Best Buy uses fake internet site to avoid giving sale prices

The BBQ Pit
1

Apparently, some Best Buys have used an internal intranet site, that looks like the actual Bestbuy.com site, to “prove” to customers that the sale price they are demanding isn’t real.

Basically, the gist of it is that customer X comes in saying that the website offered $Y amount off of a product, and the Best Buy employees say “no, it doesn’t” and then load up the fake internet site to “prove” that the customer is wrong.

It goes on to say that Bestbuy says the intranet site exists to train/inform Bestbuy employees how to use the real website…so why the fuck can’t they just learn on the real website itself? I can see no reason to have this type of internal site, if not to pull this kind of scam.

2

I’m always ambivalent about these discoveries of fraud. It is clearly fraud, but too often the victims pay the price for it. Like the tobacco companies, for example, who were fined out the ying-yang — which is great and all, except that the fine was levied in the form of a consumer tax.

“I shall punish you, sir, by slapping that man over there!”

Something tells me that once all the lawyers and bureaucrats get involved, this fraud from Best Buy is gonna cost us a bundle.

3

But they would not be able to contradict you if you printed the webpage out before going to Best Buy.

4

This just confirms to me that my decision to avoid Best Buy is not totally irrational.

5

Is ‘consumer tax’ a funky way of saying ‘price increase’? Or did some jurisdiction slap on a 50 cent per pack ‘Save Philip Morris’ tariff?

If I ever want a retailer to price match-a competitor’s price, or their own from a website, catalogue, flyer- I bring in a screenprint or copy of the flyer. I thought I was just ultra paranoid. The only place to not honor a web price at the retail store was, you guessed it, Best Buy.

6

[QUOTE=bouv]

It goes on to say that Bestbuy says the intranet site exists to train/inform Bestbuy employees how to use the real website…so why the fuck can’t they just learn on the real website itself? I can see no reason to have this type of internal site, if not to pull this kind of scam.
[/QUOTE]

I really, really don’t want to stick up for Best Buy, here… but I’d like to point out that there are a variety of legitimate reasons to maintain an intranet site version of the production page, and to set up store PC’s to default to it.

One reason might be to isolate performance problems from one site to the other: if the web site is used at the point of sale, and the customer facing site is under extreme load and running terribly (due to high volume at peak times), you don’t want that to be an issue for an employee trying to look something up. Keeping your internal staff off of your production site is generally a good practice.

The lack of up to date sales data on the intranet site doesn’t suprise me at all. My experience with updating customer facing production site content is that it needs to be done now now now, whereas intranet sites are “we’ll get to it when we get to it”. It’s the intranet site, who really cares? When I worked IT at a major bank, intranet site updates were “the next business day” no matter what, to give an example.

It seems like we might have a case of some “enterprising” employees who realized they could trick people with the intranet site, or possibly just employees who didn’t know the difference between the two.

I’m not shedding a tear, though. Best Buy should have realized the hot water they can get in by not being more careful about pricing data, so even if it wasn’t malicious, it seems like it ought to be considered criminally negligent in some way.

7

Wouldn’t the URL be obviously different? Not that casual computer users would notice, but now that we know, could consumers be educated to look for the difference between an internet URL and an intranet URL?

8

[QUOTE=Fear Itself]
Wouldn’t the URL be obviously different? Not that casual computer users would notice, but now that we know, could consumers be educated to look for the difference between an internet URL and an intranet URL?
[/QUOTE]

And then what? Have the Best Buy clerk drop some line on you like “Must be a mistake in that server, we have the REAL prices on THIS site..”

9

[QUOTE=Fear Itself]
Wouldn’t the URL be obviously different? Not that casual computer users would notice, but now that we know, could consumers be educated to look for the difference between an internet URL and an intranet URL?
[/QUOTE]

Not if they wanted to scam people with it.
Host files and DNS servers can both change what ip a domain name maps to.

10

[QUOTE=Annie]
Is ‘consumer tax’ a funky way of saying ‘price increase’? Or did some jurisdiction slap on a 50 cent per pack ‘Save Philip Morris’ tariff?
[/QUOTE]

Not per se, but the price of tobacco products (before taxes) did go up, as a result of the various tobacco lawsuits. It’s interesting to me, to see that RJ Reynolds (the only company I’d looked at) had their stock price dip drastically, when the lawsuits were filed, but started recovering as the talk of the settlement was finalized.

I think it’s fair to say that, since RJR’s stock price has been rising, above inflation, I can assume that RJR’s bottom line hasn’t been hurt by the fines levied on them.

11

I guess we have to order online then.

12

[QUOTE=Charger]
I guess we have to order online then.
[/QUOTE]
Not a bad idea, since you can pick up online most orders from your local Best Buy.

13

I bought a 42" Plasma TV from Adequate Buy, just last night. I checked on the price online before I left- $1619. When I got to the store, I found it was $1790 or so. I told the salesman about the price I’d seen, and he just shrugged his shoulders and charged me even less than the website claimed- I got it for $1609. Go figure.

I guess it pays to look up the cost before you go to the store.

14

Not quite the same thing, but at a furniture store, the sign advertising a dining room set had something along the lines of :

9 pieces (table, 6 chairs, hutch, buffet) for 2800$
7 pieces (no hutch/buffet): 1800$
Individual prices for Table, side chairs and captain’s chairs were then listed.

Of course, if you took the time to add up the individual prices, it came out to about 1500$

This sort of thing was on ALL the sale signs on the dining room sets in the store… we took out my cell phone to confirm the math, and the sales person had to get a manager to approve the 1500$ price! I don’t know why we even went through with that purchase… it’s been over 3 months and we are still missing 2 of the chairs we bought!

I will never shop there again.

15

Last week I was looking to purchase an HD DVD player. Looking online I saw that I would get three free DVDs with the purchase of the Toshiba. The next day I went to BB to buy the Toshiba and told the sales clerk about the deal I saw online, but I didn’t mention how many DVDs I was supposed to get. He told me he wasn’t aware of any such deal and left to go check on it. I became suspicious, but when he came back he said, “you’re right. You get four free DVDs with the Toshiba.” I just kept my mouth shut and picked out my four DVDs.

16

[QUOTE=OtakuLoki]
I think it’s fair to say that, since RJR’s stock price has been rising, above inflation, I can assume that RJR’s bottom line hasn’t been hurt by the fines levied on them.
[/QUOTE]
Tobacco companies cannot just raise the price of their product to cover fines and legal settlements, since there is a demonstrable drop in the number of customers (particularly young people without a lot of disposable cash) when the price goes up markedly.

17

[QUOTE=mnemosyne]
Not quite the same thing, but at a furniture store, the sign advertising a dining room set had something along the lines of :

9 pieces (table, 6 chairs, hutch, buffet) for 2800$
7 pieces (no hutch/buffet): 1800$
Individual prices for Table, side chairs and captain’s chairs were then listed.

Of course, if you took the time to add up the individual prices, it came out to about 1500$

This sort of thing was on ALL the sale signs on the dining room sets in the store… we took out my cell phone to confirm the math, and the sales person had to get a manager to approve the 1500$ price! I don’t know why we even went through with that purchase… it’s been over 3 months and we are still missing 2 of the chairs we bought!

I will never shop there again.
[/QUOTE]

I work in a furniture store, so I will comment on this practice. First, if the store does sales like this in general - bundling items to make a sale - DON’T buy from them. They are pushing sales for volume, not for quality or profit. They are looking for cash flow, period. Any furniture store that does sales like that is a) not interested in quality b) looking for cash, not profit.

Second, furniture stores do all kinds of crazy sales and the pricing doesn’t anyways add up. The store I work for cares about its quality and strives to ensure the best quality available. We sell each piece seperately and don’t offer discounts until an order reaches around $10,000. (We do offer bundle sales, like mentioned above, but that is only to get rid of floor stock.) Still, we do get caught occasionally with out-of-wack pricing because we markup almost exactly 100% from what the builder charges us. However, each year the prices change from the builder, both up AND down. Just the other day we had a customer going, “I bought this two months ago and now it is on for $100 cheaper”. Look at it and indeed, it is cheaper. We give them $100 back. They are happy.

That said, do not buy from any furniture store that is willing to give you a deal if you buy additional pieces from them. Quality costs money which volume does not make up for. If you want quality, pay for it. Don’t go looking for the cheapest item out there.

18

But actually, there was no deal for buying more items - I think the 9 item price was more than the 9 added up individually.

As I’ve said, we shouldn’t have bought from them and we are in an ongoing battle to get what we paid for. It’s been a nightmare and I’m telling everyone I know not to deal with them (and I know several people buying and furnishing houses at the moment!)

19

[QUOTE=mnemosyne]
Not quite the same thing, but at a furniture store, the sign advertising a dining room set had something along the lines of :

9 pieces (table, 6 chairs, hutch, buffet) for 2800$
7 pieces (no hutch/buffet): 1800$
Individual prices for Table, side chairs and captain’s chairs were then listed.

Of course, if you took the time to add up the individual prices, it came out to about 1500$

This sort of thing was on ALL the sale signs on the dining room sets in the store… we took out my cell phone to confirm the math, and the sales person had to get a manager to approve the 1500$ price! I don’t know why we even went through with that purchase… it’s been over 3 months and we are still missing 2 of the chairs we bought!

I will never shop there again.
[/QUOTE]
I just read an article with a technique for handling this kind of a situation that i found interesting. Perhaps you can photocopy a yellow pages ad with other furniture stores names and numbers. Take 5 copies and staple a $20 bill on each. Take them to the store on a busy day and tell the store manager that you would be delighted to hand the copies, along with the $20 bill, to each shopper in his/her store if the shoppers would take the $20 and shop elsewhere. I would imagine your chairs would be delivered before you got home. Of course, you may lose the $100 bucks but it would be soooo satisfying. :slight_smile:

20

[QUOTE=Liberal]
I’m always ambivalent about these discoveries of fraud. It is clearly fraud, but too often the victims pay the price for it. Like the tobacco companies, for example, who were fined out the ying-yang — which is great and all, except that the fine was levied in the form of a consumer tax.

[/QUOTE]

Cite?