Best Buy Admits to Using Secret, Intranet Site In-Store to Avoid Price Checking

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Originally Posted by Slashdot

Iberian writes

"The Courant site confirms an oft-rumoured possibility: Best Buy does indeed maintain a second website for what one could assume is for the purpose of defrauding its customers. State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal ordered the investigation into Best Buy's practices on Feb. 9 after columnist George Gombossy disclosed the website and showed how employees at two Connecticut stores used it to deny customers a $150 discount on a computer advertised on BestBuy.com. Says Gombossy, 'What is more troubling to me, and to some Best Buy customers, is that even when one informs a salesperson of the Internet price, customers have been shown the intranet site, which looks identical to the Internet site, but does not always show the lowest price. [State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal] said that because of the fuzzy responses from Best Buy, he has yet to figure out the real motivation behind the intranet site and whether sales people are encouraged to use it to cheat customers.'"

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Wow. This is low.

Yeah, if you ever ask people at Best Buy to do a price check on something, you'll see them using what looks like their website, which never made any sense to me. Makes more sense now.

Actually I've known about it and it is true. I checked the site for the price on a DVD before going to the store, and in-store it rang up higher than the regular price on the website. They wouldn't give me the website price until I came back with a printout of the website.

Don't we have a few BB employees around here?

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Originally Posted by icarusfall

Don't we have a few BB employees around here?

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Can never find one when you need one.

HEY I WANT A WARRANTY FOR MY WARRANTY

There that should bring one of them in.

Maybe Aren could peek in here between his sessions of buying Wiis and posting about it in fifty different threads.

I haven't worked at BB but I'll bet they simply tell the workers to use the website on their computers and don't tell them it's a different one.

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Originally Posted by MechDeus

I haven't worked at BB but I'll bet they simply tell the workers to use the website on their computers and don't tell them it's a different one.

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I have never seen any difference. For all I know, we have two sources in store, and a third normal demo computer. I have never seen any issues, and if we see a discrepancy between dot com and our prices in store, we give em the better price.

I worked there for 3 years. I'm willing to bet that most employees don't know the difference between the internal and the internet site. I always went to the real website if customers came in asking to price match. I've had to show a few employees because customers would be pissed off that the price was cheaper online like 10 minutes ago.

I feel much better about successfully using those photoshopped CAG coupons on games.

Never shopping there again tho.