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Customers Creating Fake Amazon Pages To Get Cheap Electronics At Walmart
turkeydance writes People are reportedly creating fake Amazon pages to show fake prices on electronics and other items. In the most heavily publicized cases, Walmart was reportedly duped into selling $400 PlayStation 4 consoles for under $100. From the article: "The company announced on Nov. 13 that it would price-match select online retailers, including Amazon.com. However, any Amazon member with a registered selling account can create authentic looking pages and list items 'for sale' online. Consumers need only take a screen capture of the page and show it to a cashier at checkout in order to request the price match."
WalMart's already wised up, and changed the rules. Now it only applies to items on Amazon SOLD BY Amazon. No more marketplace sellers.
http://consumerist.com/2014/11...
I used to work a second job at Walmart, in the electronics department. At least once a month I would get somebody trying to buy a game system with a bogus coupon. Most of them were $100 off of a Nintendo DS.
good luck. i'm doing jury duty on a civil case in NYC now and the system will break you before you see any money
It is fraud if you create a web page purely to deceive Walmart into giving you a discount on a product you had no intention of selling for the price.
It is deeply dishonest, and there is no other excuse for that behaviour.
Alternately, these might be Wal-Mart employees who've figured out how earn more than $15/hr by taking a cut of the fake savings, without appearing overtly guilty. At least, you for one are eager to assume they're too dumb to be guilty, which is probably true of their bosses also.
Fry's has a simple system for this.
1. You tell the sales associate (it's not done at the checkout counter) what site you want them to match.
2. They check it against the list of sites that they are willing to match.
3. They go to the site on their computer, and look it up.
4. They print an invoice that you take to the counter with your purchase.
5. BTW, they have incentive to do this, because they get something any time they print an invoice. I don't know the details, but it would be dumb for Fry's to withhold whatever the reward is just because it was a price match. So, anytime somebody at Fry's is actually helpful (rare, I know, but sometimes happens...) don't balk when they want to print an invoice!
You don't get away with just showing them your screen.
You can show them a screen, from the web or some price-search app, and then they will go to their own browser to look it up.
After all, when your employer pays you terribly, why do you care? Reject the idea, customer complains to your manager. Who is also, may not be the brightest star in the constellation, who may discipline/fire you.
Also? Average wage at WalMart: $8/hr (weekly: 8*8=64 * 5 days=$320). Which means, pulling this once and reselling the console is almost a week's pay. Taking $300 from WalMart, whose family owns more money than the bottom 42% of the US combined to feed your family doesn't seem like the most heartless crime in the world.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
I don't get why you think they are crooks?
Probably because its textbook case of fraud.
A fake price is still a price.
But its being misrepresented as real price, in a real offer to sell real playstations to the real public.
Walmarts price matching policies apply to genuine offers made on the same product by another party to the public. It doesn't apply to fake listings that were never evem intended to be seen, nevermind honored, by the public.
Walmart, should probably demand to see the listing showing a PS4. If the customer can't find it, it its not an offer to the public. If the crook leaves it up so walmart CAN find, it (and just plans to blow off anyone who tries to order one in the meantime) then Walmart should order up 50,000 units. That's "get the full attention of the FBI" money when you don't honor the shipment.
And there's no hiding behind "limited quantity available", or limited time and its already expired offers... because price matching policies tend to exclude that sort of thing too.
Because the objective of price matching policies is to convert a competitors sale to your sale. If the competitor can't fulfill the order then you haven't lost a customer to them and don't need to price match.
yes it's okay to take advantage of people. that's how capitalism works.
Actually, it's called fraud...
> Is this really a loophole? What happens if I go to amazon.com and find one of these $100 playstations, and quickly buy it, then insist they honor the contract?
Insist all you want, there is no contract until there is an exchange of value aka your card is charged. And your card isn't charged until the item ships.
This is all well established law. Not a week goes by where someone on fatwallet or slickdeals hasn't had an order cancelled because of a misprice on the merchant's part. If they actually charge the card and ship the product, then there is nothing the merchant can legally do about. But until that point, the ball is in their court 100%.
They took a $10 off coupon and added a zero?
(My understanding is that coupons have barcodes to actually check the validity of the offer in a database or something.)
Nope, manufactured their own coupon. It's not hard to do, it used to be a frequent thing on the various underbellies of the internet. And I'm not talking about chans, a bit deeper. The barcode scan is looking to see if it's valid, again--easy to make it work as well. One of the big ones back in '08/09 was for baby formula, people use it to cut other drugs--and would use mules to buy the stuff from walmart, costco, walgreens, etc usually at $200-800 at a time.
Om, nomnomnom...
Walmart was not obliged to sell other than by it's own actions... They could have challenged it or otherwise...
It's actions were made on the intent of beating it's competitors and this backfired... Only consumers really need to be protected from their own stupidity and ignorance - Corporations are big enough to make their own miscalculations and live with the consequences.
caveat venditor would be more appropriate -
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
Except that is completely wrong. Fraud and theft are illegal in free market capitalism. Rape and murder are illegal too.
Why does everyone think they understand and are qualified to speak about and criticize economic systems when they have only the barest idea of what the words even mean, much less the history and principles behind them?
Even easier, Inspect Element (built in to virtually every web browser these days) and change the live HTML.
If people knew how easy it was to forge screenshots these days they'd stop believing everything that purports to be one.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
It really doesn't, and you don't understand Laissez faire.
No, I understand how it works in reality just fine. You can give me all the bullshit definitions you want, but when put in practice it very much does mean that.
Next you'll tell us that rape and murder are legal under that system.
Since it's an economic policy not a social one, no I wouldn't.