Best Buy staff have been accused of continuing to deceive their customers with in-store web kiosks that display different prices than those that appear on the company’s Internet site.

The Connecticut Attorney General’s office took Best Buy to court in May alleging that electronics store chain used in-store computer kiosks to deceive consumers about product prices and overcharge them.

It seems that that Best Buy has not changed its ways – not that that would surprise anyone who read our recent story about how chain stores rort their customers.

The issue was recently raised by the Los Angeles Times after it was contacted by reader Leigh Murphy, who found a Toshiba DVD Player on Bestbuy.com discounted to $71.99 from $79.99. However when Murphy visited a local Best Buy to actually buy the DVD player he found he found it was going for full price. A sales person then checked the price on the Best Buy web site using an in-store kiosk. This also showed that the DVD player was going for full price. When Murphy went home and checked the price of the DVD player, he found it was still being discounted.

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal told the LA Time’s David Lazarus that he had thought that Best Buy had stopped this deceptive practice.

“That’s what they said to us. Apparently that’s not the case,” he said.

Back  in May, the Attorney General’s office explained the nature of the deception:

“Since 2005, the company’s stores have pledged to match any lower online price, including from their own Internet site. Many Best Buy salespeople falsely told consumers searching for or seeking to confirm lower online prices that the kiosk connected them to BestBuy.com. When the site displayed the higher in-store price, salespeople allegedly suggested that consumers, who thought they were viewing BestBuy.com, previously misread the lower online price or the online price had expired. “

A Best Buy spokesperson said that the kiosks were never meant for price matching, but admitted that “a small percentage of customers did not receive a price match when they should have due to errors in policy execution”.

Apparently, the in-store kiosks do now display a message warning shoppers that in-store prices may differ to the those shown on Bestbuy.com.

It appears that if you do see a discounted price on Best Buy’s web site, you better take a print out with you when you visit a store to actually make the purchase.

This is a probably a just case of a few bad apples, but none the less, it’s not a good look for a major electronics retailer. Hopefully management will work harder on “policy execution”.

Related:

Entry was posted on Tuesday, December 25th, 2007 at 5:46 pm under Retail, Scams.

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