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Best Buy Accused of Overcharging

Posted by Zonk on from the maybe-shouldn't-be-quite-so-greedy dept.

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.'"

6 of 301 comments (clear)

  1. About damn time by linzeal · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:About damn time by Richard+McBeef · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Luckily I brought a printout or I would never have gotten the price quoted online.

      Did they verify your printout? If not, I just had a great idea...

    2. Re:About damn time by terrymr · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The other one I've seen is the shelves being restocked with a "sold out" product only minutes after the day-after-thanksgiving sale ended - when I asked I was told the truck had just delivered them. Note this wasn't a product that was advertised as limited to a particular number.

  2. Re:there's a reason it's called WorstBuy by fo0bar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think there's a good reason my electronics store has a banner that reads "Your best buys are always at Fry's". "Your best buys are always re-shrinkwrapped at Fry's!"

    But seriously, you chose Fry's as an example as the opposite of Best Buy? Half their shelf stock is re-shrinkwrapped. And half of that isn't even labeled as such (I once bought a brand new WAP11 whose ESSID was factory-programed "KensLaptop".) If you want RAM or a CPU, you must go through an inept salesperson to print you out a cage reservation ticket, assuming you can get to him of course; there are usually 10 other people who want the same thing huddled around him. And I've never done so, but I heard their returns process is Cthulhu-level pain.
  3. Re:there's a reason it's called WorstBuy by CthulhuDreamer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Their collection of external hard drives is often re-shrinkwrapped customer returns. Most of them have not been erased, so there's usually a collection of mp3s and assorted files to rummage through. One may have to buy and return a few before finding a genuinely new drive, but collecting a few hundred gigabytes of music along the way makes up for some of the hassle.

  4. Something about Blumenthal by superbus1929 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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".