[wplug] Best Buy's insanity ...

[Bill Moran]

In response to "Michael H. Semcheski" <mhsemcheski at gmail.com>:

> I think I interpreted the article differently than you did.  My
> interpretation is that BestBuy maintained a 'look-a-like' website on their
> intranet, which was the same as the public one, minus some special offers
> and discounts.
> 
> But even if it is like you describe, a feature that lets employees check on
> the advertised price, isn't it important to get that right?  Wouldn't you
> make sure you included discounts and sales when you're designing this
> functionality?  Wouldn't you test these types of cases when you're rolling
> the system out?  Didn't somebody notice before this got to the AG?  Its a
> lot to swallow.
> 
> I generally say "Don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to
> incompetence."  But BestBuy doesn't have a clean record here.  I'm not going
> to google this to confirm it, but didn't they have a thing where they kicked
> shoppers out of the store for writing down prices?  Didn't they settle with
> the AG of NJ (for a small amount) over rebate fraud?

"Don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence."

I've found that particular aphorism to be dangerous.

I've been in a few scenarios where a malicious person escaped punishment
by convincingly feigning incompetence.

Sorry if this sounds bitter or anything, but in my personal experience,
the amount of trouble caused by incompetence is much lower than that
caused by malice -- the statistics say that if you can can prove neither
incompetence nor malice, a betting man puts his money on malice.

I have a paranoid suspicion that the above aphorism was invented by a
malicious person who was setting themselves up with an "out."  Even if
that's untrue, I'm absolutely positive that malicious people across the
world giggle with delight every time they hear that phrase uttered.

Think I'm paranoid?  I'm Bill Clinton -- "define 'sexual relations'"

> On 3/7/07, Tim Lesher <tlesher at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > 1. BestBuy has an intranet that's accessible from its store terminals.
> > 2. They add a feature to the intranet that lets employees check the
> > prices a customer sees on the public web site.
> > 3. That feature has a synchronization bug which causes the prices not
> > to match in cases of (for example) limited-time or limited-area sales.
> >
> > Of course, this should potentially cause errors in both directions,
> > but no customer is ever going to file a lawsuit about getting charged
> > too little, are they? They'll just go home and snicker about how they
> > "beat the man".
> >
> 


-- 
Bill Moran
http://www.potentialtech.com