I took my nephew to our local Circuit City in Bainbridge Twp, Ohio on Thursday June 21st, 2007. He checked the website the night before on what he was going to get and when he went to go get the product off of the shelf the price was posted wrong on the shelf. He took it up to the register and the lady that waited on him said that will be $184.99 with $25.00 rebate.He said nope the price was marked on the shelf as $69.99 and she went to go see for herself. We both followed her to the location where he found the product and she took the price tag off of the shelf and rang it up again. I told her that since it was marked wrong that they will have to honor it and her reply was no. I asked to see the manager of the store. She paged Mr John Sima operations manager of the store to the register. He then proceeded to say no we don’t have to honor it and so on. I stood there demanding the price and he kept refusing to give it to us at the price that it was marked…
I just wanted to make sure I was right so I walked over to the Verizon Wireless counter and asked the rep there if a price is marked wrong on the shelf they have to honor it right? She said yes they do and the reason why she knew that is sometimes the cellphones they sell at their counter are sometimes marked wrong and they have to honor it. Well, I demanded after about 20 minutes just standing around in the store for the price it was marked he refused to give it to me. I then proceeded to say I’m calling the police and he told me to get the fuck out of his store.
I finally gave up and left but not without asking some questions from the cashier. I asked the young cashier in front of a customer how often does this store mark wrong prices on the shelves and she replied very often, with that in mind I got the store # and the 1-800 the-city phone number and reported the operations manager on how rude he spoke to me in front of my 14 yr old nephew. I also contact the county auditors office letting them know that they are posting false prices on products and defrauding the customers. I’ll be getting a phone call from the district manager on Friday June 22, 2007 about my problem.
-John
Good for John for standing up for his rights. Bad Circuit City for not following one of the most basic consumer protection laws in retail. We hope John gets an apologetic call back.
A small suggestion, if we may, John might have been better off not getting in what sounds like a heated argument. Instead, after seeing that the manager wouldn’t budge, he could have called the 1-800 Circuit City number right then and there in the store and tried explaining his issue. We’ve heard of other customers using this method to good effect, and employees at other retail stores have advised it as well, and it can result in HQ calling the store and straightening the problem out. — BEN POPKEN
(Photo: Boston.com)
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Speaking as a former Circuit City employee…. Most of the people who work in the store just want to get through the day (since Circuit City dropped commission and fired the good employees). The old price tags stay up because Circuit City employees are mindless worker drones without any reason to do the job properly.
Make the store owners suffer a profit loss. Make them live up to the mis marked price!
@Secularsage: “Consumer protection laws are not meant to force retailers to sell products at a low price if they’re mis-marked; they’re meant to prevent retailers from advertising a product at one price and then selling it at a higher price when they get the consumer in the door.”
No. What you said is wrong. Like many of the other commenters, you are confusing advertising with item-pricing. The consumer protection law regarding mismarked items is to prevent the customer from having to walk to the register or customer service desk to ask about the price. It has to do with an item that is marked $x but scans at the register as $y. It has nothing to do with bait and switch, which is what you described.
@JustPeteHere: It’s fraud and is illegal and is quite worth calling the police over. I can’t see that he was being rude. He just wanted the advertised price.
If you are doing something illegal you can’t whine when people call the police on you.
@markedward: If it had a sign up that said the product was sold at $x they have to sell it at that price unless there’s an effective-date on the tag which has passed.
@Michael Bauser: I’m buying a car this week. For less than what is on the window sticker. (it’s already all set. I just have to pick it up and give them the cash). So yes, stores don’t HAVE to sell for the listed price.
@bradg33:
The article did say he asked a couple other employees on how often products were mislabeled, to which they would reply quite often.
@Buran:
That’s what I was saying before: sometimes a customer would see a price on the tag and assumed it was the actual pricing, when it was really something about a sale they missed, a sale that hadn’t happened, a membership discount, a coupon discount, a buy one of those and get this at this cheap, etc. In those cases we wouldn’t give them the cheaper price, it was just their fault for not paying enough attention. On the occasions when the Store itself simply mislabeled a price, the Customer would then get it for the advertised price (which would then be corrected after the sale).
@Buran: Car sales are treated differently than retail sales. Besides, bartering on autos is standard practice. Doesn’t make a difference here in any event because your example of bartering DOWN on a price has nothing to do with a store charging MORE than the listed price. Your example would fit (but be sad) if you stated that you had agreed to buy a car for more than the sticker price.
Circuit City’s actions are likely against the law. Marking a product at a certain price and then attempting to charge a higher price is a violation of the Uniform Commercial Code and likely Ohio’s Consumer Sales Practice Act. Send a letter to the Ohio Attorney General and cc the store. Explain the actions of the store manager in the letter.
@ToadKillerDog: You wanna see some mindless drones, visit the South Edmonton Common location of “The Source” (Canadian Circuit City, formerly Radio Shack).
Went in there for a USB hub, the guy on till was playin solitaire (real cards), and the other guy was making a kid-style fort of all the merchandise from the shelves. Turns out I was the first customer to come in that entire day.
I have been working retail for the past 15 years. The policy we have at work is….
1. If the shelf tag is lower then what the item rung up then you get it at the lower price. Making sure that the item and tag match. Customers do move items around and place them back in the wrong spot.
2. We change our ad signs on Wednesday mornings. People like to come in at Tuesday night into Wednesday morning and get items that were for sale but the ad sign is still up. The customer will still get it at “ad price”. We usually change the ad signs at 4am Wednesday morning.
3. If there is a “misprint” in the ad paper we will put the real price on the shelf with a bunch of signs letting the customer know of the misprint.
Our store is very good at accomadating the customer. There are very few times that I have seen them not give the customer what they want.
Why are people calling this the “advertised” price. The price was mis-marked on the shelf after the customer was already in the store. He knew the price and should not expect some major discount over a technicality. I say grow up, pay for what you take, and stop whining.
If the tag says 10.99 but the item is supposed to be 20.99, they only have to honor the price if its the right tag.
I bet if that jerk read the tag it was for a different item, just because there is a tag in front of the item does not mean its for that item, YOU HAVE TO READ THE TAG.
If that tag had the correct UPC and name of the item and was a lessor price then any respectable retail outlet would honor it once and then remove the tag so no one else could use that price.
Also if there is an sale price and it says until 6/22 and its 6/23, then why would you even argue when the tag is expired. That would be like bringing in an expired coupon and bitching because they would not except it.
No one is entitled to rip off a store because they cannot read, but a store should honor the price until they post a sign of the mistake or remove the misprinted tag.
@SpecialEd:
If I knew an item was $120.00, but when I get to the store there is a tag that says $80.00 with no expiration date with the correct product name and the correct UPC, I damn well better get the cheaper price.
I work retail, I deal with this every now and then, and I would honor a mistake like that once and then correct the mistake, but only if the label had no expiration date, had the correct name, and the correct UPC.
@ markedward
I’m not entirely certain I would take the word of disgruntled retail employees on something like that.
I’m also amazed that this far down there are still arguments that the “law” says they have to honor it in all circumstances when it clearly has been stated numerous times that it varies state by state.
IF the item in question was mismarked (wrong UPC + wrong description, etc.) then I don’t see why a store should honor it. Also, if you know the accurate sale price and think you’ll take advantage of what you suspect is a wrong price, which is almost what this sounds like…stop whining.
What gets my goat is when a store intentionally deceives the consumer by tricky signs that say “50% off X brand!” and then claim that because they’re only placed above the green shirts, then the blue shirts from the same brand aren’t on sale.
I’ve threatened to call the police on Steak and Shake when they locked me in the store because I wouldn’t pay for my wrong order (I ordered one thing, they brought me the wrong thing…they took it back and brought me the right thing…and tried to charge for both). I wish this site had been around then…and that particular Steak and Shake wasn’t out of business now.
In Canada, we have a policy that most stores use called the Scanning Code of Practice. This code says that any item that is scanned at a price higher than the shelf/marked price will be given free (up to a max of $10). Subsequent items are sold at the correct (marked) price.
In England the same thing exists, where they should honour the price that’s marked if it’s wrong, but if the difference is considered abnormally high, as it is in this case, they don’t have to sell it for that price.
I *think* they can just refuse to sell it anyway, but not sure on that one.
I work at Circuit City, and yeah, it’s true that we’re supposed to honor those prices. But at the same time, the tag isn’t marked for that product, the product is most often just in the wrong place. Most of the time we honor it, but oftentimes we don’t. Most people are just trying to rip us off, and from what I read here, that’s what you’re trying to do, take advantage of a retailer’s mistake. I agree. I don’t believe taking advantage of a mistake is morally defensible, and although the ops manager was rude, think from his perspective. If a customer threatened to call the authorities on you, you wouldn’t be happy either. When things like this happen, our managers do the same thing, ask you to leave and take your business somewhere else, because we really don’t care.
Ohio revised code section 13 covers commercial transactions and has the uniform commercial code. There appears to be no specific provision covering this in 1345 “consumer sales practices.” Therefore, it appears a merchant is under no specific obligation to honor a marked price that was the result of an honest error.
@Smashville:
Naw, you could have had fun with them.
Unlawful detainment, kidnapping, you name it.
I have to respectfull disagree with the “Often the item is simply in the wrong place” people. Having retail experience I very carefully read shelf tags and ISBN, item codes, etc. That being said I get rung up incorrectly all the time at places like Walgreens and Target. I don’t think customers finding items in the wrong place is nearly as common as mispriced products and out of date computer inventories.
too bad you’re not in new york; andrew cuomo would have beaten his ass.
While yes, circuit city should have honoured the price, nobody likes to be threatened. A store reserves the right to refuse service to anyone, so, if your threatening to call the cops or whatever, I wouldn’t want you in my store either. In the end, you both were wrong, you both handled the situation very immaturely.
In most places also the law isn’t that they have to honour a mismarked item, its that they have to honour the price of a advertised item, while most stores will honour the price if it is marked in error, they most of the time legally don’t have to. The point of the law is not keep companies from advertising one price and then, when the customer arrives, charge another. In this case it was truly a honest mistake (did you come in on a sunday? Most of the time this is when retailers change prices, maybe someone just missed a sign.)
The fact of the matter is, they made a mistake, and you tried to bank on it, when they wouldn’t let you, so you proceed to throw a tantrum.
If it was me, I would have met you halfway on it. Somehow I still doubt you would have been pleased by that
Question: In my local Circuit City, everything is stocked correctly on shelves (i.e. no out of place items) but the tags are screwed around. The tags under the 300 dollar wacom tablets say 99.99 but its for an item that is grouped significantly farther away, and leads to a false impression that the tablets are 99. In this example, even though the tag itself says a different item name for the item that is very far away, it is clearly under the more expensive item, and it is clear that no item has been misplaced by customers, then can I get them to honor the misleading price?
@legerdemain: Yeah, I think you’re right. It’s been a couple of years. I misremembered.
@hallik:
no, they don’t, why? because your acting stupid, stop trying to take advantage of people, would you like if someone walked into your place of work and started messing around with you?
A few years ago I was shopping at CC for a computer, they had an HP price listed wrong ($100 cheaper) and an expired instant rebate still listen on the tag. After the cashier rang the computer up and gave me a price $300 over what I expected, I simply asked her to check the tag and see for herself. She went to the computer section, checked and apologized, then gave me the $300 off. I was nice about the problem, and I was also fully prepared to take the $300 dollar bath, because I wanted the computer. I didn’t act like an ass, and I got what I wanted. Everything worked out fine, I guess because I didn’t give her a reason to take the tag and deny the price, like she could have easily done.
This customer was obviously trying to pull one over on Circuit City and the manager called him on his BS. It would be really hard to mistake a $185 item for a $69 item, so he knew it must have been mislabled.
Shame on him for pulling this scam.
This was my post that made it on this website. I read my story over and over and found some mistakes. First mistake I made is that the price on the shelf said $69.99 and at the register it was $184.99 with $25.00 rebate. My nephew at the time of the transaction said the sign said $69.99 so we both followed the cashier over to where he got it from, she took the price tag off of the shelf and told us that price wasn’t for that product but there were more then one product in that space. When should went to a different register her and another sales associate kept arguring over that it was but she later said no its not. I said well you have to honor that price and she replied no. I then asked for the store manager so she pages John Sima and he too was confused. I asked him if he would honor the price and he said no. He then came over to us and said this is the product over here for that price which was in the middle aisle towards the back of the store. Now if I was a manager of that store instead of having my workers stand around I would have them make sure the tags are posted in the right places. I stood in the store for awhile about 20 minutes and asked him again that he had to honor that price. I then threaten to call the police. He went towards the back of the store and I walked over to the verizon wireless counter and asked the rep on dute in her booth if a price tag is on the shelf and the wrong product is in its place they have to honor it right and she replied yes.
I then asked him again and he explained to me that customers move products around all the time but not in this case because there were more then 3 products on the shelf in that spot. Now after they noticed the mistake the manager and the other store rep went over to where the price tag was and redid the shelf, but they never put a price tag for the product we wanted or they never found the right tag. Yes people he did a bait and switch on us and thats against the law. I never threw a tantrum in the store, I kept my cool the whole time. I like how all of you assumed that I was in the wrong. This store has done this before after I talked with a different cashier asking how many times is the price wrong when someone else brings up merchandise to her since she has work there and she said very often.
I did call the 1-800-THE-CITY when I got home and reported the operations manager for swearing at me and saying what he did in front of my nephew. I was given an apology by phone rep but she said she will have the district manager call me in the next 24 hrs and that was on Thursday and I’m still waiting to hear from the district manager. I hav bought tons of stuff from this store but they honestly loss my business and I’ll go somewhere else from now on. Just letting you all know you weren’t there so how can you comment on something that you didn’t see or hear. I did ask the floor rep when are their sales over and he said starts on Sundays and ends on Saturdays which is normal around here in this area for most stores. I was there on a Thursday afternoon… Cicuit City needs to start to post price tags on their merchandise instead of just the shelf. A price tag would of been nice to see, how do you tell what something cost by just looking at the barcode? They should do what Walmart and Target have in their stores and that would be a scanner for the customers to see what the price is before they take it up to the register. I am happy with the outcome of this and I was glad my post was posted on here and truly thats sweet revenge..
@agent2600: Wow, very intelligent response; next time, I suggest less name calling and more of an actual response to the question. I won’t pass judgment though, I don’t suppose you ever learned the phrase “hypothetical situation.” And I do have my own store, and nobody ever messes with it because I AM NOT DUMB ENOUGH OR SLEEZY ENOUGH to lead them into thinking prices are lower than what they seem; if i did, I deserve backlash, ten-fold. Besides, since when have YOU walked into a Circuit City or other large chain establishment and not been jerked around. I highly doubt you’ve never had a displeasing moment in these stores, so you must know how it feels to be taken for a fool.
@Michael Bauser
Your link was to Los Angeles County law. It doesn’t necessarily represent California State law.
@Halik
No, they don’t, because a customer could have easily moved it there.
Hmm $184.99 and $69.99 is a pretty big difference in price. So without proof im having a hard time believing the guys story. Why didnt he pay for it online to be picked up at the store. Would have had no problem. Id beleive it if he had said the shelf was marked as 169.99. This story seems too shady.
@ToddMU03: Actually not true. In the case of this pricing error there are local laws that can force the sale. [www.consumerist.com] this story contains an example. Here in GA if there is a tag on the shelf and it can be positively identified as the item in question the store has no choice but to sell it to you at that price, if they do not they can face legal action.
posting this from my work at a 911 center, i can say that i hate calls like this. this is not a criminal matter, but a civil one. i am glad John never got around to calling the police, because i dont think it would have fixed anything in the long run, but only made the situation more volatile.
props, however, for holding them to it.
I used to work at a Circuit City in VA for about4 years. Let me give everyone a rundown of how the tagging system works, just for some additional info.
Prices are set by corporate (of course). Every Saturday night, and usually once during the week (like Wednesdays) someone goes into the back office and starts printing the new tags from DPS (the old POS system for CC, now they use something called Magellan). DPS pulls in all the prices relevant to the current store (it knows what skus and products you have on the shelves, well, at least are supposed to have) and tells you which tag paper to load into the printer.
The printing and subsequent distribution of tags is probably the worst part of working at CC, hands down. It is completely meticulous and a pain in the ass, thus the frequent mistagging. Whoever printed the tags in the back will usually tear up the tags and separate them by department. On a Saturday night, before the new ad comes out, you’d see usually something like 30 – 50 pages of new tags, something around 200-400 new items depending on how big the sale, and how big the tags.
About an hour before the store closes on Saturday night, the tags get distributed to the departments and then misery ensues. Employees have to find each and every location of the newly printed tag and replace the old tag. I’d frequently stick all the crumbled up old tags in the various pockets of my pants, so by the end of the night I’d look like a walking recycle bin. Anyway, we typically, if the night was slow at least, start putting Sunday’s tags out early, reserving the big sale items until after the store closes just in case a customer came in and found the new price. Sometimes if we wanted to get out of there early, we’d put them all up before we closed anyway. Regardless, this process takes about an hour per employee if they are competent, and nowadays, it doesn’t seem like they are. Thus, again, you see the opportunity for error given this long and tedious process. After putting all the tags up, we were supposed to walk the aisles and ensure that all the old tags which were expiring tomorrow were pulled as well – needless to say, this didn’t always happen.
– Intermission –
Still with me? Okay. A word about the tags themselves. Tags have 4 important pieces of information on them: item name and description, model number, upc, and expiration date (sometimes). Almost all sale prices you find in CC will have an expiration date on them. If a tag says, “Sale”, “As Advertised”, or anything similar it will have an expiration date on it.
Because of the high number of items and the general incompetence of employees during stocking and tagging, CC tends to have lots of items out of place. As many noted above, typically a lower price that a customer finds is because of a misplaced item, either by the customer or us. If the item name and brand/model don’t match what’s in the customers hand, then we would NEVER honor the price. If there was an expiration date on the tag but the brand/model correct, we’d honor the cheaper price about 25% of the time, depending on what the customer was buying as well as their attitude. Note that because there is an expiration date on the tag, that we weren’t required (by corporate or otherwise) to honor the old, cheaper price. If the tag is current and the item matches, then the computer will 99.9% of the time ring up the exact same price you see on the tag – the pricing/tagging computer and POS pull information from the exact same location. Rarely, a price will change at a weird time (like the middle of a Thursday) and we won’t have the new (higher) price on the tag on the shelf. Corporate almost never did this because no one expects it.
All price changes (to match the lower price) are at the discretion of managers and customer service associates (the ones at the front/return counter, not those wandering the floor). CSA’s are a lot more likely to change a price than a manager on low to mid dollar items. Managers are a lot more likely to change a price on big sales with lots of accessories.
Rarely, a price will have been “normally” priced lower at some point in the past. This means the tag has/had no expiration date on it. If one of these tags stays on the shelf, then the normal price of the product goes up, then we have a legitimate case of “lower tag price.” Of course, the item and other information on the tag had to match, but if so, we almost always matched this price. There were some rare occasions when my manager just felt like being a dick for whatever reason and would refuse to sell it at the lower price, but we never really had too much fuss.
As far as this guy’s situation, it seems HIGHLY unlikely that this was the correct tag. Normally $185 and tagged at $64? That’s over 65% off, EXTREMELY unlikely for a sale (expired tag) or formerly lower price.
If you made it this far through what’s possibly the world’s longest comment (call Guinness), congratulations, you win something.
In Massachusetts the law says that a retailer has no obligation to honor a marked price if it is a “gross error” – that is, more than 20% off the actual price for an item more than $20 (50% for an item under $20), IF the wrong price was not an intended selling price in the last 30 days. So for that $185 item, as long as they never actually sold it for the $69 within the last month, they wouldn’t have to honor any marked price less than $148.
It makes sense to me – the retailer isn’t punished for major computer mistakes or misplaced decimal points, but they do have to honor the price if they didn’t take down the sale signs.
@selianth: That’s a good explanation. Thanks.
A lot of commenters have raised the issue of an item being on the wrong shelf and, thus, displaying the wrong price. I don’t think that is much of a problem. From my experience, the shelf tag includes the UPC number of the product. You can match it up to the barcode on the item itself. (I do this all the time at the grocery store to make sure an item is on sale). If the price is indeed wrong (meaning it scans at a higher price than the tag indicates for that UPC), you can stand on your rights to obtain the product for the listed price (or what your rights otherwise may be). If, however, you see that the tag is with the wrong product, you can save yourself some embarassment (and the store personnel needless grief) by alerting them and asking them to direct you to the correct price.
Here is the thing about marked prices, they can be wrong. When I used to stock shelves, I was taught to match up the UPC from the price tag to the product. I still do that today. If I think a price is too low, I match it up to the info on the price tag. All those price tags that sit on the front of the shelf have a short description of the item along with a SKU or UPC code. Be a smart consumer, and don’t play the “ignorance” card of how this big bad corporation is trying to take advantage of poor little me. Mistakes happen. That is why Wal-mart has those price checkers.
Or perhaps it wasn’t a mistake. What if two guys walk into a store; one heads for an item he wants, picks it up and carries it around while he shops? After a while he appears to have a change of heart and sets it back on the shelf. Only, he sits it in the wrong place, with a price tag half of what the product really costs. Guy number two picks the product off the shelf, and tries to buy it for the marked price claiming that they have to honor the marked price. Companies could be ripped off every single day for thousands of dollars. We simply can’t ask companies to open themselves up to fraugh this way.
Plus, as others have pointed out, you knew the price going into the store and were obviously willing to pay that price. You seemed to have come across an opportunity to rip-off the company and jumped on it.
People are such whiney butts. This guy sounds like a real ass, and I probably would have told him to leave my store too. If you checked the price the night before and knew it was 189, just pay it and stop trying to get something for nothing. I hope Circuit City tells him that.
There have been a few times where an item has been above or below a tag for a simlar or even completely different item and the customer expects to get that price. It’s possible that could have been the case, in which case the price that’s posted wouldn’t be for the item you’re trying to buy. It happens all the time and it’s the only reason I can think of a store denying the “mistagged” item.
Consumers have a hard time remembering that people who work retail are people just like them-reasonable people who aren’t all there to take as much money as they can get.
For the most part, I just see every customer…such as this man who is going to “call the cops” (what exactly would they have done????) who wants something for free.
@APowerCosmic: I would prefer to get my legal advice from an attorney – and have. As several readers have already noted, Ohio law requires that they honor an advertised price, and posting the price constitutes advertising it.
In my case, I wrote down names, store phone numbers, etc., called the Ohio Attorney General’s office, then the national office for the chain. I had an apology and a check within two weeks.
So here’s something that bothers about this complaint, and something that customers don’t seem to understand.
Retail stores are big places, and stores like CC have literally thousands of different items within their walls. To change the prices of these items, the stores usually rely on a team of 5-10 people that work overnight shifts of early morning shifts.
In short, your changing thousands of prices with a few people in a limited amount of time. It’s almost a guarantee that the store will miss a tag or two here or there.
What really bothers me about this complaint is that CC actually has an expiration date for all of their offers printed on the bottom right hand corner of the price tag.
Check out [www.passwird.com] for an example for a price with a mail-in rebate.
From what I understand, if an offer is advertised only through a specific time period, the company is not required to honor that offer after its end date, reguardless of whether or not a tag is still up. That offer is clearly marked as no longer valid, and the customer is not entitled to that price. It certainly would be good customer service for CC to honor that price, but they are under no legal obligation to do so.
I’m a former Circuit City Sales Manager, and have worked in stores in both California and Missouri. I’ve had to deal with many, many instances of something being mistagged and the customer wanted it for the tagged price. There were basically three scenarios:
1) Through oversight, or more often laziness, an employee doesn’t take down an expired price tag at the end of the sales week. You will usually find them in the audio and car stereo sound rooms and on endcaps (the end-parts of aisles). All As Advertised, Special Value, Sale, and Rebate price tags have an expiration date. All I’d have to do is tell the customer, “That WAS the price, but the price has clearly expired, as seen by the expiration date in the lower right corner of the tag.
2) Sometimes the wrong price tag gets put on a product because the model numbers are very similar, and the employee didn’t know enough to know that the model number on the tag wasn’t the model number of the product. For example, a price tag for a 32″ Sharp LCD TV model LCD32D62U is affixed to a 32″ Sharp LCD TV LCD32D43U. The price tag says $1399, but the TV actually costs $1699. Do you give it to you for $300 off because it has the wrong tag on it? No, because, “This IS the correct price for the D62U, but this TV is NOT the D62U. It’s a D43U, and there is no tag that says the Sharp LCD32D43U is $1399. Sorry for the mix-up, but the price tag is clear.” How are you supposed to know that the TV you’re looking at is a Sharp LCD32D43U and not an LCD32D62U? Not my problem.
3) And then there’s the genuine regular “Guaranteed Low Price” tag on the product that matches the model number, and the price is simply wrong. Usually, the Guaranteed Low Price was changed at some point in the past, and nobody bothered to change the tag. In this case, I would always honor the price, though these were the rarest of cases.
I had some customers complain about false advertising or bait-and-switch, but in Missouri and California there was no legal basis for this. The incorrect prices hadn’t been advertised, and Circuit City had not “baited” any customer into the store with false pricing. The customer was already in the store when they encountered the incorrect price.
All of the above was taught to me by my Store Directors and District Managers. I wasn’t happy when customers had negative experiences in my store, but I also had to protect my store’s profit margin index (PMI). Nothing mattered more than PMI.
Now, the manager using profanity and being rude was a dumb move. It’s common sense that if you’re dealing with a situation that you know may get escalated, you never want to do anything that takes away from your credibility.
I had a similar story with Target, I bought a garbage can, the price was marked lower (as were all the cans on that shelf) but they told me there is nothing they can do.
I asked for their corporate info, which they provided and went home and compiled an email. I got a response that they are sorry (blah, blah, blah) and asked me if a $10.00 gift card would make me happy?
I responded that the item was marked $30.00 cheaper, not $10.00 and while I appreciated their will to make amends, my principles come first and as such I would have to turn down anything less than $30.00. I have yet to hear back from them (about 2 months ago)
Ugh. I have to agree with the customer here. I worked at Circuit City for two years as a customer service representative, and I always, ALWAYS, honored the price that was marked on the shelf. If it’s marked incorrectly, that’s not the customer’s fault. It is CC’s fault for being LAZY and over-looking their tags on Saturday night before the new ads are released. So much for the “Product Flow” team.