Best Buy Scam

[Lightmeup]

Apparently when you check BB's online website to do a price check from inside one of their stores using their local wifi network, you get redirected to a secret website that has higher prices. When you bypass their wifi and go direct to the internet, you get their regular site, which has better prices. Pretty sneaky, huh?

"Best Buy still uses a secret internal website to deceive customers, according to the L.A. Times. The website appearing on in-store kiosks resembles Best Buy's official site in every way, except for the prices. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal was surprised to hear that his investigation failed to end Best Buy's bait-and-switch, telling the L.A. Times: "We thought Best Buy had addressed this. That's what they said to us. Apparently that's not the case." A tipster in Virginia also reports the continued existence of the secret website.

According to our tipster:
Not that anyone should be surprised, but Best Buy is still at it.
My wife spent several hours at home researching digital picture frames online, and Best Buy actually had the best price on one, as well as being the only way to get it in time for Christmas. Last night we went to our local Fairfax, Virginia, Best Buy. They didn't have the frame at first, and I actually have to commend the staff, they searched for about 30 minutes because one of them thought he had seen it somewhere. They finally came up with one, the Kodak EasyShare EX1011. I took it to a different station and asked them to price check it, and it came up at $255.99, well over the $234.49 that was listed online.

We went to one of their public computer terminals and searched it and it came up at the $255.99, no surprise. iPhone to the rescue. At first it was showing the $255 price on my iPhones browser, then I realized it was connected through WiFi, so they have it blocking the external Best Buy site and feeding the fake one. I disabled WiFi and searched again and bam, there it was, $234.99.

The electronics department said I had to go to customer service for such a thing, and they promptly took care of the price change."

http://consumerist.com/337161/best-buy-still-embracing-deceptive-in+store-kiosks

 

[PhotonWrangler]

Holy cow. That is evil! I hope this comes to the attention of the media (again), especially since they've been ordered to stop this behavior and haven't.

 

[gadget_lover]

I'm not sure I'd call it evil, or even bait and switch IF the intent is simply to let you find what's available in the store and at what price. That even sounds reasonable. When I use their kiosk in the store I'm expecting to see what the store has.

If you'd bought it online, you'd have gotten the lower price, possibly with shipping and handling charges.

It would be evil if Best Buy intercepted all the rival web sites and changed their prices, but that's not what has been suggested.

Daniel

 

[Lightmeup]

I'm not sure I'd call it evil, or even bait and switch IF the intent is simply to let you find what's available in the store and at what price. That even sounds reasonable. When I use their kiosk in the store I'm expecting to see what the store has.

I was born at night, but not last night. The fact that they have two similar looking sites where the only difference is that the one available in their store has higher prices seems like an obvious ploy to trick you into thinking you are getting the true "online" price. There is really no reasonable explanation for the existence of this alternate site, since they could just as easily be accessing the legit site, right? They have gone to a lot of trouble by creating and maintaining this bogus website, and the only reason that makes any sense is that it is a scam.

 

[gadget_lover]

I'm not sure why you expect a mail-order catalog (as an internet site most closely resembles) to have the same pricing as a brick and mortar store. Most places that have a catalog charge for shipping and handling, so they can mark down the prices. It costs extra money to build a store and stock it with merchandise that may or may not sell before it goes out of date. Mail order can utilize 'Just in Time" purchasing, so the inventory investment is drastically reduced.

I'm also not sure why you expect to stand in a store and shop online. If it were my store, I'd gladly give you the online price, then add shipping, handling and taxes.

When I go to a place with a kiosk, I expect that the kiosk will reflect the prices and products available in the store, not the ones available only via the mail. Maybe Best Buy thinks that way too.

As for similar look to the web site.... anyone who has developed websites for internal and external use has run into the issue of using the same templates to keep the look and feel the same. There are even legal reasons to keep logos, colors and slogans identical.

If you want to talk about bad stores, try the now defunct Comp USA. I visited a dozen stores and every one of them had higher priced models of everything on the shelf behind tags for less expensive models with similar names. I asked in every store, and 10 out of 12 claimed that kids were moving tags around on them. The reality is that the scanner would ring up the higher price and most people accepted it.

I don't like best buy, but evil requires much more effort than accurately reflecting in store prices.

Daniel

 

[greenstuffs]

I don't shop at bestbuy unless its a rock bottom price. Having said that i have to add the workers are rude and they just want to sell you stupid cable and extended warranty. Besides that this is more deceiving than bait and switch.

 

[Lightmeup]

I'm not sure why you expect a mail-order catalog (as an internet site most closely resembles) to have the same pricing as a brick and mortar store.

Because they say so. Many big box retailers let you use "price matching" when you come into their store, a policy which lets you get the same price that a competitor charges or, in the case of Best Buy, pay the same price in the store that Best Buy charges on its website.

 

[BB]

Retail is a dog eat dog world and I understand corporations trying to maximize the buck. And, all in all, I would be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt...

However, in this case they are silently redirecting the address to the same website except with higher prices. And, they were caught before doing this without notification, and now they are doing it using weasel worded disclaimers.

This is almost on par with "national" product pricing on the self and the bar code reader using "local pricing" on the register. And a notice on the check stand stating that shelf pricing reflects national pricing and the register reflects local pricing.

If they were serious about clearing up the confusion, they would put two price entries on the "in-store" website--one national and one local--but of course, they would never do that... Ergo, they are scum.

-Bill

 

[fieldops]

I'm not sure why you expect a mail-order catalog (as an internet site most closely resembles) to have the same pricing as a brick and mortar store. Daniel

Best Buy like many stores has a "pickup in store option" when ordering online , so there is no shipping fee. This "alternate site" sounds deceptive to me.

 

[gadget_lover]

As I re-read the last half dozen posts, it occurred to me that I'd never seen anything in a best buy store that advertised free wi-fi. I've been in their stores dozens of times and don't recall being able to connect to their wi-fi, though I usually do my surfing via a PDA tethered to a cell phone, and only look for open hotspots as a lark.

In order to classify as "evil" they have to do something to suck in the unsuspecting shopper.

I suspect that the wireless is for the store's internal use for their workstations so they can look up products and prices. The fact that customers are stumbling upon the open access points is probably not by design.

I could, of course, be wrong.

Daniel

 

[PhotonWrangler]

I've never seen a sign advertising their WiFi service either. So their "geek squad" doesn't secure their internal APs?

 

[da.gee]

I thought this had been corrected too as the story is old. They should be punished for this BS.

 

[z96Cobra]

Beat them at their own game. Take a printout of the lower price with you, and keep it in your pocket. Buy it at the higher price, then take the receipt over to customer service and make them price match it. You'll get the difference plus 10%. I remember reading about them doing this a while back and one (or a few) state(s) took them to court over it. I think it was about a year ago.

Roger

 

[Alan B]

Interesting story.

I don't know how they do it, but if I was making a website for internal/external pricing I would not make a separate site, but look at where the request was coming from and index a different price column in the database. This may not be a different website, but the same site with different price calculations based on the store vs inline costs.

Of course it would be trivial for this "same site" to look different to the user, and it should, IMHO. I would actually prefer to see both the "online price" and the "store price" at the same time, but this might interfere with the idea of online ordering with store pickup.

-- Alan

 

[Mash]

This has been going on for a while, and some states attorney general even got involved.
However BB seems to have gone back to their old ways, and covering themselves with some lawyer speak disclaimers.
Apparently sometimes they refuse to "pricematch" the lower price of the BB internet site!

 

[83Venture]

Wal-Mart won't price match there own internet price with the same item setting on the shelf in the store. Found this out last year when I bought a new Canon camera.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

Isn't the policy that they'll match the price of competitors? I don't think this counts as a "competitor."

 

[AWGD8]

You guys got it confused...

This is how it works, BestBuy online price is different from the price that you see inside the store even checking using the BB (wi-fi).
It would take an experience BestBuy associate to log-in to their computer and goes online (not BestBuy store WI-FI connection). Normally what`s happening is that some items online (web) are on sale and when you go to the store the item is @ regular price.

Based from my experience, I went to Bestbuy to get a NANO. Before I left the house I did check the online price of Nano @ $180. When I arrived at the store, one of the associate told me it`s $199. She even checked it online (Wi-Fi). So I told her I would just order online and left her. Then I decided to ask another BestBuy associate and did check the price again on the computer. Yes, it`s $199 then this time he logged in to some BB website outside their in-store prices and it`s showed the real online price that I saw when I was checking the price at home. He said that he would price match the Bestbuy online discount price to their in-store price then sealed the deal.

I think the best way to avoid this hassle is to print the online price before you leave the house.

 

[flashfan]

Best Buy offers store pick-up for online purchases, so if you want the online price, purchase it online, then just pick it up from the store. Their website will also show which store has the merchandise in stock, which is convenient, and should save time.

You will get a confirmation email fairly quickly to confirm that the store has the item, and all you need to do is go and pick it up. Sounded like a really good system to me, but...read on.

I did an online purchase with store pick-up about ten days ago, and am still embroiled in a nightmare with Best Buy because the store wouldn't/couldn't give me a simple GIFT receipt. They said online purchases don't get gift receipts. Huh? Called corporate customer service the next morning--they were a bit "confused," but said they would expedite an email gift receipt within 24 hours.

Three days later, still no gift receipt. Called again, and found the first person I spoke to did absolutely nothing. Transferred around to different departments and spent more than two hours on hold, and was told a GIFT receipt would be arriving within about 72 hours.

What do I get? An email saying they're mailing an "online receipt" which I should receive within 7-10 days, with no mention about whether or not it is actually a GIFT receipt, rather than a "regular" receipt.

Good thing the item I purchased is not a computer or related item. The 14-day return period would expire before I even received the gift receipt!!!

Sorry for the rant...!

 

[flashy bazook]

My memory is foggy on this, but wasn't Best Buy at one point kicking customers out of its stores when they were going around checking prices and usind a PDA as a price comparison tool?

This was before the Wi-Fi internet access, by the way, I believe that the customers were just using the PDAs to record the prices.

So, assuming my memory is accurate on this, the information on the tainted website would be par for the course for Best Buy.