According to our tipster:

Not that anyone should be surprised, but Best Buy is still at it.

My wife spent several hours at home researching digital picture frames online, and Best Buy actually had the best price on one, as well as being the only way to get it in time for Christmas. Last night we went to our local Fairfax, Virginia, Best Buy. They didn't have the frame at first, and I actually have to commend the staff, they searched for about 30 minutes because one of them thought he had seen it somewhere. They finally came up with one, the Kodak EasyShare EX1011. I took it to a different station and asked them to price check it, and it came up at $255.99, well over the $234.49 that was listed online.

We went to one of their public computer terminals and searched it and it came up at the $255.99, no surprise.

iPhone to the rescue. At first it was showing the $255 price on my iPhones browser, then I realized it was connected through WiFi, so they have it blocking the external Best Buy site and feeding the fake one. I disabled WiFi and searched again and bam, there it was, $234.99.

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

Keep up the great work, Consumerist.

[Sue Busch, a Best Buy spokeswoman] said the kiosks were never intended "for price-match purposes," but admitted that "a small percentage of customers did not receive a price match when they should have due to errors in policy execution."

"Every day we get at least one person asking why he can't find a price he saw online," the salesman replied.

I said I was looking for a DVD player I'd seen online that was selling for $71.99. I said it wasn't on the kiosk site.

"Here," the salesman said, "let me show you a secret."

He switched to a different screen, typed in his employee I.D. number, and the real Bestbuy.com came up. "Try now," the salesman said.

I asked why the real website wasn't available to everyone.

He shrugged. "I wish I knew."

Maybe that's something California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown should also be wondering.

• You walk into a Best Buy to purchase a sale item you saw on their site.

• The employee tells you that the item is no longer on sale, and shows you what looks to be Best Buy's website, but it's really a secret intranet that Best Buy's corporate office denies exists. The price on the website shows that the sale is over.

• You cry and leave, then at home you see that the sale isn't over at all. What happened?

The Hartford Courant investigated this phenomenon throughly and are convinced the secret "intranet" exists. Their columnist actually saw it:

Many employees I talked with said they had no idea there is an internal site. But two employees at two different stores confirmed to me that there is an intranet site available only to employees.

One long-time employee showed me the intranet site Hammer and I had been led to believe was the bestbuy.com site.

The salesman told me it was a site that only employees could access because it contained confidential information as well as item prices.

Computer Purchase Reveals Website Confusion [Hartford Courant]