[wplug] Best Buy's insanity ...

[Brandon Poyner]

On 3/7/07, Tim Lesher <tlesher at gmail.com> wrote:

> Having read the article, I'm still not totally convinced that there's
> intentional deception going on.  I can imagine:
>
> 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.

Intentional or not, the problem is that Connecticut has very strict
consumer protection laws on correct pricing.  If you break that law in
Connecticut you'll face large fines.  I had an acquaintance who worked
as a stock boy at a grocery store, and they had to be extra careful to
stock things in the right space and that the everything had correct
pricing.  I seem to recall he said the fines could be in the thousands
of dollars for just one mistake.  Also Best Buy got in trouble in
Connecticut a while back for putting the price after rebate on their
fliers without clearly mentioning the price before rebate, a big no-no
there.

An example of Connecticut going after incorrect pricing:

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/07/ct_walmart.html

-- 
Brandon
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