Best Buy really knows how to piss-off customers
I saw this very same story floating around the net a few days back – scanning titles in the feed reader. It didn’t hit me [at the time], but I now realize what a misleading business practice it was for Best Buy to maintain an internal site in order to thwart customers from receiving better deals on their electronics purchase(s).
Under pressure from state investigators, Best Buy is now confirming my reporting that its stores have a secret intranet site that has been used to block some consumers from getting cheaper prices advertised on BestBuy.com.
Company spokesman Justin Barber, who in early February denied the existence of the internal website that could be accessed only by employees, says his company is “cooperating fully” with the state attorney general’s investigation.
Barber insists that the company never intended to mislead customers.
Read the entire Best Buy Confirms It Has A Secret Website. I’m definitely adding this to my list of pet peeves concerning the entire Best Buy chain. Now, whenever I see those irritating looking little Geek Squad cars, I’ll have something else to remind me of how I loathe giant corporate electronic chains. Story originally seen here, here, and here.
As an ex-Best Buy (and GeekSquad employee), I can tell you no one had any idea this was going on. The internet kiosks that have “BestBuy.com” on them also has other items that aren’t really on bestbuy.com in which we used for customer fulfillments. So while we knew it was a little bit different, I (personally) never knew they had prices differing from that of BestBuy.com.
I’m not 100% sure that they intentionality used these to make customers pay full price, but I know I never used them when customers told us about a certain BestBuy.com price. I’m guessing most employees assumed that the prices on the kiosks were the same as well, and not intentionality screwing the customer. As employees, we have nothing to benefit from that anyway.
I’m thinking its about 50% lazyness on BBY Corporates half on not making sure BestBuy.com and the kiosks prices match, and 50% “hey, maybe this will help increase profits ocassionally if we just leave the kiosks prices always at retail price”.
Just my .02 cents (or is it .02 dollars ;)
Guy
bust buy does all sorts of crap on purpose. the most annoying example to me is that almost every week they have DVD sales…and when they show the stack of DVDs on sale they often show the expensive version of the title (like the 2-disc one) in the picture…and it’s OBVIOUS that it’s that one, so I walk 10 blocks to best buy, find the DVD advertised in the sale, only for them to tell me that it’s the shit single disc one on sale, and i point to the flyer (which is quite obviously a picture of the one I’m holding) and they say I’m wrong. A couple weeks ago I got in a 15 minute argument about the Saw II unrated DVD only to get asked to leave the store.
First the geek squad debacle and now this. The geek squad was accused of padding virus trouble calls and selling un-needed antivirus software to thier good customers .
The geek squad is the service arm of best buy.