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.'"

Comments

Re:About damn time

[zerocool^]

Not that I give a damn about their business practices, but I used to be a sales associate at Best Buy, in the computer department.

You have to trust me when I say this: The people in the store have NOTHING to do with this. We never hid sales items.

Here's the real story. Every Friday or Saturday, we'd get the weekly ad which went live on Sunday. In my store, we got two trucks a week, Wednesday and Friday, after close of business. Sometimes they were 48', sometimes 53'. If we didn't have the ad by Friday night, we could usually tell which stick of ram would be on sale because we got a box of it, probably 20 units or more. As I recall, there were usually three brands - kingston, ValURam, and one other that I forget. Every week, one of the 256 MB sticks would be on sale, and usually a laptop stick as well (I worked there around 2000-2001). So, when we knew, we'd stock as much of it as possible to have it close on hand.

With no exceptions, on Sunday morning at open of business (11 am), the first people in the store would be headed straight for the computer department counter, to buy all the ram they could. Usually, it said something like "limit 2 per" on the ad, but when it didn't say that, boy was it not a fun day to hand out the ram. Anyway, by 6 pm - close of business - on Sunday, all the ram was gone. We of course still had the two other brands in the same size which were $20 more. But, by Tuesday, the customers were incensed about the lack of advertised items.

I cannot count the times I was accused by outraged, misinformed customers of bait-and-switch when I'd show them what we happened to have in stock, be it ram or computers. No, sir, I'm sorry that we don't have any more of the $350 E-Machine computer in stock. Perhaps when you see a computer deal that's insanely cheap, you shouldn't presume that you are the only person within 50 miles that will want to purchase it. Yes, sir, we did have them in stock. Yes, sir, we got a shipment of 30 of them last Friday, and we anticipate getting another 15 Wednesday, and probably some more this Friday. No sir, I can't hold one for you.

Whatever. Ask me anything you want, I worked there long enough to know how almost everything works. I'll reply truthfully.

~Wx