Reader Adam says:
Today, like many anxious gamers, I went to Circuit City (Store # 3111) to pick up the highly anticipated “Call of Duty 4″ for the XBox 360. I chose to pick it up at Circuit City as this week’s circular ad listed a free copy of the previous game “Call of Duty 3″ with purchase. When I went to check out, I was told that it was a misprint and that they refused to honor it. Myself, along with about half a dozen co-workers were rightfully angry that we wasted our lunch hour on this Circuit City bait-and-switch, that has become too common with this outlet lately. I would urge other Consumerists to skip out on Circuit City and try for another retailer (Target has a free $5 gift card).
Adam
We looked up the weekly circular for Naperville, IL and sure enough. There it is. No mention of a misprint. We think Circuit City should honor this offer. There’s really no reason to believe it was a misprint.
Are other people having this problem?
Circuit City Weekly Ad, Page 12 [Circuit City]
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I’ve grown to expect shady things like this from circuit city, which is why I went there on sunday and hid 3 copies of call of duty 3 (they had at least 12 copies total) in 3 different places, just in case.
I can’t prove they’re lying about their stock, but it’s the only way to ensure I actually get the game I want, especially with all the ebay hoarders out there.
I experienced a similar CC Bait & Switch situation a few months ago. They advertised “Save $20 with the purchase of any 2 Xbox Live accessories $19.99 & Up,” so I went to the local store to pick up a couple of XBL 1600point cards for $20 each ($20 total after the advertised deal). The mgr said the deal is good ONLY if you buy an XBOX360 Elite system. It did not say this anywhere in the circular, and needless to say myself and several other customers left the store quite angry. I called corporate to complain but did not hear anything back from them.
CC won’t see another dollar from me and I will badmouth them to anyone who will listen.
I get pissed when people try to insist that a store should honor a CLEARLY incorrect price. (Like a $500 item listed as $5.00, etc). There is a difference between bait and switch and expecting a company to give up tens of thousands of dollars because people take advantage of a loophole.
BUT: Now, it looks like Circuit City is taking advantage of people like me who give them the benefit of the doubt by lying about a misprint.
Ok, if it is a misprint, what did it mean to say? That is, if someone typed something in wrong, what was the correct text?
Clearly BS on their part.
This must have been an isolated incident. The offer started this morning and I’ve already given out a few copies of CoD3
@GearheadGeek: they were all out and the nearest Fry’s is 20+ miles away but yet I still get their circular in the paper.
this is NOT an ad correction!! This is NOT bait and switch. CIRCUIT CITY will honor this ad, with no questions. I don’t know what happened at that single store.
I much prefer Best Buy over Circuit City.
That’s right, I said it.
I went to a CC 15 minutes away in Northern Pittsburgh. It’s a funny one because there’s rarely anyone working there. I was told to go to customer service. They told me that they got a wrong shipment (COD2 instead of COD3), and that I could get a gift card for COD3 (so you could use that for another game…), or ring COD4 for 30$+tax. I went with the 30$+tax.
Go Go Gadget Fraud!
Or false pretense, if you’d care to be old school.
I find letting the Attorney General’s office know about these instances of false advertising works wonders. Corporate is more than happy to straighten out the offending manager.
That’s funny, I went to a CC in NJ today and had no problem getting COD3 for free with my COD4 purchase. Big posters in the store promoting it and everything.
Sounds like one franchise owner just didn’t want to honor corporate’s promo.
It’s not available online any more, but it’s still listed there for all to see. It’s most certainly not a misprint or price mistake or offer mistake of any kind:
[www.circuitcity.com]
-Jeff
[alinktothefuture.com]
I bet the employees are pocketing the promos
In the rare case I do ever buy something from the CC/BB’s of the world, I always buy on the site for in-store pickup. This way you’re walking in with a receipt and they can’t try to scam/upsell/extend your warranty. I never make any large purchases at these places, but once in a while they’ll have a decent ‘online only’ deal for a smaller item.
@JayDeEm: They didn’t have it available for delivery or in-store pickup. I think they don’t update the site in mid day of release.
It’s 10:26PM EST and on CC’s website, when you look up COD4, it lists right there:
Special offers
• Free: Call of Duty 3 with purchase
It ALSO lists COD4 like THIS:
Out of stock online
Notify me when available
Not available for in-store pickup
You know what’s funny? I work at Circuit City, and we honored this at my store. I wasn’t around too much, but I sold two copies of the game. Each one had Call of Duty 3 for free included. Sounds like store #3111 has managers who are either cheap, or have no idea what they’re doing. =/
CC runs promotions like this all the time. When I bought Silent Hill 2, i got Silent Hill 1 for free. When I bought Devil May Cry 2, I got Devil May Cry 1 for free. I’m assuming something happened to their COD3 stock and they were just trying to weasel out of things.
I didn’t have a problem.
I refuse to shop at Circuit City.
Period.
I won’t take anything from them for free.
They are as bad as Best Buy.
I’m a manager at Circuit City (until tomorrow, haha), but a lot of people brought this up today as part of the sale, and I just price adjusted CoD4 to take off the price of CoD3. Basically, if anyone wanted, they could return CoD3 and get CoD4 for like 25$.
It’s the little things in life that make me happy =)
I purchased COD 4 today, and the salesperson threw COD 3 on top of it, and I said, “No, I just want #4.” The guy told me that it comes free with it, so I got it. I didn’t even know that was the deal. Here’s the thing, though, COD 3 sucks. I played it for a couple of hours, and you can’t skip the cut scenes, and the layouts of the levels are stupid. Getting it for free is not much of a treat. But, if they do promise it, they should provide.
@freakinalex: Get back to work, and make sure you sell those PSPs!
@Trick: “I didn’t have a problem.
I refuse to shop at Circuit City.
Period.
I won’t take anything from them for free.”
Uhhh…if you refuse to buy anything from them, how can you say you didn’t have a problem getting the COD 3 promo for free??
Just for your information.. All the Columbus, Ohio stores never had Call of duty 3 in stock for November 06, 2007. We never had a chance to buy it, even though the ad said it would be available at 2pm. They did offer to let me buy Call of Duty IV, then get Call of Duty 3 for free if they got it back in stock by Saturday, November 10. What nice people not…. FALSE ADVERTISING.
@formated4tv: Don’t you mean you adjusted 25 and gave them COD4 for 35$ ?
I thought COD3 retailed for 25
The reason this probably happened is there was a bug in Circuit City’s computers that when the regular or gold editions of Call of Duty 3 (not the Platinum Hits edition) were added to Call of Duty 4 on the register ticket, it not only discounted CoD 3 to free (as it’s normally $30) but it was discounting CoD 4 $30 as well. So you were getting a brand new, top-tier game, as well as its previous version, for a grand total of $30. Here’s the original thread on CAG:
[www.cheapassgamer.com]
Yes that happened to me, and I remember being ecstatic that I got a well-reviewed, newly released game, and an excellent-but-older game for $30 total, which is roughly a $60 discount.
This guy is reporting what is so far an isolated incident, so I see no reason to get angry at all of Circuit City about it.
@JayDeEm: That doesn’t always work out. You might get a box full of bathroom tile.
“Boss, they’re lining up at the door.”
“*&@^%! Okay, tell them it’s a misprint.”
@ MSUHITMAN
I’m so glad someone finally said something about the bug in the system!! My b/f went last night to get his CoD 3&4, and together, they rang up at about $30+ sales tax. You people have to stop whining over this one incident when soooo many people have gotten their copy…
I used to work at Circuit City and although during my employment there I haven’t had any experiences like this sort of “misprint” I can testify to the underhanded way departmental managers go about in increasing sales. They were underperforming compared to BestBuy and other electronic retailers so all regional managers had store managers push as much product out the door as possible. Sometimes it led to morally gray area.
Buy online people! and not these retailer’s websites, online STORES I mean
I would hope the local attorney general would investigate this. This is obviously not a misprint, as it is inconceivable how the printer could have accidentally misprinted the article in this way.
A “misprint” means that the printer is at fault because of a typographical error (such as offering something for 4.99 when it was supposed to be offered for 54.99). This may be a mistake of Circuit City’s marketing department, but they must honor the ad as it was printed.
This is at the least Circuit City illegally not honoring it’s own ad, and at the worst Circuit City blatently pulling a “bait and switch” scam.
So i was one of the lucky Circuit City shoppers at store # 3175 and I went to pick up my copy of Call of Duty 3 & 4, however when i got there they were all out of the 3rd one. So they were discounting the price of Call of Duty 3 right off the top of the price of Call of Duty 4!!! I was lucky enough to get there before they changed there prices and I picked up my copy for $29.99. I did try going back and they said, well it is what it is now. Things changed, take it up with Corporate. Corporate said sorry, but its out of our hands.
@formergr:
Uhhh…if you refuse to buy anything from them, how can you say you didn’t have a problem getting the COD 3 promo for free??
–
I didn’t get anything for free. Where did I say I did? I won’t buy *anything* from Circuit City. I prefer to buy from companies who don’t wake up first thing in the morning and figure out how they will screw their customers that day…
@Asvetic:
I know this is a old topic but just to let all of you know I am a manager at the Naperville store (3121) and we honored this offer with no prob. In fact this was not an add misprint at all, they just did not update our system with this offer so we were told to manually price adjust the items. I would guess that the person you talked to at 3111 was just a new associate.
Well first of all, at our store did honor this promotion at our store. However, look at the fine print, it says you can get COD3 WHILE SUPPLIES LAST. So this isn’t bait and switch. Putting on your ad describing that your location will have limited quantities of a certain items isn’t bait and switch. This also isn’t false advertisement because they actually did honor the offer.