buy and really makes Best Buy out to be one hell of an awesome company. However, Best Buy is very goal oriented... but these goals have one major flaw, it is not enough to meet or exceed a goal. Best Buy stores compete against other stores. What this means is if the worst store in the company were to hit 110% of their goals (effectively exceeding expectations right?) then that store is still considered the worse... How? Because all the stores are lined up in a ranking system and if 110% is the lowest but some other stores got on avg 125% of their goals, what the hell are you doing wrong at your store then?
So what this does is drive a very common ideology at the store-level. Do whatever it takes to make sure you are in the top half of the company. At Best Buy, 25% of all stores are on the verge of having their managers and supervisors fired (which means they will try and fire the part-timers and full-timers to save their own jobs first). 26-50% range however are not having picnic's either. If they don't get their act together before the next month, they will likely be in the hot seat too.
What does all this mean? It means corporate says these are our high quality customer oriented policy... but they said if you don't make these goals, we are going to fire you. Believe me, it's a lot easier to fook customers in the @$$ to make sure you win by doing shady as shit than it is to win by following the policies. But, Best Buy corporate has to know this is how their company runs... so they go on letting it happen, because as I said... it's plausible denial.
BBY Corp: What do you mean people are being unknowingly signed up for MSN accounts?
BBY Store Management: How the hell are you supposed to sign up 75% of all PCs sold with MSN accounts?
Here's one for all your /.'s
BBY Corp: GeekSquad needs to make this much money from RAM installs...
BBY GeekSquad: How the hell do we get 10 ram installs in a day... Oh here's an idea, let's charge the installation fee for multiple sticks! w00t! Yes, at $29 per stick, once we had a guy go to 4GB and he had 2 512's pre-installed. It cost him 156 dollars installation fee. Best Buy R0x0rs!
Why the hell when I post does it not maintain my breaks? Is it because I'm not hitting preview and just hitting submit? this is pissing me off because my posts look totally disorganized.
Posted some time ago already...
4 23239
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/03/0
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
We need enforced laws about trade. Otherwise, it would be utter chaos. In your "FREE" world, nobody would be sure of what they were getting, what they were paying, and costs would skyrocket while trade would plummet.
Or do you think stores should be encouraged to commit fraud? For real? I have lots of good ideas that would be difficult to notice or prove. I don't want to live in that kind of world.
Man, you really need that seminar!
I went to Best Buy to get a new laptop for my GF. I looked online, and considered purchasing it online and then doing in-store pickup but decided not to because I wanted to see the damn thing first. Went to the nearest BB that had it in stock (30 miles away), and they had it for $50 more than online. I asked, they checked their in-store computers, which also showed the $50 higher price. Luckily, this was just before Vista came out, and they had some swanky HP machine w/a touch screen there running Vista as a demo. I was able to access the web and bring up their public site with the correct price. I got the right price in the end, but what a pain!
Wow, I had to reread the story, I thought it said "Jerry Falwell Jr., Connecticut's consumer protection commissioner". I was wondering how he got from Virginia to Connecticut so fast.
1)Scam People who scam consumers
2)Profit
To get a paragraph break, type less_than, P, greater_than (three characters total). The first time you do this in a post, you must do it twice to get a line-space.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
"Online Only" guarantees a sale, or attempts to. it guarantees you won't be buying it from another store or website while you still have the power to buy it somewhere else only a mouse-click away. it's more crucial that they get your attention then, as you are far less inconvenienced to go elsewhere (type compuplus.com, jr.com, newegg.com in your browser) as you are to leave the store, get back in your car, & drive to Fry's or wherever the next emporium of electronic crap is in your area, let alone put up with THEIR sales policies.
Who wants to bet that in response, Best Buy will simply raise their online prices?
This reminds me of the fiasco in Quebec concerning dry-cleaners. Women's clothes cost more to dry clean than men's, and for a good reason: there is more variety in the fabric and cut of women's clothes than men's, and therefore they require extra care. Typical nanny-state Quebec declared this was a form of sexual discrimination; so the dry cleaners simply raised the prices of cleaning men's clothes to match women's.
Who won? The cleaners. Who lost? The consumer.
Government: Please stay out of private enterprise.
P.P.S. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
Caught me too at first. You're leaving it on the HTML Formatted posting method. You'll need the
:)
s in there for linebreaks, or switch it to Plain Old Text.
It's a very literal website
Future Shop, the Canadian retailer BB just bought has been doing the same thing before BB bought them out.
... its *blocked*. Ditto Amazon.com. 10 popup windows and a command prompt pop up to execute a script to shut down the competitor's site. Seems like they forgot about Google cache... Oops! Turns out the Skyfi 3 sucked so I didn't but it. The very fact no one could honestly help me and tried to deceive me made me walk out the door and I'll never go back.
The other day, I went to FS to buy Satellite radio receiver and a home kit. FS didn't have the cheaper but good SkyFi 2 receiver I wanted. It had it on sale in the flyer but there was probably only one in the store. They say the Skyfi 3 is on sale and much better. They offer to me to use their computer to look up the product. Great! Go on newegg.com
I would recount that BB staff spent 35 minutes looking for a radio saying it was in stock, couldn't find it, offered a raincheck and never called me back. But that's another story....
Its true, i used to work there. Glad to see they are being called out for it.
I needed a printer fast so I went and bought a relative cheap all-in-one unit from HP ($60). The box said it would work with Mac OS X. It didn't, so I returned it saying that I wanted my money back since the advertisement was incorrect, even HP confirmed they had problems with their drivers. They went like: No, 15% restocking fee or buy a more expensive model. I said: I don't want a more expensive model, this unit doesn't work as advertised, it's useless, I want my money back, I'll buy another one elsewhere because you don't carry other brands. No, couldn't do it, after a long time, I just took the unit, went outside and advertised to everybody not to buy their stuff anymore.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
"Because you can get this great service plan, for only PENISES a day! I'll sign you up for that, OK?"
Is how I read that.
, , , or
One time Best Buy printed an ad to the effect of "purchase any stick of memory and receive $50 off when installed by us", only they apparently forgot to add "with the purchase of a new computer". This was a coupon that you print right from their website, complete with bar code. So essentially we'd go into a Best Buy, find the 256 meg sticks of the Kingston pc2700 memory (which rang up to $50), had them charge us for the installation fee (w/out actually having them install the memory), scan the coupon, and like magic the total came up to $0.00. This would confuse the shit out of the cashiers. After they'd get a manager over to doublecheck everything, we were free to go. I still have some of those receipts that show the $0.00 total ;).
;).
And, if that wasn't bad enough, my roommate took that same memory back to Best Buy a couple months later to return it for store credit (he had like 3 or 4 sticks of it). For some reason, the store credit value for each stick of memory was like $75 instead of the original $50 he "paid" for it. Long story short, he's now the owner of a $300 digital camera
It really blows ass that a company like Best Buy pulls shit like this, but what, exactly are they going to learn from this?
The lawyers trying the case on both sides will get filthy, filthy richer and according to the likely outcome of the likely class-action suit, anyone who shopped at a Best Buy in some geographic area between date x and date y is entitled to a free $10 gift card for store credit only.
The same monkeys that got overcharged the first time around will be those going straight to Best Buy with their $10 gift cards to use towards the purchase of something else they probably don't need, can't afford, and will be financing through Best Buy.
Yeah, I'm sure this will hurt Best Buy real bad.
In cases such as this, what the state of Fed needs to do is step in, find out who ordered and/or carried out this bait-and-switch/scam and CHARGE THEM WITH A CRIME. Like, maybe, theft, fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, etc.
Otherwise, big companies will continue to get little slaps on the wrist, and the lawyers are the only ones who will benefit.
Jail and money are the only things these guys understand, but it's often looked at in reverse from the perspective of the judicial system:
Let's say I work for Enron. I'm 30 years old, and decide to steal millions. I'll likely be out of jail in 5-15 years, in which time, assuming I hid the money properly (which is probably a safe assumption for anyone 'smart' enough to embezzle millions from a public company), the smaller pile of money will have grown into a bigger pile of money. I'll also have the time to catch up on my sleep and write my memoirs in a comfy, Fed min-security prison in Connecticut.
In cases where tons of money are actually stolen by single individuals at the corporation, punish them by TAKING THE MONEY AWAY. It's worth it for them to steal millions mid-career, because they'll still be able to enjoy it after prison.
Now look at situations where it's corporations stealing the money via false ads and fraud:
They charge everyone a few bucks extra and it quickly turns into millions. In this case, it's a team of bad apples, but likely they're not keeping the extra money. It's people acting illegally on BEHALF of the corporation. Find the ones that orchestrated it and throw them in JAIL, since there's no money to take, and they weren't even smart enough to steal for personal gain.
Message contains 1 attachment: spam.gif
Don't you remember when they were having people arrested for comparison shopping? Wasn't this the store that tried to forbid *writing down prices?*
The ONLY reason to shop at Best Buy is to buy their loss-leader music CDs and DVDs, but I'm not sure they still do that, and I don't buy cartel-produced entertainment anymore.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Is this really over charging?
Sounds like bait-and-switch to me.
IANAL, but over charging can't be illegal per se, it's not like they FORCE you to buy from them. But bait-and-switch is illegal iirc.
If you were offended by anything I said... No, I'm not sorry. Please lighten up.
By that, I mean this is the USian way of doing business. Bait and switch. Or they just rob you (that would be the geek squad division).
Fixed it for you.
About six months ago I went in and was looking for some memory, I told the guy it was online for 49 bucks and the item on the shelf was 69. He goes to the site and says, "Nope. it's 69 online." I had my treo still set at the besyt buy site and I turned it on and said "Is this not the same SKU?" It was. He scratches his beard and says "I don't get it. Let me ask my manager." Manager comes over and says "Ah. We must have a cached page. It's 49 dollars"
Now. Maybe.. But I doubt it was a cached page. This explains alot.
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
They don't have a "secret" lowest price for matching. But all the chains have criteria that must be met to match a competitor's price, and nearly all retail chains place limitations on their own sale prices (while supplies last, rebates, included items, even company-specific model #s in the case of computers) which technically disqualify the promotion from price-matching.
Didn't stop us from matching prices and offers very aggressively when I worked there. And we still realized a profit from all of my sales, so that was just business and revenue we were taking away from the competition. But it was almost always a manager-approved exception to some rule or another regarding the price-matching policy.
I'm sure this has changed now that Circuit City has become a dumping ground for rejects from Best Buy, current CEO included. The situation reminds me of an anecdote from one of Sun Tzu's contemporaries concerning a Chinese kingdom that destabilized a neighboring enemy by releasing thousands of criminals across the border.
I'd be careful there...
You see, unless you're using a non-standard definition, the standard warranty is offered by the manufacturer of the item, not Best Buy. The extended warranty IS through BB(or at least their contractor). Thus, if you didn't buy the extended warranty, and the 30 day* return period has passed, then they are indeed correct to tell you that you're trying to get service from the wrong people.
*Or whatever it is for that particular product
I don't read AC A human right
Actually, I had made the mistake of buying the extended warranty which they proceeded to declare void the first time I tried to make a claim against it. Besides, it doesn't matter whether or not I was trying to get service from the wrong people, that still doesn't excuse a manager telling a customer to "fuck off" I'm not paraphrasing here, those were the words the manager used.
GENERATION 667: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation
BestBuy policy is that they do not match Online prices not even their own online prices. Hint: It's on their wall by checkout in very huge signs. The price match guarantee is that they match local competitors that have the same product instock and have "no barrier to entry" (like Costco where you have to 'pay' to be a member)
Now, a lot of the times (most) BestBuy will match their own online prices as a courtesy, but it is not their policy to do so, so I'm not sure how they can get sued for it. Maybe some states "force" brick and mortor stores to match their online stores prices?
Contact your credit card company and reverse the charges on the "services not rendered" clause (which generally does exceed the normal dispute period limitations)
Or just file in small claims court, they'll probably just pay you off rather then deal with it.
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...
Even though I did just get canned from Best Buy's Geek Squad. We aren't all bad. I did all I could to try and help customers get what they needed without focusing on the % to budget.
As for the national site and the local site (thats what they are called in our toolkit) I always made sure to check both for each and every customer that came in since I had heard about this "scandal" and never saw a difference between the two in my 6 months of employment.
Maybe thats the true reason I got canned instead of getting writeups for being a minute late due to bad traffic...
You know, many years ago when they first opened the BB store in covina/west covina, my buddy and i used to go there a lot. We were still in H.S. and pretty poor, well more cheap than poor. The point is that we noticed that we were being over charged EVERY time we shopped there. Being the cheap bastards, we'd calculate our purchases (games at the time) with tax included. So we always had JUST enough. And you wouldn't believe it we were off a couple of bucks every time. Well, my buddy just blamed my math being off just a little so we just paid the extra (that was our food money!) and went on with our business. But i got tired of that shit and took a calculator, and sure enough, we still got over charged! After we paid for our product, we busted out the calculator and showed the cashier and they called the manager over. We got our $1.20 back and that was "the end of it." But we made sure to tell the "manager" that this ALWAYS happened. They said they'd look into it. Well we went back a couple more times after that and it was the same deal -- but now we always got our money back and only paid the correct amount. I wonder if anyone else ever caught this? Imagine $1 for each item purchased from each customer each day... thats a LOT of money! I'm all for a class action lawsuit if you guys know about this!
My abilities are only limited by my imagination
And all of what you say is true, but I don't think the AG doesn't still have a case. BB is publishing a _weekly_ ad, and they know (as you came to know) from experience that sale items tend to sell out on the first or second day. So if I'm a higher-up at BB, and I'm setting a policy in which I know on half if not more of the days of a given sale the item in question won't be available, isn't that still pretty much bait and switch on half the days? If BB intentionally runs a sale in which it knows it will run out of items far before consumers stop coming looking for said items, that doesn't sound ok. I suppose the law will come down on whether it can be proven "intentional" or not, and maybe it can't, but I can't imagine that leadership isn't at least aware of the situation, and choosing not to order more units, or warn customers, etc. So good luck to the AG.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
(Repost)
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.
What devilspgd said. Take them to court. Before you ever consider buying an insurance plan, read the paperwork very carefully. Before pressing a claim, make sure it's covered.
I never buy extended warranties for that stuff, their profit margin is something like 200%, vs 10% or so for large-cap insurance items like homes and cars(I don't count healthcare plans as insurance anymore).
I don't read AC A human right
A friend of a friend saw them for what they were years ago. They shop at Best Buy et al., but strictly as "insurance". If something breaks, they buy things from these stores, but only keep it for as long as it takes for their real equipment to come back from warranty repair. If the store happens to sell the same model, sometimes they'll just return the broken one directly to them.
There's nothing like a good gunfight to uplift the spirit--Calvin
This is old news, fellas. Anyone who does even a little price shopping can see that Best Buy is actually Worst Buy.
They overcharge for everything. Anyone remember the recent scandal in Connecticut where they were dishing out a separate web page to avoid giving discounts?
These people are real morons.
gotcha thanks for the help guys, I didn't realize once I finally setup my account the settings would be there... lol. I was starting to think I needed to put in HTML... I'll switch to plain text.
/. account, hehe.
Here's my first spaced out text on my
Yah.... or you could just come back in the middle of the night with a brick and a pickup truck and go crazy.
I work in a photo lab and sell cameras, and it may seem like an upsell, but the high end batteries, and especially rechargeable batteries, are sooo worth it for digital cameras at least. People will come to pick up their digital prints and have a 20 pack of the cheap cheap (not energizer, duracell or rayovac, like the "Heavy Duty" brand ones) AAs, ill grab a 2 pack of energizer lithiums off our little spinny rack on the counter and tell them "These 2 batteries here, are going to last longer in your camera than all of those.", and its the truth. If somebody is buying a camera for a trip i always try to sell them a pack of the good (energizer lithium or duracell power pix) batteries, or if they're buying it for general use i try to sell them rechargeables, usually energizer because thats the only charger that comes will full batteries. Most chargers will come with 2100mAh batteries and then the separate packs are 2500mAh, the energizer comes with 2500mAh batts.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Not much uses NiCds anymore because they're slow to charge, have a memory and are terrible for the environment. The only thing that comes to mind when i think NiCd is corless power tools, but even those are being replaced by Li-Ion. Any rechargable AA you get now is gonna be a NiMH.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I was wondering if, seeing that you know a good deal about the workings of Best Buy retail stores, you would mind speaking to me regarding some of the business practices at Best Buy. I am an attorney in New York and would appreciate any time you may have to speak 1 on 1. Email me any time at danielrehns@gmail.com.