Hi,

Wanted to share my experience with Best Buy today regarding my Blu-Ray purchases and wanted to see if anyone of you have experienced the same.

I went today to my local BB store to avail the 20 off 3 BR disks. As I had read on the special buy thread that The Rock and Con Air were 19.99 at BB.com, I went to a store supervisor to price match it. When he looked up the disks, they came out to be 24.99 at their best buy page. What really puzzled me is that after coming home I went to BB.com and for sure both of these disks show up as 19.99!!!

How can BB's intranet site show a different price than the internet!!! Could BB be playing a bait and switch with it's customers so that when a customer asks for a PM they show the phoney site and say the price is 24.99 and not 19.99 as you said???

Unrelated, I did buy The Rock and 2-POTC AWE disks, however their system registed my first POTC disk as 4.99 (24.99-20.00 for RZ) and the rest is at full price. Now my problem is that I wanted to give my brother one of the POTC AWE as gift. If he were to return the disk, I am told he will get 4.99 for it - which to me is unfair! Their system should have reduced all the disks equally in price.

I'm not sure how to interpret their business practices. :confused:

i'd never trust a Best Buy employee to do anything...I'd always bring a printout with me.

This is old news. There's already a class action lawsuit for exactly this same practice. They actually go to an intranet where the prices are higher than on the internet to thrawt people like you from price matching. I'm surprised they're still up to their old tricks...then again...not really...:o:o:o

Yes, there was a lawsuit pertaining to this exact issue. I work at Best Buy and ALWAYS bring up the internet Best Buy.com to price match for customers. Unfortunately, many associates do not. Honestly though, it is not done maliciously on their part. It is due to a lack of training. When an employee hits the applications menu it brings up two choices of bestbuy.com: bestbuy.com local or bestbuy.com national. If you click on local, that takes you to the intranet bestbuy.com which shows the local prices. Clicking Bestbuy.com national takes you to the internet prices which sometimes are lower and sometimes are the same. I have never found them to be higher than the in-store prices. It is unfortunate that customers are being screwed over by this... If a supervisor pulled up the in-store pricing and told you that was the online price then he was flat out lying to you as it is impossible for him not to know better.

You would not be able to use the 20 dollar off three blu-ray movies coupon in conjuction with the price match though. When a price match is done in the register system it automatically overrides any coupons pertaining to the items. You cannot combine offers. This is fair though as you cannot use the coupon online either. However, for Bestbuy to deny you the price of the online site is WRONG. Print out the website price and go back in there and get your money back. They can easily credit you the price match difference within 30 days.

Are you guys sure that there is not any mention about the price discrepancies in the Policies or Help pages ? I am not sure about best buy but HMV's internet prices for HDM are usually $10 less than the in-store price and they don't do any price match.

Yes, there was a lawsuit pertaining to this exact issue. I work at Best Buy and ALWAYS bring up the internet Best Buy.com to price match for customers. Unfortunately, many associates do not. Honestly though, it is not done maliciously on their part. It is due to a lack of training. When an employee hits the applications menu it brings up two choices of bestbuy.com: bestbuy.com local or bestbuy.com national. If you click on local, that takes you to the intranet bestbuy.com which shows the local prices. Clicking Bestbuy.com national takes you to the internet prices which sometimes are lower and sometimes are the same. I have never found them to be higher than the in-store prices. It is unfortunate that customers are being screwed over by this... If a supervisor pulled up the in-store pricing and told you that was the online price then he was flat out lying to you as it is impossible for him not to know better.

You would not be able to use the 20 dollar off three blu-ray movies coupon in conjuction with the price match though. When a price match is done in the register system it automatically overrides any coupons pertaining to the items. You cannot combine offers. This is fair though as you cannot use the coupon online either. However, for Bestbuy to deny you the price of the online site is WRONG. Print out the website price and go back in there and get your money back. They can easily credit you the price match difference within 30 days.

Well I don't mean to open a can of worms but they also denied my $5.00 disney coupons saying that the system read them as "invalid coupon" even though I had printed 2 of them via the plug-in. I also had them scan the POTC AWE coupon but that too came up as invalid. I guess BB is not a "participating retailer" :).

NOTE: This was not in conjunction with the 20 off 3 for RZ members.

OTOH, as you said that deals cannot be combined, I'll be SOL if I were to now get a price-match after using the RZ coupon. I guess I'll take $20 discount over the $5 for The Rock's BB.com price match :(

Well I don't mean to open a can of worms but they also denied my $5.00 disney coupons saying that the system read them as "invalid coupon" even though I had printed 2 of them via the plug-in. I also had them scan the POTC AWE coupon but that too came up as invalid. I guess BB is not a "participating retailer" :).

NOTE: This was not in conjunction with the 20 off 3 for RZ members.

OTOH, as you said that deals cannot be combined, I'll be SOL if I were to now get a price-match after using the RZ coupon. I guess I'll take $20 discount over the $5 for The Rock's BB.com price match :(

The other problem is the consistancy that they use to inforce policies. I used my 2 Disney coupons with the $20 off 3. They did not scan but the cashier just entered the UPC and it took the price off. But I must admit I would have argued the point with a manager if they had not taken them. Since one was a manafacture coupon. They are a retailer are out no money for them.
But I agree that is does suck to get there and then they donot use the coupon for you. But I have a simple policy that I follow. Make abit of a scene but only with someone in charge not the cashier, they are just doing their job. And if they are not willing to give you what you feel you deserve then walk out. Most managers do not want a unhappy customer in their check out lanes. Over 16 years in retail mgmt has made me rather bitter and jaded. Glad I am not there anymore.

Walmart has this too, their online price is different compared to store prices and the DVD that I was about to purchase.

This is old news. There's already a class action lawsuit for exactly this same practice. They actually go to an intranet where the prices are higher than on the internet to thrawt people like you from price matching. I'm surprised they're still up to their old tricks...then again...not really...:o:o:o

Info about the lawsuit:

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/IndustryInfo/story?id=3209776
http://www.ct.gov/ag/cwp/view.asp?Q=382168&A=2788

Was this ever decided?

Walmart has this too, their online price is different compared to store prices and the DVD that I was about to purchase.

Walmart doesn't match their website prices -- you can find this on their website. However, Best Buy does. I used the $20 coupon and got my Rock price matched to $19.99 yesterday.

Best Buy told me once that their online and B&M stores were actually different "divisions" of the company that had little to do with one another.

I can confirm that the prices online and in-store are often different, plus the site they have access to in-store on kiosks is there intranet site, not their internet site, and has been stated above the prices can differ between the two.

Note that the price for The Rock listed in the Sunday flier for this week is $24.99.

Ironically, what you can do is purchase it through the web site and select in-store pickup and still receive the $19.99 price.

I'm surprised the register did what it did with the PotC disc; most times you use a RZ coupon it takes an equal amount off each item (e.g. for $10 off on three items it will take $3.34 off the first and $3.33 off each of the second two items.)

If have issues with a retailer, contact the retailer.

larry