Some stores fess up and admit that they made a mistake in pricing, which I applaud (I love when companies admit to their mistakes!), even when the store fails to honor the original "deal." I would be much more understanding of the situation if Walmart did this, but to claim that each and every user "cancelled" their order?

Thanks again, Walmart! Now I remember why I don't shop at your stores AND actively tell others to stay far and away from you as well.

I understand companies make mistakes. Walmart used their generic cancelation e-mail to get out of their mistake. It's annoying but nothing to get really upset about. I even understand why they included a fake phone number in their e-mail for cancelation. What I didn't expect was the lack of refund when it came to shipping and tax.

So to all businesses out there, if you want to make a quick buck, put up a product at an unbelievable price, cancel all the orders and keep all the shipping and tax money. Why even carry product anymore?

I didn't order but the way they sent out the emails was BS. They should just fess up and says they screwed up and you're not getting it for that price.

I don't know that I'd use "thuggery" to describe this situation. If they really wanted to be thugs they'd hit your credit card for the full $49.82, instead of canceling your $19.82 order.

I got a different cancellation email from them this morning. It said this:

At the time you placed your order, the price of the item(s) listed below was incorrect on our website. Due to this issue, we have canceled the item(s) from your order. No further action is required on your part regarding this issue and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Which is pretty obnoxious, but at least it's not dishonest.

They likely just did a routine cancel of all the orders, because of the simple price mistake (1 instead of 4 is easy to do on the keypad), and the email was fully automated. Maybe everyone will receive a follow up email with the admission that a mistake was made? (probably not)

Yeah, a follow-up email did go out around 5-6 hours later, although it was still pretty impersonal, just quoting their policy very matter-of-factly. (I know, that's all you can expect, it just felt like someone got yelled at for not sending out an email and whipped something up in corporate-speak at 9pm on a Friday night)

We did receive a follow up email, at least I did, telling me there was a price error and that my order was canceled due to that error.

They went about this the wrong way, but anyone who placed an order and begins complaining is just looking for a deal that never existed. Everyone that has ever bought a high-profile game for the new systems before KNOW that they are not $20. All those people were just looking to hopefully take advantage of a mistake.

Shame on Wal-Mart for sending out improper cancellations, shame on the customer for trying to take advantage of an obvious mistake.

The email I received states:

Dear Xxxxx,

We are contacting you regarding your recent order
xxxxxxxxxxxxx.

At the time you placed your order, the price of the item(s) listed below was incorrect on our website. Due to this issue, we have canceled the item(s) from your order. No further action is required on your part regarding this issue and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Your payment method will not be charged for the item(s). Any authorization hold on your credit card account will be released in accordance with your financial institution's holds policy. Please contact your financial institution for more information.

Item(s):

Super Smash Bros. Brawl Wii Qty 1

As a Consumerist, I find it a veritable outrage that Wal-Mart didn't sell this sure-to-be popular game so as to lose $20+ per unit. Did you also know that they buy stuff from China? Asses.

I am wondering if that would constitute false advertising? After all...all the people who pre-ordered from Walmart DIDN'T pre-order from Gamestop, Target, etc. Essentially, they took business from other companies deceptively.

they did this on quite a few games. I ordered Condemned 2: Bloodshot for the 360 for $19.82 and that shit got shot down as well.

buy.com did a very similar thing to me a few months ago.

I pre-ordered Alien Syndrome for the Wii for about $20 cheaper then any other site (most were around $50 - I pre-ordered it for around $30) I even took screen prints of the page & everything.

Well the game release date got pushed back - no problem. But then all of a sudden I got an e-mail from buy.com that they shipped my order (about 1 month before I knew it was going to be released). I take a look at buy.com - OK, everything looks OK - guess I will wait and see what they send me.

Well they send me a PSP game. ???? Well I of course return this and e-mailed support and such to get this problem fixed.

At this time buy.com did what I considered a very dirty thing - They took the page that displayed Alien Syndrome for Wii - and changed it to the PSP game - so it even looked like I ordered the PSP game!!!!!!!

So after returning the same game 3 times & by this time the game already out - they decided to just cancel my order since I apparently can't play a PSP game on my Wii.

Buy.com did not just change the price - they tried to hide their mistake and change the product to a game on a different system!

I decided to not even bother anymore... I just don't even bother with buy.com anymore - a place where I purchased a little for my self - but did a lot of business with for the company I worked with.... needless to say I don't do anything with buy.com anymore.

@sleze69: stores are protected from false advertising claims if they are obvious mistakes and they make an attempt to correct the error. The more than 50% off is an obvious error since it is going to be a hugely popular game, and there is no reason to sell it at a loss. In addition, they refunded the money unprompted. What they should have done, was given people the option to pay the correct amount and still get the game on launch day that way everyone gets the product they want (even if it is not at the obviously errored price mark)

@Fry: Shame on the customer for placing an order from Wal-Mart for a product at the advertised price? Does the dirt on your tongue from licking Wal-Mart's boots taste good?

i thought the law that if something is incorrectly priced then they have to give the customer the product at that price. They can fix it afterwards but any customers up to that point are entitled to the price. For example, I worked in retail years ago and was told a story by a manager that $300 leather jackets were incorrectly marked as $30 with the price gun. They had to sell 3 of them at that price before they were able to get it fixed. Wouldn't that same concept apply here?

I'm proud to say, as a New Yorker, I spend close to 10k a year on consumer electronics, NONE OF WHICH are purchased at Best buy/Circuit City/Wal-Mart/Target. Between mid size online retailers, EBay, and mom and pop stores, i get anything i want at the price i want without the wonderful big store "Customer Service" (customer disservice, they're actually there to show you why NOT to buy at these stores). I'm NOT a glutton for corporate punishment. I've actually been doing it for 5 years now, and i got burned only once over a $30 item. Every time i walk by one of these behemoths, i snicker under my breath at my own satisfaction from seeing another gullible customer meekly strolling in like little red riding hood into the big bad wolfs trap. HOORAY CONSUMERIST!!!

This is the problem with online stores. B&M stores are governed by laws against this sort of thing. If they offer something at a price, then they must fulfill that offer. Online stores have no regulations that force them to meet their obligations. And let's be honest, most of the "mistakes" are simply attempts at generating traffic.

@xtc46: Here's where we disagree. 50% off is not all that obvious a mistake. Stores often have loss leaders that are meant to generate store traffic. Had it been $4.95... then it is an obvious mistake.

What I find funny is the 17 cents less they charge in the name of "always low prices".. its a disgrace, and I will never stoop so low as to worry about 17 cents on a game purchase. And I certainly won't be rewarding companies that insult my intelligence with such crap.

Guys, think for a minute. I'm guessing that selling one of the biggest games of the YEAR at 20 bucks is damn near cost, if not at a loss.

It's not gonna happen, and you're a fool if you think it was. And if you signed up for this, you were attempting to take advantage of a mistake. (4 and 1 on a keypad are right next to each other. Someone goofed and fat-fingered the price in)

Did they handle it badly? Definitely. But similar things have happened with stores like EBGames and I don't see near the bile directed at them as i see at walmart.

@Scuba Steve:
Now add that 17 cents up across millions of transactions. It's not much individually, sure, but taking it as an insult is a little silly. Paying less is paying less.

@The Great TK: You are looking at the 17 cents from walmarts point of view not from a customers point of view.

gamers always want to save money as our wallets are raped everytime we buy a game these days. Telling us we are saving 17 cents is an outright insult to our intelligence when its followed by an always low price marketing pitch. roll that one back you stupid friggen smiley face!

As for the article, They should give everyone who ordered the game $5 off the real retail price.

@The Great TK: Umm, in my experience, if EB screws up a price bad, they STILL honor it.

I got a 50$ game recently for 10$. Because someone had left a 4 off the price tag. All I did was point it out, and they gave it to me.

Walmart 1. Best Buy 1E+100

Walmart, all can say is, you have a long way to go to catch up to Best Buy or Sears.

@Fry: Actually, high profiles games can be 20$... For example, super mario galaxy for the Wii, perhaps the most anticipated Wii title even more than SSBB, was available for 50$ with a 25$ gift card from Toys R US.

By the way, it's not a keypad mistake. There were more than 30 games in the list that were cheap on preorder (e.g., Rainbow six 2, Turok for the 360, etc.). I doubt that suddenly Walmart made a price mistakes on 30 games.

@evslin: Except when they did that they'd rightfully get a flood of chargebacks. You can't offer an item at one price and charge another.

@The Great TK: If you don't want angry customers, don't bait and switch and then say THEY cancelled the order, which they did not.

It was crappy that the price was listed at $20 and it was crappy that the email was so poorly written. Still to list a high profile, pre-order game at 60% off is pretty damned suspicious.

I don't know how the prices were entered into the Walmart system. I doubt that, being a public company, Walmart would intentionally do anything to fiddle around with revenue. Not in such an obviously unsavory way.

Let's face it though, if you for a moment didn't think you were getting over on Walmart with this one, please get a clue.

@cirej2000: Wal-mart advertises crazylow prices, and you think we should "get a clue" when they actually offer crazylow prices? Wow. No matter what their excuse is, they should acknowledge their mistake and go through with what they promise. Raise the price later, sure, but not after the fact.

@Buran:
I never said it was handled well. Someone from upstairs noticed, killed the bad preorders, and everyone got a boilerplate cancellation message. After the WTF's started flying, further explanation in another email.

@Firstborn Dragon:
I was referring to online preorders.
Even walmart will usually give the advertised price to you if they screw up a pricetag in the brick and mortar store.

@parad0x360:
So you'd rather they not take anything off at all then? And then you're only thinking about video games and not their inventory as a whole. That's their strategy FFS, is underprice their competitors out of business. You are the first person i know of who complains about getting a price break (even a minor one). Not just "meh, who cares", but "zOMG do they think i'm stupid!?"

You deserve to get screwed for patronizing wal-mart to begin with.

@GearheadGeek: Learn to read. It was a mistake and customers tried to take advantage of that. Also, I shop at Future Shop for my games, not Wal-Mart. Does the dirt on your tongue taste good from kissing the consumers behind?

@bravo369: I don't think the same would apply here, as it is an unreleased item. The jackets were already in the hands of the customers in your case.

@Fry: If Walmart had a posted offer at that price, then that offer existed. How is blaming the consumer relevant in this case? Walmart made a bad mistake worse by lying to its customers.

@The Great TK: So people are fools for believing Walmart pricing? Is that the reputation Walmart wants? Should the consumer have to ask "Are you sure, Walmart?" everytime they see a price tag?

@uricmu: You still had to purchase the game to earn the $25 to another purchase, so no, it's not 50% off. It is simply $25 spent on something else on your next visit.

Sorry for the triple post.

@MMD: I didn't blame the customer. "Shame on them for taking advantage of an obvious mistake" is different from "it's your fault for believing the price".

So "shame on them" isn't blame? Fascinating...

When it was first announced that it was at $20 (see Kotaku), it was very well known that this was going to happen. Yes, it is Wal-Mart's fault. Yes, the customer tried to take advantage of it. I'm not for Wal-Mart, but I'm not going to side with customers trying to do something that they knew full well wouldn't happen.

@Fry: From traffic on ebay and a surprising average selling price of 25$ after SMG was released, I'd guess that people bought multiples. Still, my point is there are great deals. And yea, I would have happily taken a 30$ gift card to walmart with the 20$ preorder if they insisted and paid 50$.

I didn't think this deal would hold. I'm just pointing out that there are great deals on release games. For example, you can usually buy the new Madden and get some bonus (e.g., this year another game at half off at TRU).

@uricmu: Good point, but getting a gift card worth 50% isn't 50% off the game, which is what your comment seemed to imply. My mistake.

But your other comment about the 1 and 4 being close, it's 1 and 5 :P
If this did happen to multiple games (like someone else had said), it could be a mass-upload to the site and simply the wrong priced looked at, or a keypad mistake.

@Fry: How, exactly, is a customer supposed to know what the price "should" be if they aren't already well-versed in gaming? Say a kid asks for this game as a birthday gift from Grandma. Is Grandma trying to do something she "full well knew wouldn't happen" by responding to a posted offer?

It's not the consumer's responsibility to worry about whether the posted price is accurate or not before making a purchase; it's the merchant's responsibility to price things correctly - or, at the very least, try not to blatantly lie if a mistake is made. Anyone who got one of these bogus emails has every right to complain.

@MMD: The majority of the people that got the e-mail probably DESERVE to have gotten shafted for trying to take advantage of the "deal". What grandma goes shopping online for a game that isn't out yet for little Timmy anyways?

@Fry: It's not that all the preorders were 19$. The wii games were around 19$ but not all, and the XBOX games were 29$ and not all. So that's about 30$ on both types. It means somebody somewhere in the chain discounted some preorders by 30$ rather than somebody typed wrong.

@Fry: You seem to be the one with some difficulty understanding the English language. YOU said "shame on the consumer for trying to take advantage..." which is a stupid statement on its face. A consumer would be trying to take advantage if they hacked the site to change the price, not if they try to buy something for the advertised price. If someone tried to sue Wal-Mart for the $30 difference or some other such lame-brained "I'm entitled" crap, then indeed shame on them. There is simply no shame in buying something at the price at which it's offered. If you see something you regularly buy for $5 at your local grocery store on the shelf for $2, are you going to run to the manager and tell him or her they've made a horrible mistake and you feel you'd be taking advantage by buying it at the marked price? If so, you're simply not very smart.

@MMD: Exactly. As someone who has been gaming for exactly 8 days (on a Wii purchased for $225.00) I had no idea until I read all these comments that I was never going to get a cool new game for under $50. I look online for good prices for something I like, wait a bit if I have to, and jump when I see a price I like (well, not at WalMart, but for argument's sake...)

That's how I got my Zune for $90 a few weeks before Christmas and that's how I got my Wii. I would have been really pissed if I had gotten an email saying "oops". Yeah, I researched and found out how much they were SUPPOSED to cost--I purchased from your store because you advertised them for LESS.

@Fry: Who are you to say who does and doesn't shop online? My mother is 75 years old, and she routinely buys *and* sells on eBay. She does all of her Christmas shopping online every year. If any of her grandkids had asked for a video game, she'd have bought it. Online. And (hopefully) for the price at which it was advertised.

Even if some savvy gamer was buying this thing at the mistakenly low price, how is that gamer to know it's a mistake rather than a case of Walmart using its allegedly superior purchasing power to get a great deal for its customers? And have you ever heard of a loss leader?

There are all kinds of reasons why a price might be surprisingly low. Blaming the consumer for attempting to purchase something - anything - at its advertised price is illogical at best.