Best Buy Charges $10 More For Opened Hard Drive
It's always important to check the price tags in the store to make sure you're not getting ripped off. Alan writes:
I was in Best Buy yesterday, purchasing an external hard drive at Best Buy, and caught this little pricing glitch. Nothing like paying an extra $10 and not even getting the original packaging or the "new out of the box" feeling.Hey maybe that's the fee for insuring that there's actually a hard drive inside instead of ceramic bath tiles.
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Comments:
Now, if the manager insisted that both prices were correct, there would be a story.
Maybe the tiles were imported from Italy?
insuring a hard drive? what are you, state farm?
It's not a markup, it's a $10 charge for opening those damn blister-packs. And frankly, they're undercharging for the service.
Either that, or they forgot to update one for a sale or something. Eh.
This is something that they would catch at the register. They're supposed to go through once a week and make sure all the open-item tags have been corrected. I guess this one slipped through the cracks.
Oh you don't understand. The opened box is already pre-formatted and comes with a porn collection.
They are charging more probably because this box is verified as containing the hard drive it is supposed to.
If you really want to receive the hard drive you pay for at Best Buy, you should be prepared to pay a premium, evidently.
@joeblevins: /Signed. I remember working there and it was 10PM, 1 hour after closing, you just wanted to go home and not redo the open Item stickers. Plus if you screw up you're supposed to make a new sticker but it was always the last one and you had to go all the way back to warehouse to get another one, and those guys are jerks. Plus the next morning Merch was gonna come out and redo the price tags anyways. And on top of that, nobody should buy an open item Hard Drive, or anything Open Item!
Why would anyone buy an external HD at a retail store, when you can get them online for a quarter (sometimes literally) the price?
Why does anyone even shop at Best Buy anymore? My guess is masochism.
@reykjavik: Quite simply not always true. This price on the Freeagent 250Gb is actually lower than most stores.
Hate them all you want, but BB really does often have deals. I got my 750Gb Freeagent Pro for $180, which at the time (6 months ago) was at least $100 lower than any other store.
@joeblevins: Correct. As much as Best Buy sucks, and sucks hard, at some point these articles just become piling on for the sake of it. Merch put out new tags for the closed box item, and since the department salesmen do OB tags, not merch, the OB tag didn't get changed. It's disorganization, which you find almost anywhere, not a ripoff. BBY does enough to warrant mention, but this isn't it.
Here's what happened:
Sales tags are done on Sunday morning at like 6am.
Open item tags are done on friday nights. If this box was returned on saturday, it had all waeek to sit there un-changed.
Legit mistake, not a Consumerist issue...
I think it's worth 10 bucks for the hundreds of gigs of porn that are undoubtedly on there. Where elese are you going to get that much porn for free?
Call the fucking police, someone forgot to update a tag when the price dropped!
Seriously, is it a slow news day or do you have a hard-on for making Best Buy look bad? At least, post stories with some damn substance.
I just don't understand why he wouldn't show them the bathroom tiles and take off the damn sandals already!
I'm going to agree with Eric. When I came across a printer in a similar situation, I brought it to the attention of a clerk-person, who corrected the price 15% instead of 10% that the open-box discount should have been. No need for calling up The Consumerist, no need for taking pictures, just a simple "hey ma, check out this printer I got for ~20 dollars!"
I know I like to see Best Buy with egg on their face, but sometimes it really is just something that was overlooked. Sometimes people are just too quick "Oh noes! Consumer getting screwed!"
(BTW, there's MRSA in this comment.)
This happens everywhere with open pox stuff. The new price drops and the stores don't pay attention to their open box prices.
@HeartBurnKid: Or we just get tired of seeing these...every...single...day. For BBY and Target and every other retailer. People make mistakes; we get it. The first time it was funny. Now it's just old.
@joeblevins:
Copied for truth. Let's get over these and have some real posts. I really liked this site about 1 month ago when I started reading it, but this type of stuff is just getting stupid.
With an open item, at least you know they checked it to make sure it's not a bunch of bathroom tiles instead of just trusting the shrink-wrap (which anyone can do).
Are we 100% sure it's the same hard drive? The picture doesn't show.
Best Buy's policy is to NOT sell open hard drives in the first place. Sounds like this store has done at least 2 things wrong here.
It will still ring up at the lower price at the register and the employee (should) lower the price by ten percent. I mean, really, people don't you realize that the price is automatically rang up from the barcode, and not manually entered?!?
Cute little sign, but not sure worthy of this site. They aren't charging more for the open drive just because it is open. It just wasn't updated when the price was lowered overall.
We have seen these a few times on this site. Getting old.