Best Buy Really Does Not Want To Let You Buy The Advertised Special
Reader John writes in with a story about "upselling" at Best Buy. He saw a TomTom GPS unit for $99.99 on sale at Best Buy, so he headed over to the store to pick one up. What follows is his account of how much trouble it was to actually buy the item. We think we counted 9 times that John had to tell various and sundry Best Buy employees that, yes, he was sure that he didn't want to buy a slightly more expensive model of the same device.
Here's John's story:
Today (11-23), Best Buy had a Tom Tom One 125 GPS for $99.99 - $80 off the regular price. My daughter has wanted one for Christmas, so I figured now was the time. When I got to the store, I found an associate in the GPS department and said I wanted to purchase the unit advertised. Without asking any questions, he immediately told me it was an entry level model so it probably wasn't what I wanted. I politely said, no, it was indeed the unit I wanted. He then said, you realize the maps aren't installed on this and it takes 3+ hours to install them. He continued saying that for "only" $30 more, they had the same unit with the maps already installed.
I again politely said no thank you, this is the one I want. He said three hours is a long time, you know. I said yes it is, and it feels like I might have to stand here three hours at the rate you are trying to sell me something else. May I please buy the GPS advertised?
Sure, he says, but I have to wait for my manager because he has the key. OK. After about 5 minutes the associate says sorry this is taking so long. How about if I show you some of the other GPS units we have. No thank you I tell him. I just want to buy this one. Are you sure? Yes I am. When have these over here... Now I had to gently but firmly tell him this is the one I want and I would be happy to go to a competitor that price matches if they don't want to sell me what I want to buy. Ok, he says, I'll go get my manager (oy!).
So the manager arrives and starts all over with, you know this is a very basic model, the install isn't included and takes three hours, but for only $30 more... No thank you, this is the one I want. Please may I have it? Finally the GPS is removed from the case and given to the associate to walk up to the register (apparently customers aren't to be trusted with such an elementary device until the transaction is complete). As we walk to the register, no less than two associates we pass say to my associate "hey Joe, did you let him know that is the basic one and the maps take like forever to install? You did? Oh. Did you tell him about the $30 special we have on preloaded maps? Oh. Ok" Talk about blatant upselling!
Finally at the register. Ahhh. Nope, not quite. Now it's the cashier's turn. She tells me about the $30 more option for maps. No thank you I again politely say. Then she tells me her sister had this one, but returned it for a more expensive one because all it did was give directions. That's too bad for your sister I sympathize. When I pull out my Best Buy reward coupons for another $15 off, she says she doesn't think that I can use them on a sale item. I politely say that I didn't see that exception. Where is that stated? Well, no where but she is pretty sure I can only use one coupon at a time... Let's try them both and see what happens, OK? I ask.
Reluctantly I am finally out the door with a $99.99 GPS less $15 in rewards credit, plus tax.
I wonder how many other customers will get upsold?
Now, obviously we are not lawyers, but we would like to direct your attention to the following paragraphs from the FTC's "Guide Against Bait Advertising." These paragraphs are from a section that lists some of the many shady things that retailers do when pulling a bait and switch. Disparaging an advertised item is one of them.
No act or practice should be engaged in by an advertiser to discourage the purchase of the advertised merchandise as part of a bait scheme to sell other merchandise. Among acts or practices which will be considered in determining if an advertisement is a bona fide offer are:
...
b) The disparagement by acts or words of the advertised product or the disparagement of the guarantee, credit terms, availability of service, repairs or parts, or in any other respect, in connection with it,
Gee whiz. Good job sticking to your guns, John.
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Comments:
You just know that this was one of the hot-button topics during their monthly Saturday-morning employee meetings. They probably even did some role-playing to make sure everyone would get in on the upsell. I used to work there (a long time ago, back when they had the ShrinkStomper interviewing celebrities), so I can only guess that they lose a bit of money on each one of these they sell at this price.
I used to work at Best Buy and this was standard practice in the early morning meetings to go over "deals" and other options to tack on. A lot was dedicated to selling service plans and our "attachment" ratio, but others were simply suggestions to offer, like 3 accessories with every camera purchase, high margin items obviously. Stay away from Best Buy if you can....let them go the way of Circuit City.
I'm pretty sure I saw a commercial for this exact device during the Oklahoma-Tech game direct from manufacturer for $99.95. That also comes with the satisfaction of NOT BUYING FROM BEST BUY.
(The commercial was more exciting than the game, btw)
With the exception of the $15 "rewards" credit you can get the same price on Amazon without all the hassle.
you shoulda turned it on at the register and "fake-punched in directions" to the exit while reading them aloud
"Head southwest towards customer service and then turn right at the stanchion to proceed to the double doors"
Unbelievable! I bought this GPS too (no problems at my Best Buy thankfully). There is NO 3 hour install. That's complete BS. And it does have the maps pre-installed. I can't believe this. Everyone at that store must be in on lying to customers.
Best Buy is and was famous for this practice. They actually were busted for the ol' bait and switch by advertising the cheaper product and when you get to the store, lo and behold, they didn't have any but they did have the slightly better, slightly more expensive one in stock. The fact that so many employees badgered him about the $30 upsell tells me it was a calculated effort to not sell any of the $99 units. Some things will never change, and that is why I vowed never to return to BB.
@discounteggroll: Show receipt to LP at the front desk or be gang-tackled by overeager store employees. Recalculating.
In this one case I can sympathize with the best buy people. It seems like they are blatantly upselling (and they might be doing that at the same time) but I'm guessing that they had a rash of people buying this model and then returning it, disappointed that it didn't have the maps.
It's very possible that I'm wrong, but it almost sounds like when I worked at a tech support helpdesk and we'd have to ask if you'd restarted your computer...then make your restart it again anyway because you probably put it into standby mode instead of restarting it.
Lately at Best Buy the people have been a lot more helpful, the cashiers have been chatty and the sales people in the sections have known exactly where their products are.
Whats really funny about this is that i work at a best buy and its not that way in our store, our GPS units are stacked right in front of the department for all customers to get, no waiting on keys, now we do let people know about the map issue but its not a big deal if they still want that Tom Tom, i really feel sick to my stomach when i read stories about other stores and how shady they are cause it give all the stores bad reps.
What they didn't tell him was that the pre-loaded maps on the more expensive model are likely out of date and when he installs the TomTom Home software it will inform him that new maps are available for a one-time free download ... that takes 3 hours. My TomTom GO930 was that way.
Did you know that for only $30 more, you can get the same unit with the maps already installed?
How is it that this guy went to Best Buy, he had 4 or 5 people trying to upsell him a GPS unit. Everytime I go, I cannot find anyone to help me. Maybe next time, I'll mention I want a cheap GPS just to get a sales rep!
While I totally agree this is an annoying and ridiculous upsell, I can sooo see this post appearing on the Consumerist:
"I went to buy the $99.99 TomTom GPS and got home only to find that it doesn't even have the freakin MAPS on it...I mean, it's a GPS, shouldn't it come with the MAPS??? Then I find out that for only $30 more I could have gotten one with the maps ALREADY INSTALLED! Of all the salespeople I encountered that day, not ONE PERSON told me that the one I bought didn't even come with the MAPS!!! It took me THREE HOURS to install them!!!"
lol
Sounds like a chance for someone to buy them out of the basic model and resell the "upgraded" units with the maps already loaded for $15 more each.
A bunch can be loaded all at the same time. Just a thought...
Recently, I purchased a game for the Wii and the woman at the register tried to sell me a $30 protection plan for a $50 game. Unbelievable.
What do you expect, it's Best Buy...only thing they are good for is maybe "normal" sales on music/dvds. Never buy electronics there.
What Best Buy did there is probably illegal.
Good luck getting the law enforced, though.
Personally, at some point, I would have used an obscene hand gesture, walked out, and never come back.
It is sort of funny. There is a Best Buy with 5 minutes of me at work, and also a Circuit City. I have gone to the Best Buy about 20 times over the last few months. Almost EVERY time they do have the sale item I came in for. So I leave. However, I have never once even thought about going into the Circuit City.
Funny thing about the whole:
"No act or practice should be engaged in by an advertiser to discourage the purchase of the advertised merchandise as part of a bait scheme to sell other merchandise. Among acts or practices which will be considered in determining if an advertisement is a bona fide offer are:
b) The disparagement by acts or words of the advertised product or the disparagement of the guarantee, credit terms, availability of service, repairs or parts, or in any other respect, in connection with it"
For one, it seems as though they were trying to just inform the customer about the updated model, not "disparaging" an advertised model. He was simply stating the facts as to how long it would take to make the advertised model up to the same performance level as the more expensive model. Neither did the associate ever say the customer could NOT buy the advertised model and HAD to buy the more expensive one. This just sounds like a personal attack on Best Buy, which this site loves to do.
Would the FTC do a damned thing about this, even if anyone did complain?
One time, when I worked at BBY, they started selling this horrid digital camera. I'm not sure who made it but it was disney branded. It had tinkerbell on it so the intent was here's a digital camera for your kids. It's resolution was 640x480 and it had about 10MB of memory... this was in 2000. The average camera around that time was around 2 to 3 MP. It connected via parallel port. The sticker on it was 99.99... At that price it was a horrible item. It was technologically the equivalent to a camera from 1995.
Only one person expressed interest in buying it. It took me about 30 minutes to talk him out of it.
Not up-sell him, just talk him out of it because it was a very bad purchase. It's one of the only moments that I actually felt good about telling someone why they don't want this product.
I know sometimes its hard because everything else is a bit more expensive and you may not be able to afford it. In this case I think all the bby employees harping at this guy might have been a bit of overkill, but understand that products get released by manufactures that are complete wastes of materials and sometimes the sales/service person is trying to do you a favor by informing you why.
In this case if you can download the maps yourself I'd say that amount of time would be worth 30 bucks.
@wgrune: Yeah, I was gonna say...
The sale price probably grossly undercut their markup, and they were trying to shill the more expensive version that could make a profit. Most Best Buy employees aren't that organized. There must have been a memo.
At the same time, it also makes you wonder what else was on sale that was covered under this "treatment".
Hmm...I shop at places like Best Buy and Fry's Electronics all the time and I've never experienced anything like this. In fact I bought a Garmin GPS from Best Buy last December...I told the employee which one I wanted...he got it out of the case for me...I checked out and left.
I've never had an experience at any store where an employee was trying to sell me one particular product over another...
"Sec. 238.0 Bait advertising defined.
Bait advertising is an alluring but insincere offer to sell a product or service which the advertiser in truth does not intend or want to sell. Its purpose is to switch consumers from buying the advertised merchandise, in order to sell something else, usually at a higher price or on a basis more advantageous to the advertiser. The primary aim of a bait advertisement is to obtain leads as to persons interested in buying merchandise of the type so advertised."
Straight from your guide that you posted there. So again, I say that Best Buy did nothing wrong and they were just over pushy, which in a sense is wrong, I suppose, but not illegal in any aspect.
..Unless they were selling heroin. In that case, I might just go that best buy. HA kidding.
@blkhrt1: The continual attempts by the associates to upsell the OP I would say DO constitute discouraging purchase of the advertised product.
They basically said "DON'T get that one, it SUCKS", just in nicer language.
@snowburnt: This is because when Best Buy INFORMS the customer it doesn't have maps, they get angry, want the cheapest thing they see, and get pissed because "NO ONE TOLD ME" when in fact, 5 people did.
This, this and a thousand times THIS.
I worked at Geek Squad for 3 years (2004 to March 2008), and not doing this was grounds for being written up and having to go through additional coaching and "role playing".
Not only upselling the product, but we were told to "sell like you're on commission" when it came to accessories and services, despite us not being on commission.
When I'd bring that up with managers, all they'd do is give me a dirty look and swear that it was never said and that it wasn't policy, but, fail to do it and you'd get written up for poor performance.
None of that even touches on the "pre-setups" they do on computers for Black Friday.
I don't own one of these, but I'd have to assume that loading the maps takes three hours like once, right? It seems unlikely that you'd need to re-load them every time you went to use it.
If that's the case, what a terrible upsell.
Save the $30 and use the time to spend with your family, pet your cat, clean your bathroom or whatever while the TomTom's off doing its thing. I can't imagine being so impatient that you'd need your map-equipped device the second you unboxed it.
What they didn't tell you was that for only $32 more, you could get the maps preloaded and a 20oz bottle of coke zero.
@dragonfire81: You really think a court would see it like that? Fail.
They have better things to worry about not what the definition of "disparaging" is.
OMG. I would have said I was a AAA member and can get maps for free!
The sales associate was "following the script" laid out by management. They don't know who the mystery shoppers are, so they put everyone through the same ordeal. They lose points if they are caught not doing it for the right person.
Next time something like this happens try using the following phrase:
"I appreciate your efforts, but I don't work for Bestmark. I'd just like to buy product X, and be on my way. Thanks."
This sounds like they weren't trying to upsell you to another model but they were trying to sell you a map loading service from the Geek Squad.
They probably had some that they preloaded and wanted to sell.
At least they didn't tell you they were out of stock on the non preloaded units.
Last year when I worked for BBY in the computer dept we had one of the loss leader $399 laptops that Geek Squad had opened up a bunch and did their "customizations" on.
When someone came in to buy the $399 laptop we were instructed to say we were sold out and then tell them we did have it with the Geek Squad service done on it for "only" $29 more or whatever the service cost at the time.
Not being comfortable with that I of course refused and sold the customers the $399 because we did have some. When we ran out of those I then proceeded to sell the ones that had the services performed on them for $399 as that's what corporate had said to do in a bullitin.
This however didn't make the local management happy and I was instructed several times to stop doing it and to charge for the services.
Finally my direct manager came up to me and bluntly told me if I didn't start charging for the services that he would fire me.
I of course didn't give him the chance and walked out on the spot.
This doesn't really sound like bait switching, and it could be that that particular store gets a lot of returns for that particular item because the maps are not already on the device. I could totally see that happening. Not everyone who shops at Best Buy is tech savvy, and there probably are a lot of people who would pay 30$ to have the install done for them. In fact I do believe BB tries to cater to those who want electronics who are not tech savvy.
Bait switching would be more like having an empty slot for the sale item on the first day of the sale then when someone comes to look for it the associate jumps on the customer trying to get them to purchase the slightly better and more expensive model since they are "apparently" out of stock on the one on sale in order to improve the bottom line. Or telling a customer the sale item is sold out when they come in at 12 noon on the first Sunday of the sale and then attempting to sell them more expensive merchandise.
Yes the badgering was unnecessary however I don't think there is anything illegal about it. If the badgering was that bad I would have told them you have lost a sale today and went and bought the unit elsewhere even if it was 10$ more.
If you know what you want just buy it at bestbuy.com and do local pick up. You probably would only get hassle once instead of 4 to 5 times.
But i see he had a coupon for a discount.
I never had this type of situation happen to me at BestBuy.
It might just be that particular store. I bought that exact special yesterday at Best Buy, as well as another one of the specials from the same flyer, and while I spoke with multiple sales people, and discussed the pros and cons of the products I was choosing, no one tried to pressure me into an upsell. In fact, if I hadn't already been dealing with a sales person on the first item I picked up, I wouldn't have needed to even speak with anyone--the TomToms were on a display in the aisle where you could just grab one for yourself.
Oh, and no one asked me to see my receipt on the way out!
Oh Best Buy... What is 3 hours? I mean really, you just plug it in, start up the software and let it do its thing. The only reason I could see it being a problem is if you absolutely needed to use it right out of the box...
I do have to say that I bought the cheap TomTom model they were hawking last year and I brought it back because it disappointed me. Upgraded to the slightly more expensive Garmin model, and I've been very happy with that purchase. I should have taken them up on their suggestion in the first place. But 9 out of 10 times, their upsell pitches suck. For example, I bought a Dell laptop that was on sale @ Best Buy and they tried getting me to buy the next model up because apparently a laptop with a Core2Duo and 2 gigs of memory can't handle iTunes and Microsoft Office... If the price on that laptop wasn't $100 cheaper than dell.com, I would have just walked out. I hate shopping in retail stores for this very reason.
And regarding this week's BB pre-Black Friday ad... I ALMOST considered going and buying the 46" Sharp LCD from the local Best Buy, but I know I'm going to get the upsell business from them since it's an "entry-level" 1080p LCD. Forget it. I'll hold onto my money for the time being, I have a feeling that after Black Friday sucks for retailers that big screens are getting a big price cut before Christmas. At least I can dream.
Maybe "Best Buy" means "You'd best buy this one or we'll never let you leave the store."
@blkhrt1: Yes, they were merely informing, not disparaging, thank you for helpfully pointing this out. Let's review the 'information" they so helpfully provided (without disparaging the sale item), shall we?
A...told me it was an entry level model so it probably wasn't what I wanted
B...you realize the maps aren't installed on this
C....and it takes 3+ hours to install them.
D...three hours is a long time, you know
E...I have to wait for my manager
F...How about if I show you some of the other GPS units
G...I just want to buy this one. Are you sure?
H...you know this is a very basic model
I...maps take like forever to install
J...her sister had this one, but returned it
Do you still work at Best Buy, as you indicated in earlier posts, or just continue to love them blindly, sort of like the owner of an adorable pupply who tickles its belly even though it craps on the rug.
Are you doing this out of loyalty to your employer or do you receive compensation for each post?
that happens everywhere. nobody actually police's it, so why wouldn't it. i was walking by the local butcher's shop this weekend and saw a sign in the window stating "leg of lamb special 2.98 lb." that's it. that was the whole sign. Lamb usually goes for at least a $1 a pound more than that, so i thought it was a good deal. i stopped in and bought 3 pounds. the total was $14.10. now i'm no math wizard, but i know something was amiss. i thought maybe i had read the sign wrong. so i paid for the purchase, and went outside to look at the sign again. i was not seeing things. so i went back inside and asked what was the deal. the butcher (with attitude) says it's not $2.98 unless you buy the whole leg. if not, it's $4.49 a pound. what could i do? he has knives back there.
Imagine you were the sales person or the cashier. The week before you told people that the one without the maps was cheaper and it only takes a few hours to get the maps and will save you $30. Soon after buying it the customer comes back ranting and raving about the idiot sales person who sold them a useless GPS device.
The next person that comes in looking at GPS(es?) do you think you will make sure they know that it doesn't have the maps? and that it takes a while to get them?
Who knows? They could have had an especially rabid customer come in, chew the cashier's head off (even though they had nothing to do with it), track down the salesman to yell at them, yell at the GM, Manager, assistant manager and then wait on hold for 3 hours for executive customer support to complain (when they could have been downloading the maps on their cheaper tomtom).
You meant they didn't try to sell him a store credit card!? He got off easy!!! Try getting out of Sears some time.
I was in best buy this Saturday and the exact GPS units discussed in this story were in a large bin right near the registers. This store has customer line barriers (that make you feel like livestock) set up that are made out of storage totes. There was a tote full of these GPS units... no sales people to deal with. Just pick it up and walk to the register.
Thats why I dont shop at Best Buy.