Best Buy sued for violating its Price Match policy on purpose
By Laura June 
posted March 24th 2009 1:13PM
posted March 24th 2009 1:13PM
Last Thursday, the U.S. District Court, Southern District approved a motion for a class-action suit filed by plaintiff Thomas Jermyn in New York State against Best Buy. Essentially, this suit will claim that Best Buy is in "extreme" violation of its own Price Match policy, and that it uses the advertised policy as a way to scam consumers into the stores and purchase gear. Best Buy's Price Match policy is "undisclosed," meaning that we don't know how it actually operates -- and the suit claims that the company routinely denies the Price Match policy -- as a matter of a lesser known, less cooler policy. The law offices charged with filing the suit are asking that consumers who have been affected by the policy get on the bandwagon. Next up: we file suit against them for using the name "Best Buy" when they are totally not.[Via IGN]
I love best buy. They raise their prices on payday and will do anything they can to screw you if they can... but... they have very bendable pricing rules. If you can find the right clerk and say the right things you can get really good deals. Last week they have the Sammy LN46A650 listing for 2099 and I walked out with it for 1450. I know you can find it a little cheaper online but it would have to be shipped. Spotted an open box sony blu-ray and bought it for 250. Brought it back the next morning and said it didn't work and they let me take the 350 dollar Samsung in exchange. If they want to play dirty I think it's perfectly acceptable to hustle them right back.
looks like the IGN link is now dead.
This is just a test, please ignore
best buy = worst price... stupid scam artists in a brick and mortar institution. you would think after Circuit City bit the dust they would wise up...guess you cant fix stupid.
I work in the camera department at best buy. My routine for price matching is that if I can find any confirmation on a price, (website, ad, photo, phone call, etc.) I'll match it. But it has to be from a store that has a retail location in the area.
> company routinely denies the Price Match policy --
> as a matter of a lesser known, less cooler policy
"Less cooler" ?? Take an English class lately? My six year old speaks like this.
Best Buy was always banging their customers up the backside. I had a instance that bestbuy was selling a phone for 350.00 and had a 300.00 off instant coupon, and then compusa had the phone for 300 with 300.00 off.
I asked them to pricematch the original price of the phone and they told me no they dont do that. cause they are giving a dicount with it.
I knew i should have returned the phone and cancelled my service. best buy will rape a corpse in the morgue if they knew it could bring them money
Then why didn't you just buy it at compusa?
I always ask stores to price match. If they refuse (whatever the excuse), I buy the product at the cheaper store. You're not forced to buy from them you know.
@Verlin
youre wrong clown... it does...
"How do you handle a price match if the Best Buy price includes a promotional offer such as a free gift card or rebate?
The Best Buy net purchase price is calculated by deducting the value of all instant and mail-in discounts such as rebates, free offers and promotional gift cards. Existing rebates and free offers associated with a product purchased at Best Buy will not apply if a price match is executed."
Pretty sure it says its price matched, but all best buy offers on the product are void...
MEANING... If Circuit city offered an Xbox Premium with a $30 gift card, but Best Buy offered an Xbox Premium with a 1600 point card, you will get the $30 price match but you cant get the best buy offer of the free card...
FINALLY someone is taking the steps to get BB to stop their scam. Reminds me of the time I walked into the store with a print-out of one of the Garmin navigation units directly from the BB website... The store WOULDN'T MATCH THEIR OWN WEBSITE!!!
Ok, the complaint this suet is making against Best Buy is less about the Price Matching policy being unclear and more about the guy not understanding it.
First off the policy of who and what is matched is up to the individual stores, this goes for all stores with price matching policies, but a few rules of thumbs to follow are:
1) Brick and mortar stores only. Discount online stores like newegg and Amazon often undercut the price that stores like Best Buy and Walmart can afford to do and are often excluded from this deal. Also as pointed out local stores are often only considered, if the nearest K-Mart is 400 miles away don't expect to get an advertised discount because the amount you spend on gas just trying to get the discounted product will easily counter act the discount unless you're using a car which can get 60-80 mpg, but again some stores will even price match these long distance sales.
2) Same item only. ALL Stores carry brands like Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba and the like, but even that TV your looking at with the same size, resolution, and manufacture aren't always the same, small differences between the models can be used to exclude price matching, if model numbers are not the same matching the price might be a costly mistake by the company, because some companies like Sears and Walmart don't by the top end of a specific model, thus often carrying a sub designation on the model number, this sub designation can and will often disqualify price matching. Some stores will price match similar models if the pricing is nearly the same, its the cheaper discounted versions of the models that don't get that deal. Many stores order store specific models unique to their chain to avoid price matching on high priced items, this is especially bad for computers.
3) Manufacturer direct sales are often excluded. The manufacturers don't often price to hurt their brick and mortar sales locations, but sometimes under cutting sales will happen and these are often not backed by the stores, though often when this is going to happen with models that are carried at store front locations the discount is backed by the manufacture and passed on to the consumers through a mail-in rebate or store rebate.
4) Clearance items are not matched. Just because a store is going out of business or no longer carrying a product, that doesn't mean the store you're trying to get price matching from won't continue to carry that item.
5) Special offers are often not matched. Yes sometimes you'll have situations where you get a buy this get this deal, but unless it is a packaged offer which the store you're trying to get to price match also carries good luck on getting it. Just because Store A is offering an item for $50 off and a $100 gift card to Store A doesn't mean that Store B which has a price matching policy has to also because Store B doesn't sell gift cards for Store A, and there isn't any conditions requiring them to offer items which are similar to items offered at Store A, e.g. a gift card from Store B, see Rule 2, you might be able to get the $50 discount but don't expect to get a gift card or a $150 discount on the item.
6) Advertised Specials price matching on same items only. This goes back to Rule 2, stores will often discount items only they carry because they want you to buy from them, not go to another store and buy using a price matching, again you can some times negotiate at discount but don't depend on it.
7) Store will price match their own stores or online site with in reason. Prices will vary from store to store even in chain retailers, though its rare you can sometimes find a variance up to 10-15% from one location to another, sometimes this is to counter act tax variations between the two locations sometimes it could just be a mistake in the pricing, but you can often take advantage of it as long as the item is still in stock. Manager specials and online only discounts are often not matched because these discounts are being applied by a pricing policy implemented by a particular branch of the retail chain and not as an over-all approved discount for the chain.
These go for all stores that do price matching and not just Best Buy, price matching is being offered to try to satisfy return and regular customers and not to bring in new customers who will likely only be doing it because either a) the other store is out of the item in question or b) the other store is further away, and who is also unlikely to come back or purchase anything else on that visit.
I HATE BEST BUY.
I went into a store and asked them to price match.
They called the police on me and I ended up in jail for 15 years.
That is my whole story and is why I never shop at Best Buy anymore.
I've had my local Best Buy refuse those Disney coupons for $10 off for being printed, even though they are delivered via email.
I work at Best Buy and let me tell everybody how I do the Price Match. If you walk in and are an asshole customer to me, who wants the matched price and then an additional 10% off because they had to drive in an 30% off the service plan because Sears sells a 16 month one for half price, and don't want to buy an HDMI cable with your blu-ray player because the Blu-ray is $300 bucks and the cable should be there. Guess what, I'm not going to give you anything off. If you come in and are a good person and just want the same deal you can get across the street at wal-mart but want somebody who at least knows what they are talking about I give you the deal. I hardly even check to see if they have it in stock or even really have it for that price.
Moral of the story: If you are a nice person nice things will happen to you.
The moral of the story, 95% of the people who are complaining on here are complete ass-wipes to Best Buy employees because they are "all-knowing" because they can rant on a dumb tech blog.
And they expect the employees to bend over backwards for them when they are acting like jerks. Notice how 50% of these anecdotel stories end with the person saying Best Buy kicked them out of the store. Nice pleasant people do not get kicked out of stores.
@Phil
It doesn't matter whether I'm an asshole or not. It's called a price match guarantee. Not a price match, except assholes deemed so by employees, guarantee.
@Ahole:
Hahahaha, oh man. The thing is... Phil is trying to say even if a STUPID CUSTOMER such as yourself thinks they are entitled to a price match, even though it falls under a plain as day EXCLUSION, the customer has convinced themselves they are still entitled to the price match. If you are an AHOLE, the employee will recite the Price Match Policy Exclusions as to why you were denied, if you are nice to him, he might bend the rules for you since it was just a misunderstanding on your part, but he feels bad since you drove out to the store under a misinterpretation of what a price match is.
I know I am right because 90% of the morons whining through comments on this article, STILL misunderstand what a price match is. "It was a slightly different model.. I hate Best Buy for not matching a different model," "They didn't include the free gift card, or the promo financing" blah blah blah.
Seems people on this website can't read the damn exclusions and interpret them properly.
It's one thing to get angry when you are entitled to the price match, it's another when you THINK you are entitled to one, but you are wrong. I'm guessing most of the people here are angry because of the latter.
HA.
I hate Best Buy.
I camped out there for Black Friday starting Thurs morning at around 6am.
When it was time to hand out the coupons, I got coupons for 1 of each laptop and then the stupid manager comes out and tells everyone that he changed the rules and a person can only get 1 laptop and thats it!
I never bought anything from BB again. They made us hand in our wrist bands for the laptops and only keep 1. My girlfriend went to the bathroom during that time and still had all of hers. So we cut them off and we tried to get 2 laptops and she was yelled at and made to leave.
lol. you guys should go take a hike. literally and figuratively.
Awww, you couldn't get your 6 laptops to resell on Ebay. Nobody is feeling sorry for you.
Who really wants a Celeron computer with an 80GB hard drive, 1GB of ram, one USB port and struggles streaming YouTube videos?
Ooops, sorry to all those people who consider a netbook a primary computer solution.
Maybe it was to send them to friends in Israel from our synagogue...
The only thing worse than people buying things to resell on eBay is people buying things to send to their foreign family overseas.
Best Buy IS lame and so it thier LAME return policy... LAME LAME LAME LAME!!!!!
I have also experienced the same, when I asked the rep to price match a griffin aux cable which office max was selling at 5$ less, he denied. Best Buy sucks!
don't forget Geek Squad and all their shenanigans...
Don't forget about those blog sites that post anecdotal stories about shenanigans and all the sheep that automatically think that the person is 100% telling the truth and telling all the facts to the story.
You know, because nothing on blogs are EVER taken out of context.
I always find that, if you hang around the product you are interested in until someone asks if you can help you, then say you are interested in the product but are going to get it elsewhere (even online) because it is cheaper, they will match the price.
If they don't get it elsewhere - they lose out and you get the lower price. What is the problem?
i fucking hate best buy, fuck em, and there gonna start jacking everything up since they know CC aint around no more
Next time, try to realize that the 85 year old Grandma standing in the accessories aisle is not a Best Buy employee.
Also, next time, try not to make up stories about things that didn't really happen.
Thanks.
Price matching has its place.
Normally I would go to the store having the sale price, but when I have a Bestbuy gift card that I can only spend at Bestbuy, I am going to get the best damn price I can, which means having to pricematch.
Some of there stuff is at a way higher price ill admit that much, but if bestbuy price matched everything there would be no way to make money. Everyone has there own sales to try and get people in the stores, so why can't people be happy with what they have rather than trying to bring it all down. I would much rather be able to price match some stuff than not be able to do anything at all. Its not a law they have to match every price, Circuit City is gone. Bestbuy is the only major retail location left in my area for computers we don't have a microcenter or frys around and to be honest going into bestbuy for something was a way better experience then when i had to drive 2 hours to go to frys and find out the ram i bought there was already an openbox and all this stuff. My point is, when we all saw the post a few months back that Circuit City was closing everyone was saying good things about bestbuy, now theres some lawsuit that wont last very long and we are all switch sides again. I guess its true that most people who are on engadget just hate everyone and everything.
@Verlin
How do you handle a price match if an instant gift card is included with a purchase?
The value of an instant gift card with purchase will be considered when calculating a price match. If the combined value of a competitor's product and instant gift card is lower than the combined value of Best Buy's product price and instant gift card, Best Buy will match either the price or the instant gift card value, depending on the offer.
How's them apples tasting??!!? not too good eh??
Agreed on previous comments..
I'm a manager at best buy.. if you come in and act like an ass then I won't do anything for you. However if you are nice, reasonable and calm, then 9 times out of 10 I will price match or at least do something for you. I can pick out you tech bloggers from a mile away. You come in demanding we price match something you know yourself is unreasonable and throw a fit when you don't get your way. Guess what? If we lose money on the deal, we won't match it, it's that simple. It's a business. In your line of work would you make a decision that involved yourself losing money?? Didn't think so. The reason you come in with some of the price matches is because you don't want to buy from those shady places you get that pricing from and want to try to be it from us.
To the person who thinks it's his right for us to have to price match a TV at a loss.. LOL
I agree with the class action lawsuit. I have tried the price matching with best buy and I have heard things like:
1) We only price match with our website
OR
2) We only price match with local stores and our website
OR
3) We only price match with just local stores
OR
4) We only price match with Company A because they are the only other ones in this mall
OR
5) We only price match if the price is different by X amount
It's like nobody knows wtf they are talking about in that place. Since the last 2 fiascos with their laptops that i bought from them, I make a point out of not buying ANYTHING from them. And guess what. They are going down in this economy pretty soon. So who cares? Their geek squad knows shit, their stores are trashy, their prices are ridiculous, their service really low quality, their employees are underpaid so they don't give a damn, their "repair center" takes forever and is run by handpicked low IQ individuals... I mean COME ON!.... They lost a huge flat screen TV we bought the other time. HOW? HOW DOES IT DISAPPEAR FROM THE STORE? And then you mention the BBB and the TV "appears" suddenly in some truck or backroom... BS... not BB.....
i really dont think this lawsuit is going to go anywhere
no one understand that you have to meet x, y, and z to get the price match.
best buy is NOT walmart.
i work at customer service at a best buy and it is ridiculous on how many people use the excuse "well walmart ______"
honestly, i personally know someone who has brought an old (as in 2 years old) item that was USED to walmart without a receipt and complained enough that they gave her the 60 some odd dollars back. best buy is NOT walmart.
people do NOT read the back of their receipts with the fine print stating the policies.
the price guarentee policy is on a huuge poster by the registers in the front of the store and also by customer service. everything's in the fine print which people dont and never have read.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?type=page&entryURLType=&entryURLID=&categoryId=cat10011&contentId=1118843518460&id=cat12098
I've been on sales floor at Best Buy for a few years now.
To all you people out there that say that Best Buy sucks:
I've heard just about every complaint in the book about why Best Buy is just absolutely horrible. But all of those complaints usually come from the people that didn't get their way and turn into bullies with a sense of entitlement when it comes to trying to rip us off. Best Buy isn't trying to screw the customer, half the time the customers that take this stance are the ones trying to screw us. Just because we don't cave into every request doesn't mean you should hate us. If you caved into making every request a reality at your job, would you still have that job? You've got to remember most Sales Associates at Best Buys that I've noticed are also college kids. What self respecting 30+ year old goes in there with a bad attitude and takes it out on a 19 year old? Accusing that particular person of scamming with key phrases such as "The ol' bait and switch" and the ever popular "You're giving me the ol' run around." (What do these even mean really? Because Best Buy as a company has never trained me on these principles. I'm just there to help you. If you don't buy, we're not on commission either. I'm really just there to talk to you and hopefully you buy something.) OF COURSE if you're nasty about everything the 19 year old associate will think "This guy's not worth our business. He hates and/or doesn't trust anyone under 30. We don't need people like that causing scenes and scaring away the other well behaved customers. We'll do fine without him." And we have, just ask the Circuit City that was across our parking lot and facing our store that hired everyone we fired. Or CompUSA for that matter, they were next door.
Bottom Line: If you follow the rules WE set down because it's OUR STORE not yours, you won't get screwed. The rules are simple and can be found on our site. (Same place most of you try and get those prices you want matched.) Be a little more respectful and let us get through all the spiels they want us to deliver even if you politely decline every single thing from the insurance to the accessories and just let us do our thing or buy it online from somewhere shady where they won't answer your questions and pay out the nose for shipping. Your call. Don't try to use the whole "I spend so much money here, you'll be losing me forever" thing. It won't work. You spend money on things we lose money on anyway. Next guy buys it at full price the following week. Simple as that.
We don't tell you how to do your job, do we?
I couldn't agree more... I dont even work for bestbuy and i still agree. Its a business. If it was a non-profit organization, that might be a different situation. Companies like CC and Compusa that ran themselves into the ground just didn't realize the importance of obtaining revenue at a certain cost. It doesnt matter HOW MUCH $$ people spend at your establishment, if you dont make enough extra margin to cover the cost of doing business, than whats the point? The reason companies like amazon, and other random websites can offer lower prices is because they have no major overhead.. Rent, utility bills, permits, labor, supplies.. If that's who you'd like to purchase from, be my guest.. Luckily we live in a country that allows you to make your own decisions. Getting mad at the company for making smart business decisions isnt a bad thing. If they took every single deal, and lost $ on it, they'd be out of business in no time flat. I think the main reason people complain is that they want the best price possible and sometimes its just not in the cards. Its luxury.. No one NEEDS a flat panel TV...When was the last time you argued with the cashier at the grocery store, and asked them to pricematch a loaf of bread... or asked them to give you a discount because "they should want to keep you as a customer." Think of it as if it was your own business. If each and every day, it COSTS you money to run that business, and you're not making any money at all, how long do you think you can sustain that business? I think more people should take this into consideration before they go spout off at how much they hate BBY.. or any company for that matter. Be smart, saavy shoppers, find out what local establishments have the product IN-STOCK, CHEAPER, and then go in and ask them to pricematch. Its not that hard. Read the fine print, be friendly, and most of the time you'll end up having saved a few $$.
If Best Buy is so terrible, why are all the people on this thread wanting to buy products from them via a pricematch? Quit being morons.
yeah mark said it right - i complained several times about there policy i may jump on that ship i think
I used to work at Best Buy, and time after time I was told by my managers not to match other stores prices.
Anything that you can buy in store, yu can find it cheaper online (even after shipping)