Best Buy Sued for Price Match Denial Policy

[Guest]

Who cares? It is a price MATCH, meaning that you already have a place you can get it for that price anyway. Just go back to where you got the ad.
Even if it is out of stock the first store usually allows rainchecks/special orders unless it is something like the black friday ads, but those are excluded from most price matching anyway.

Note, I work at OfficeMax and in over a year there have never ever seen a denial for price match or return, even those that are obviously invalid and shady. Like a guy buying a laser printer and returning it 3 days later with empty toner cartridges saying it didnt work... every month.

 

[jerreece]

[citation][nom]ChaosGS[/nom]You cant beat walmart price wise, its impossible, so Circuit city's advantage was customer service and expertise[/citation]

LOL Are you joking? Have you ever shopped @ Circuit City? I refused to ever shop at Circuit City because I always knew 100 times more information about the products than the sales staff did. And I'm no expert.

As far as the price matching debacle goes, it's no surprise. It's all about profit margins. If one looks very closely, they'll find that quite often two major box stores will carry the exact same product, except there's a difference in the model number!! This is how they get away with refusing to price match on some occasions. Because it's a "different" product.

Manufacturers don't help the matter either. Since they are the ones who sometimes make the same product with different model numbers. One number being specifically for a certain retailer.

 

[chaosgs]

Not just a price match, they actually BEAT the price, and most of the time give you 10% off that price. BTW Call of duty world at war cost $15 for circuit city (thats how much they paid for it), and we sold them for $60 new when they first came out, that's how much profit stores make off games, the Average game cost $12-$20 for the store to purchase it and re-sell it so much higher. Wish i had a direct buy.

 

[Railgun1369]

Exactly. Though it's a toss up. Pay for shipping on one hand or tax on the other, depending on where and from whom you buy.

 

[chaosgs]

[citation][nom]jerreece[/nom]LOL Are you joking? Have you ever shopped @ Circuit City? I refused to ever shop at Circuit City because I always knew 100 times more information about the products than the sales staff did. And I'm no expert.[/citation]

Ya i worked there, and you will see this problem every where a dumbass manager works, it all starts at management. But at the same time it doesn't matter how good management or the employee is if the customer is retarded. I had a customer who needed a copy of vista 64 bit so that he could have 8 GB of ram installed for his crysis machine, i told him that's a bit over board for a $50 game and would see no performance increase what so ever, than he bitched me out saying i don't know shit.

Had a customer yelling and CRYING literally crying, "Obama lied to us and now the Russians are gonna nuke the hell out of us, ITS THE END OF THE WORLD" The manager was talking her into leaving while me the assistant manager and all the store supervisors were laughing our asses off.

I had a customer bitch me out cause i didn't know every artist and song we carried because "well you work this department, so you should know every artist and every song". Thats not even humanly possible but ya he bitched me out for not knowing his favorite rap artist (i hate rap).

 

[hellscook]

ChaosGS, I know exactly how you feel. It's impossible to know everything in these stores. All these people who post that they know so much more than the employees is totally full of crap. Sure, you may know more details about the product you're looking to buy, especially if you researched it, but do you know the details of all the TV's, receivers, speakers, stands, mp3 players, printers, cameras, etc? The features of each change dramatically from model to model and then the models get discontinued and new ones appear every 3 months.

 

[LaughALot]

I find this piece a little suspect, "alleged that Best Buy provided financial bonuses on denying proper price match requests", how do you track denials? There's no paper trail. "Excuse sir, but before you leave the store pissed off, can I get you to fill out this comment card saying I properly screwed you".

 

[LaughALot]

I've had no problems and I've taken advantage of it several times. But as some one has already indicated its probably the domain of the individual store managers. Example: I live outside of Boulder, Co; I bought a 46 inch LCD for my mother in Colorado Springs (90 miles away), found the same TV for $300 less at Circuit City in Boulder, went to the Broomfield, CO Best Buy location and got the refund. So in doing this I used the Broomfield location to collect a discount for a purchase made at the Colorado Springs location.

 

[hakesterman]

This is the most bogus nonsense this side of Mars. Do you
honestly think they are going to match other store offers if
the price your after is less than what they actually paid for
an item. Frankly they should get rid of the price match anyway
because all their competition has gone out of buisness because
Best Buy kicked all their butts in prices and service.

 

[68vistacruiser]

Only the lawyers will make any money off this suit. I have no doubt that some of these businesses sue themselves so they can settle for pennies on the dollar. Think Ford Explorer. All the owners got for the roll-over problem was a discount on buying another Explorer. I've signed up for several class action suits, one involving Microsoft, another dealing with a diamond ring I bought. I never saw a dime from it, but I bet the lawyers did. Next time, I'm refusing to take part in one.

 

[thegh0st]

I don't know about NY but so far in TX I have never had Best Buy deny a price-match request. There reward zone program used to be really good in the beginning and the only thing I used Circuit City for was their weekly advertisement to get Best Buy to match something in it I wanted and to get my points. Just recently they matched a Fry's add on a Sony TV. Most times they don't even verify the add but on a rare occurrence at certain stores they would call the other store the add was from to verify the item was on sale and in stock (they also did that on the TV of course). Heck, I've even pulled up Fry's on my phone and looked up an item and had Best Buy price match that.

 

[rooket]

Oh I forgot to mention that CC always honored my price matches, there never was 1 single time that they didn't. Best Buy honored ummm one price match on a pack of DVD-R.. I would recommend that they stop doing price matching, a store is not obligated to price match with other stores. The policy is only there to complete and also in this specific case for example all it is there for is to get unsuspecting customers into the store. They offer price match because they know that most people looking to match price with a competitor will buy the product at their price if they don't honor the price match gurantee just because the customer is already at the bb store. That's how their scheme works.

 

[rooket]

Oh yeah I remember the explorer roll over problem. Here's what the problem was with the Firestone tires. They were good tires, but the PSI spec printed on the label on the inside of the door was too low, so people were generally running too low of tire pressure and it was causing stability issues on the road and the truck would end up going out of control and crashing. Had they put the proper spec on the label, there would have been no recall at all.

 

[Guest]

I am not sure of the entire scope of the law suit but most local electronic stores will not price match against the net but only other local stores. This is Fry's policy as well.

 

[antilycus]

worked there, its like commission too. If you dont sell Performance Plans, you don't get hours... which means you dont make money... which means the commissions are tied to money... evil place, dont bother. Go to Amazon.com and get free shipping.

 

[mavroxur]

[citation][nom]ChaosGS[/nom]You cant beat walmart price wise, its impossible, so Circuit city's advantage was customer service and expertise, you dont get customer service at walmart, no one expects customer service there (they expect 5 Star service at Circuit city though). Yeah some people have bad experiences at Circuit city customer service wise and i dont blame them, its managements fault. Though every day we would have a customer shit all over the floors and walls in the bathroom every day, every god damned day, and i mean every fucking day.Best buy is going to go out of business in the next 5 years, worst customer service ever. Every manager there never does anything, making $100K salary plus sales bonuses, all he does is talk on a phone, the assistant manager smokes pot (he stinks of it and has fucked up pupples), while their employees goof off, circuit city wasnt great but never that bad (Walmart is even worse).[/citation]


I dont recall ever getting customer service or expertise at my local Circuit City :-/

 

[rooket]

ChaosGS I read on a review on toms hardware that there is a performance increase by having a lot of ram with windows 64 bit, but they were talking about a core i7 machine as well. There may or may not be some merit to that customer. However, if it was me I'd start at the video card and move on from there if I already had at least 2 gigs. But yeah I'd agree that most customers aren't going to know much, but some of us know some things and don't come in the stores acting like know it alls. Those are the kind of customers that should be appreciated I guess. I really liked the store manager at my local CC, but I think some of the staff were high on weed or something. Not that it really matters I guess. I got good service at my local best buy compared to that store but it doesn't really matter because when I walk in an electronics store I know exaclty what I want and what I want to spend. The staff in these stores are suppose to be there for most customers that have questions they need answered in order to select the proper product and I've noticed that some customers just will absolutely refuse to listen if say for your example they don't really need more ram and they probably need a new computer or video card instead.

 

[cabose369]

i find that hard to believe... I'd take this article with a grain of salt.

 

[Guest]

I go to best buy (in canada) to ask for price matching and they tell me we dont match this store nor that. and gives some lame reasons like : they are wholesalers ( freaking tigerdirect is a wholesaler ? ) wtf

 

[compulsionnra]

I just hope that companies will stop trying to screw their customers. Hopefully this will move Best Buy towards that.