Oh Worst Buy, when will you ever learn?

First, the in-store kiosk, then, it's the Geek Squad, then it's the in-store kiosk again. If patterns hold true, something about the Geek Squad will surface again

You know they are doing it intentionally if you get the fake web site through their WiFi. The spin the PR dept will have to put on this will rival the Bolshoi.

Is there a reason why people still shop Best Buy???

Yeah, I went in looking for a printer. When I looked at the website the price was $205.98 when I wnet into the store the kiosk said the Price was $249.99. I went on the best buy website from my phone and I showed the price $205.98 to the Salesman as I was checking out and he said the website was having problems and charged me in full anyway

I attempted to purchase a navigation system for $249.99 (the price I saw at home), then drove 30 mins to the store in Visalia, CA when some curly haired punk in the car audio department showed me the price at $299.99. I told him I knew of the secret website and he'd better show me on the "trick" kiosk. He said he's looking at the same site you and I do. Liar. I drove a block north to Circuit City and found a BETTER system CHEAPER. That was this summer and I haven't shopped Best Buy ever since.

$235 dollars let alone $256 dollars is crazy, look at radio shack or staples, range some where between $60-180.00 dollars for a frame anywhere from 7-11.3 inches...

@abercrombie121: Good job on standing up for yourself. They saw you coming a mile away.

"The electronics department said I had to go to customer service for such a thing, and they promptly took care of the price change."

What department are you talking about? The entire store at best buy is electronics!!!!! Second of all, this internal website is by no means a secret website used to deceive customers. It is used to display the in-store price of every item in the store. Unfortunantly there are many incompetent employees at best buy (as with at any other retailer) that dont know this and they themselves believe the in-store kiosk is the real bestbuy.com when it isnt. The holidays is a time of ALOT of new employees who havent been properly trained. You guys never worked there so you wouldnt know, so maybe you should learn the facts before you start freaking out. YES, i did work at best buy at one point and although i dislike many things about this company, i defend them on this one.

I don't understand what all the fuss is about. Just because they put ALL higher prices on their kiosks AND redirect your URL request over their public internet WIFI to load the INTRAnet prices when you think you're getting INTERnet prices. Sheesh! It's all just an honest mistake. And it only happens to a small number of customers. And it always defaults to a HIGHER price. You people are so fricken' sensitive.

Their kiosks now say at the top in bold : THIS KIOSK REFLECTS IN-STORE PRICES ONLY. Unless these stores systems haven't been updated, there is no excuse for these consumers to blame the store for their lack of reading.

why dont consumers just eliminate this hassle by PRINTING out the online ad showing the lower price?? thats what i do, in order to avoid these types of problems.

Hooray for having 3G internet on my phone and not having to rely on a store's wifi. One less way for best buy to trick me.

@rolla: Best Buy could always say you photoshopped the print out.

I went in to a best buy 3 days ago, saw one of the in store kiosks with the best buy website up on it, absolutely ridiculous, AND USING THEIR PUBLIC WIFI TO EVEN FURTHER DECEIVE CUSTOMERS!?! CRAZY! WHY HASNT BEST BUY BEEN SHUT DOWN?!

@ogremustcrush:

DOES IT HAVE A SIGN OVER YOUR iPhone Saying "ALL WIFI PRICES ARE IN-STORE PRICES" or at the door saying "Free Wi-Fi (Prices are much higher when you use our wifi)" or "We have the right to deceive customers into thinking they are actually on the internet"

I was just coming here to email the consumerist about this happening to me just today. I went to buy a norelco razor which is 29.99 on their website, I went in to the store, and it was 49.99 on the shelf, anyways I try to pricematch and they show me that it's 49.99 on their "website", instantly I remembered the post on here I saw about 2 months or so ago about this. I go home, bam 29.99. Whatever it's not worth it, I'm going to avoid BB as much as possible.

Why have 2 sets of prices anyway. If something is on sale, it should be on sale. CC also does this but at least their kiosk refelects the prices and when asked, their reps. will look it up for you and pm. Filtered wifi? ...haha, that's a new one.

@ivealwaysgotmail10: As far as I know, the message should be embedded on the webpage, so yes you should see it on the wi-fi. However, I haven't been in a Best Buy recently, so I cannot confirm this. I'm surprised that they could even use the Wi-Fi honestly, when I used to work at best buy, you had to use a company proxy server to get any http access at all.

It seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to just because they have second thoughts about their sale prices. I'm not saying they're not doing it, knowing Best Buy it's totally in their character. I'm just saying, rather than hijacking people's portable internet WIFI to force their non-sale prices onto our iPhones, if they don't like their own sale prices, why don't they just not offer them?

1.) During the summer they had a big yellow banner that said prices reflected in-store prices only. I can't imagine they'd be dumb enough to remove it and get in trouble again.

2.) Buy online and schedule an in-store pick-up.

@vvv: You should just buy it online and then pick it up at the store.

I almost got scammed by the internal website a few weeks ago when trying to buy a compact flash card.

I asked for an online price check, which they proceeded to look on the "internal" website. I saod to them "I thought you guys werent allowed to use the deceptive fake "internal" websites anymore?" then asked for a manager.

They then agreed to check the "national" site and price match for me.
Just goes to show that you can save money by being a smart shopper and knowing about different businesses.

Am I the only one getting deja vu from these comments? Haven't we had this conversations several times before?

@clarient: Yes, so I'll summarize.

Story: BestBuy will f**k you over every chance they get

Responses: Wow, boo, hiss! Okay I'll keep shopping there.

Repeat ad nauseum

Drove to my inlaws house for the holiday yesterday and when I got here I realized I'd left the power supply for my laptop at home. Got online and check the local big box retailers to see what they had in stock. CC had a Targus universal adapter on their web site for $69.99. I didn't have a printer and wasn't sure if I was going to try and brave the crowds there today so I didn't bother with the in store pickup. When I went by the store there were actual parking spaces. So I went in to get one. It was $89.99 on the shelf. Took it to the register and mentioned the lower price on the net and they price matched. They wouldn't do this at the CC by my house.

@abercrombie121:
... I went on the best buy website from my phone and I showed the price $205.98 to the Salesman as I was checking out and he said the website was having problems and charged me in full anyway

But then you told him to cram it six ways from Sunday because you weren't doing business with cheating, lying scumbags; and walked away leaving the printer at the register.

Right?

Right?

The wifi filter is crap, but as for the kiosk, if it has a sign, then too bad for people who don't read.

I deal with enough people who order online who don't read directions enough as it is. With this whole "guaranteed delivery by Christmas" crap, people don't read to find out the cutoff dates for shipping. You can't order something tonight and expect it to be delivered by tomorrow. I don't feel bad for people who simply choose not to read what's in front of them.

Shame on Best Buy for sucking. Congrats to them for knowing how to run a business. They treat employees and customers like crap, but still make an incredible amount of money.

@hn333:

I can't that was my original plan, but it says out of stock online, and you can't put it in the cart to pick it up. So I went to the store after that.

[www.bestbuy.com]

Hearing that something like that happened at the Fairfax BB store doesn't surprise me...that store is not only full of people that are completely stupid but will also try to screw you.

One time they tried to screw me out of a return....they claimed that it wasn't eligible to be returned because two numbers with different names ("EDA" and "P/N") on the drive and box didn't match up but the serial numbers did! The cashier "Lizabeth" even claimed that the serial number was the same on every drive! Then the manager and Best Buy's customer relations department basically backed up what Lizabeth said.

Thankfully I was able to take it back to the Best Buy in Manassas, where they didn't hassle me about at all.

... I'm a cheapassgamer, so price matching circuit city in Best buy is smart as it is smart to price match best buy in circuit city. i don't see why people don't do this. Circuit city price match themselves well though, except they always have out of stock problems.

@abercrombie121: That's really showing them who is the boss. Complaining and still knowingly pay the inflated price. That will teach them.

@Copper: Even if they HAVE a sign, asking an associate to PM their online price and being told the in-store price IS the online price, based on the kiosk, is simple fraud. Anyone commending them for questionable, if not illegal practices shouldn't be let within 500 feet of selling anything, because they're crooked scumbags.

Now if they are filtering the wifi thats interesting, though they definitely do not advertise free wifi in their stores, so anyone who is hopping on it, is illegally leeching, so i don't think you can argue about that. And they still have the giant yellow banner on their in store kiosks. I don't know if that is enough but its still there.

are BB and CC competing for "worst customer service" of the year award? Silly stores, CUSA won that and received their prize already.

"pen of Pinocchios"

rotfl oh classic! Well said!

It seems like they WANT to make customers angry there. I try to avoid it, but had 2 $100 gift certificates from there I earned from freq hotel points. I used them a online couple of weeks ago to get the Epson CX9400Fax All-in-One Printer I'd been wanting. Being Christmas shopping time (3 weeks prior) their initial message after completing the order indicated they were backlogged and orders would ship out at the end of January. Whatever. I still wanted the printer. Two days later I got an email basically telling me that it will be soooo long before the printer will be in stock, just "let us know if we can change your order to another model in stock." No can do, want this printer ONLY. The next day I got one of the "Your order has shipped" emails and got the printer shortly after. what? They couldn't ruin my Christmas like they wanted, so they just decided to send it two weeks before Christmas anyway? Must have determined I didn't WANT to deal with it until late January.

They should replace the bouncers at the front door with kiosks, then maybe people wouldn't mind going in...

"You should just buy it online and then pick it up at the store."

And then you can stand in the pickup line for an hour to get something that you could have had and been out of the store with in fifteen minutes otherwise.

This happened to me the Saturday Evening after Thanksgiving. By then the crowds had thinned out and the check out lanes weren't busy at all. But there were eight of us standing in line at the pickup line with me being number eight. It was exactly an hour before I was waited on. They had one girl working the pickup line, five running cash registers...actually three of them were standing around chatting most of the time.

Oh, and on line the camera was $213. In the store $249.

@Neurotic1: Online you have to be cheaper; you have greater competition. Someone ordering at home can choose from BBY, CC, Amazon, Target, Buy.com and fourteen thousand others, so you have to lower your price. And since you have no brick and mortar support structure your margin per product is higher and you have room to cut prices and compete.

Those B&M costs *are* there, though, in store, so you list at the regular price so customers not shopping around pay the difference. Nothing wrong with any of this. But when the customer comes in with the web price, that's when you match the web rather than being deceptive. That's the only area that BBY fails in here.

@clyde55: Were you able to take advantage of their "guarantee" and get a discounted price on your item?

Here in China I've never had any problems with Best Buy. I tend to trust them more over the other small vendors that sell in the same general area because they have a warranty that can be relied on. On the other hand, they don't sell any of the latest game consoles (Wii/PS3/Xbox360) and I can't imagine why.

Target's no better. I looked online for a juicer a month ago, and Target.com had the one I wanted for 13.99. The web page urged me to find it in a store, so I checked my local store. When I went into the store, it was $19.99 -- and they refused to match their online price. The manager actually gave me 5 pounds of shit about it. When I told her I'd leave my cart full of other stuff with her and go to WalMart, she told me "You won't be the first. We don't price match our own site because we don't have to." I went to WalMart.

macys online and in-stores is the same way. But i found out that macys online is entirely different from the stores and that the stores could have different prices. I found this out on their website somewhere. ALso, when i tried to buy a pair of shorts in the store , theirs was full price while online, it was 50% off. Classic bait-and-switch.

It seems to me that if they have wifi working and redirecting to the "internal" site, it's basically to stop you from using one of the demo laptops to access the "external" Best Buy site so you can price check. Redirecting people who use a wifi phone is just a side-effect.

I suppose that if you really want to be sure you're looking at the right site you could always memorize the address of a public proxy server and use that on a demo laptop.

I got an idea! Let's send Best Buy a nice message by doing the following, en-masse:
1. Find items that use this bait-and-switch method
2. Make a printout of the page(s) of the items you want
3. Go to Best Buy, get the item
4. Upon seeing a different price at the register, cancel the transaction and walk out.

When you look at those seemingly "misleading" prices on their kiosks there is a HUGE yellow banner on the page that loads which says "Kiosk resembles in store pricing - national prices may vary." Nobody notices that? Not every Bestbuy store has the same price, just as not every Bestbuy store has the same price as the website. Pricing can change with territories, plus they have a good 30 price match anyway, it's not like the money is lost forever.

Best Buy did address this as he said... They just addressed it only in the state of Connecticut.

I shop at best buy all the time and love it :D Bought a game today that was advertised at $59.99 and when i went to check out it was $37.99. I win :) Everyone who priceshops should see that bestbuy is overprices on many of its electronics and If they don't see that they deserve to pay the extra anyways.

The LA Times just reported that the kiosks have been disabled.

@nursetim: You know they are doing it intentionally if you get the fake web site through their WiFi.

Most likely their kiosks are connected via WiFi and the "hosts" file on their server is set up to direct bestbuy.com to their intranet site. I will bet it was set up so that the kiosks are not accidentally left on the national site not to block customers using iPhones.

First, I've never seen a WiFi at a Best Buy that did not require a proxy, so I can Shenanegans on this whole story. Second, what is wrong with having the website only show the local prices. Try getting Walmart to match even a Walmart a few miles away! (Damn, I just compared it to WalService...) Third, price matching something is up to the customer to provide the proof, not the customer service. Otherwise, you could walk in and claim Circuit City has a 360 Elite for $279 and you even saw it on their own website.
Look, Best Buy sucks, but I work because it is flexible with my school, pays more than Starbucks, and gives me a discount to feed my gaming habit. But for every story I see on Consumerist where somebody claims to have been screwed, I have five more that day from people trying to screw the company out of serious cash. I had a guy try to return a sealed GPS today for $700. I opened it because it felt light (my GM is good enough to say it is okay rather than take the shrink) and found a cardboard picture of an iPod. He changed his story to say it came that way.
The guy in the article probably wasn't exactly treated fair, but I don't believe 100% of his story.
Anybody wonder why nobody admits even 5% of the fault in any of these stories? They try to make themselves look good and like the victim. Doesn't Best Buy suck enough without you being all Drama Queeney on us?

If you are afraid you aren't going to get the online price with BestBuy, place an in store pick-up through their website before you leave the house. This way you are guaranteed to get it for the online price.

There was a CD I wanted that was $14.99. I didn't want to pay that much at the time so I passed it up. I went online just tonight and they had the CD for $7.99. I ordered it, waited for my confirmation, and headed to BestBuy (it's like 5 minutes from my house) thinking I got a good deal. Even better, when I got to the store it took more than a minute to find it(try 10 to 15 with 4 people looking) so I got it free because of their in store pick-up policy. If they don't have it in your hand within a minute of handing them the confirmation you get up to $10 off. Totally worth waiting a few days!