NOT HOT! BestBuy's new PM policies

[darkeneddays]

I quit messing with BB when I realized that they only seem to have 3 of any given sale item. I'm in retail as well, granted food is a bit different, but if we are OOS on ANY sale item, we get ripped a new one by upper management. BB is notorious(at least in my area) for being OOS on the first day of a sale and not getting anymore of the particular product until long after the sale is over.
Thank God I never had to mess with any customer service realated issues...

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: faZZter
"This is made all the more interesting, and slightly hypocritical and ironic because, several weeks back, they refused a PM to OM on some KVR 256MB PC2100 RAM, as I had a printed ad from OM, but it was ambiguous about the speed of the memory. They looked up the actual OM SKU on OM's web site, to find out that the RAM on sale was PC2100, and BestBuy only carried KVR PC2700 and PC3200 RAM."

So your mad at them because they wouldn't pricematch a more expensive RAM to the PC2100 crap? Haha. Why should they?

You missed my entire point. Go read the whole thing again, please.

I didn't mind so much that they refused that older PM - in that circumstance they were right to do so - the product in question was actually different. The POINT of that incident, was to show that they DO check competitor's web sites, something that they TOLD ME (on my most recent attempt to PM), that they DO NOT DO. (Or rather, WILL NOT do.) (And on the most recent PM attempt, the product in question was exactly the same, that was not an issue.)

Originally posted by: faZZter
I DO understand your frustrations with the pricematching "loopholes" but it seems to me it is probably the manager at your particular store who is forcing the issue. I have rarely had any trouble pricematching stuff at BB in my store. They have even gone through on some real sketchy ones (like pricematching to an after instant rebate price) for me.

First of all, yes, that has been my prior experience. Other than the PC2100 RAM from OM, I've had about four sucessful PM's so far, and IMHO not PM'ing the OM PC2100 RAM to the BB PC2700 RAM because they are different products, is a perfectly valid reason for denial. (The OM ad didn't state PC2100, they had to look up the SKU to find that out. I had not been to the OM store, so I didn't know that was the case. Since it didn't state a speed, I assumed that it referred to all speed grades of KVR of that size.)

But at this recent attempt at a PM, the products were identical, the issue was that a printout showing the price of an item, for sale at a local retail competitor, was not a valid form of "verification" for price-matching, and because it was an "internet offer", it also was not valid for pricematching. (Because, of course, all web page printouts are fraudulently created by customers, with the sole purpose of scamming BestBuy. Not like they could take a quick look at the web site themselves or anything...)

Originally posted by: faZZterAs far as pricematching after I already bought something and it goes on sale somewhere....haven't had a problem as long as it is another local store.

That's the thing - my local OM is about 5-10 minutes away from my local BestBuy. I guess I made my mistake - I went to shop at BestBuy, insead of their competitors. I just find it more convenient, since the BestBuy is closest to me, out of all of the other major retail chain stores. I live not far from some fairly major shopping centers in the northeast, so you would think that stores would tend to be pretty competitive around here, and they are, which is all the more puzzling to me why they would refuse a PM like that.

Originally posted by: faZZterThey have phoned other stores to verify stock for me many times. In fact I messed up once and waited to long to pricematch CC. I had checked in the morning if they had a particular item and then waited till afternoon to pricematch at BB. Well BB called them and damn if they weren't out of stock then. I did go to the other store to check if they were lying but sure enough they were all gone. (sorry don't remember what it was......a hard drive I think) So I screwed myself that time.

That's one reason why I posted originally - that behavior is apparently now in violation of corporate policy. Don't expect them to do that for you again.

Originally posted by: faZZterHeck one girl there even pricematched a game for me (granted it was only 10 dollars less) without me even showing her the ad or anything. I just told her CC had it on sale for 10 bucks less and she pricematched. (I wanted to get it at BB so I could get reward points)

I had the same "luck" PM'ing that 250GB Maxtor HD from CompUSA. Went in without an ad, she called them, verified price/stock, no problem. (I checked CompUSA stock on their web site to make sure that they were in.)

But again, this behavior is now against BestBuy corporate policy - don't expect them to do this.

Originally posted by: faZZterI guess you guys just live near sucky BB stores.......

Or BestBuy just got a lot more sucky, in general. Remember, up until this incident, my experiences at BB were much like yours, and generally not an issue to PM. I was verbally told that these were the new corporate policies by the CS dept. manager last night.

 

[MDE]

The BB by me won't PM anything, it's ridiculous. I just go to CC and PM BB's after rebate prices there, takes less time and is a lot easier on my eyes without the 500 jiggawatt flood lights shining everywhere.

 

[Dyre]

BestBuy is dojgn so well because they don't have stupid policies that make them lose money.

You relieze most PM's end up WAY below cost, right??

So the simple fact that deal hounds like people on this board don't like BB is enough proff to why the company is profitable.

 

[Johnbear007]

Just dont buy wnything there, best buy sucks anyway. They always have.

 

[gwlam12]

nevermind....

 

[ivwshane]

BestBuy is dojgn so well because they don't have stupid policies that make them lose money.

You relieze most PM's end up WAY below cost, right??

So the simple fact that deal hounds like people on this board don't like BB is enough proff to why the company is profitable.

If price matching ends up making an item below cost then they shouldn't have the policy in the first place. You don't create a PM policy and then choose your PM based off of what you might lose in the deal.

That's the point of this thread imo, that best buy states they have a PM policy but make it very difficult to even take advantage of it.

 

[dolph]

i tried to pm a tv from fry's to buy it at bb once. flat out told me, "sorry, this price is too low, we won't pricematch." "can i see your pm policy?" "no, you can't." went across the street to good guys. "wow... this is a low price, let me just call to make sure it's in stock... ok, here you go!" bb is teh suck.

 

[tcsenter]

Wow, I'm shocked! In summary:

- Local Best Buy B&M stores will PM local competitor B&M stores only (pretty standard in the industry)
- Verification of competing advertised price must be in published printed form applicable to the local competitive market (pretty standard in the industry)
- Verification of competing advertised price cannot be a web page printed (and possibly manipulated) by a consumer (pretty standard in the industry)
- Best Buy employees cannot implicitly trust the word of a competitor's employee over the phone, they must see "hard" verification (standard in the industry)

This is outrageous! How can these outrageous policies by justified (other than the fact they are fairly consistent with and representative of PM policies throughout the retail B&M industry)?

 

[Pothead]

people whine since they now can't rip off BB.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: Pothead
people whine since they now can't rip off BB.

I have only one word to say in response to your conclusion, Sir:

BINGO!

 

[RaNDoMMAI]

Best buy does so well because they provide alot of stuff(not just computer stuff) for a good price. Much better then the mall and stuff.
they have pretty good prices are dvds, games, music cds, fringes, sometimes tvs.

Plus there are alot of old people who are still perfer B&M stores to online dealers.

Before i found fatwallet and hot deals here i brought alot of my stuff from BB. For the norm, best buy is great.
We smart buyers are still few in number compared to the norm.

anyway OT: I have never really PM to bestbuy, CC tho has been great for me.

~RaNDoM

 

[ZoNtO]

I have always had decent experience with Best Buy. One time I saw a 4x Dual Format Memorex DVD Burner above a DVD-ROM Price tag and so I decided to try and get the 64.99 price that it was marked at. I took the drive up to the cashier, it rang out at 139.99 or whatever and I said, "Whoa that's not the right price, the tag said 64.99." She told me to just run and grab the tag and ask a salesman about it. I did so, in the reverse order. I grabbed a salesman and pointed out the price tag (which clearly said DVD-ROM) on it and asked why the burner had rang out at 139.99. He looked at both for a sec and then said he didn't know why it rang out wrong, the 64.99 was the right price. I took the tag up to her and told her what the salesman said so she changed the price (after another cashier had come over to "verify" the price tag as well). All in all I paid 69 bucks out the door, and it had a 20 dollar rebate which I got back. GRAND TOTAL: 50 bucks.

Anywho, I don't appreciate the people dissing on CompUSAs return policy. For those of you that know me, I do work there and it's a pain in the butt when people complain. Just hear me out. The reason that companies put Restocking Fees in place is because if they return a product to the manufacturer that isn't blatently defective, they take a hit. When people bring back a piece of hardware to me at returns that is opened up and say that just don't want it, I charge the restock fee every time. I don't care how many people sit there and bitch and moan at me. The ONLY time that fee is waived when I'm on returns is either A) its like 20 dollar or less software or B) a manager is called up and overrides my judgement, in which case I make him/her ring it through. Now I do understand how people feel when this happens, but there's a few key points to consider.

1) The company is out to make a profit, bottom line. If every business had 100% perfect customer service, that business would not be IN BUSINESS. There has to be a line drawn somewhere.

2) Most people when they do returns don't think of what the company has to d with their returned product. If nothing's wrong with it, they can't send it back to the manufacturer and get credited for the bad item. They either just sit on it, or eat the cost.

3) It's beneficial if you know exactly what type of product you want when you go into a store. That way, if the product you buy doesn't work, and they don't have another in stock, they can work with you to get the product from a different store (or give you credit towards something else).

4) Most people are easy to deal with when you're nice to them, but if you act like a rager then they respond that way as well. I have NO problem hooking people up, c'mon guys I'm an AT'er as well, no less a computer junkie, I know what you guys go through.

EDIT: Sorry for not pointing this out earlier. The 15% restocking fee at most places is when the bought item is opened up and returned FOR A REFUND. If you do an exchange, the fee is waived (at least at CompUSA). If you bought the item in the first place, why wouldn't you want an exchange? You bought it thinking it was going to work, and when it didn't you returned it. So get another one and you're out the door. Hope that clears things up ^

Also, CompUSA has the best in-store warranty that I've ever come across. This is a very applicable situation, say you bought a brand spanking new 9800XT at 500 bucks when it came out, got the 1 year TAP Replacement Plan on it, and the x800 Pro comes out in a couple weeks. Hark! What is this, the 9800XT is out of stock? Well then guess what, you get an X800 Pro! Pretty sweet deal huh. Either you pay 500 + 400, or you pay 500 + 40 and get the new-gen card. And here's another: Say you get the 1 year on the X800 Pro and try to connect the 1 and 4 points on the chipset, flash the bios to X800 XT, in theory modding the card to an X800 XT, clockspeeds and all. Well Jimmy, you just slipped with your knife and cut the chipset in half! Uh oh, better take it back and get a BRAND NEW X800 PRO CARD. Or you happen to overclock it to high hell and fry it, well take it back and get a new one.

Now I know I'm gonna get flamed because I work there but frankly I don't care. I do think that Best Buy's new PM policy is rediculous and bad customer service. As previous posters stated, at least at my work, we either check website, ad, or call to verify the price, and more often than not I myself know many of them and can do it right there. The only experience I have with Circuit City is that they wouldn't Price Match a DVD Burner to Best Buy's price, but apparently a lot of people are content there. The bottom line is this: When you take advantage of something so much, the company has to take actions to prevent loss. BB's seem a LOT extreme here, but that is their own stupid decision. There are plenty of other valid alternatives to dealing with rude people, so find the store around you that has the people you like to deal with and shop there. Maybe I get special treatment at my work, but I'm not lying about the warranty/return stuff. So many people get selfish and/or brainwashed that they become blind to the reason policies are in place, not that the store hates their business.

Just my $.02...

 

[alm4rr]

how bout you take a picture of the price/item in competitors store with digi cam then show it to them in BB... instead of ripping the tag off their shelf 😉

 

[phillydog]

There have been a few issues with BestBuy.... a few years back when the TDK 24x10x40 CDRW was on sale, I brought a copy of someone's scanned receipt, and a scanned shelf tag to BestBuy. (mind you, these items I showed them were infact BestBuy items as well), and the manager said he would not pricematch, in that I needed to have the ORIGINAL receipt (which they would have photocopied anyway), or the original shelf tag. If anyone cares, this was the Best Buy on Queens Blvd, in New York.
When asking the manager for the store number, he refused to give it to me, and told me if I wanted it, to buy something and it would be listed on the reciept.

I went to a Best Buy on Long Island later that night, and no problems.

Oddly enough, they could have simply punched in the receipt number and brought up the order to verify it was infact real.

The point of the above jibberish was to show that it may just be a crappy manager being a bunghole, and not all stores.


Circuit City states they will match any competitor, either B+M or online, but when I brought internet ads to try and pricematch for the Sony F828 camera, they told me they couldn't pricematch because:

1.) They couldn't verify the validity of the store to be pricematched (which, btw, had horrible ratings)
2.) They showed me their cost on the camera (on the terminal) was $878, and the add I had was for $625

I told the guy that the above 2 points were irrelevant since they weren't mentioned (on the wall) for the pricematch, and he could only offer his condolences and an offer to contact the regional manager for an override.


I'm not sure if any store will truly pricematch online anymore, as most of us (including myself) have abused (or tried to abuse) the policies.

So far, the only thing left is the Amex Gold card BVG which will pricematch the base price (ignoring tax and shipping) for something in print (flyer, magazine ad, newspaper ad). I'm not sure how they verify the store is legit, but it worked for me, and I don't need to know how or why it worked, just that my credit card was given a refund for the difference.


We will soon all start shopping in B+M stores soon enough, since there is progress (so said) of implying an internet tax. I don't know anyone who would buy online if paying shipping AND tax, since that would kill the deal, but leave it to the government to bring down the economy.

 

[bupkus]

1. I don't think this administration would start taxing internet transactions, afterall, if they believed in raising taxes they wouldn't have given tax breaks skewed to the top income bracket.

2. What BB has done will probably bring on a dominoe effect by CC and others. I wouldn't be surprised if these retail outlets had casually agreed over lunch it was time for a change, of course without everyone making the same move at the same time.

3. I did my last price match at BB about a week ago with MS Flight Simulator 2004 for $20. So long PMs wherever you are.

 

[ZoNtO]

Internet tax would be the dumbest idea ever

 

[Auxano]

I gave up PM at BB 2 years ago - They say no - I say - What does that big bold print on the wall say behind you - they say it does not matter - I have also not purchased anything for 2 yrs there. My problem with them is that they say the will PM yet they dont follow their own "policy"

IMHO that part should be class action - If they don't really want to PM them don't say you will.

Grrrrrrr

 

[Cashmoney995]

If these idiots would figure out that highering people with an IQ over 3 would mean they would make more money...

Every time I walk into Best Buy. Hey yo homes, can i hook you up with some stereos? I gotz the Amps, I gots the watz. Frankly, I have a high school degree, something half of their idiotic employees can not say. Best Buy is the most ignorant company, they higher the biggest duck heads to sell products they know nothing about.

 

[daveymark]

OP, you could go up to the pricematch policy in the store and read it into your voicemail. Or read over the phone to someone live and have them type it

 

[tcsenter]

Circuit City states they will match any competitor, either B+M or online...

BZZZ! Sorry, wrong answer, thank you for playing:

"If you've seen a lower advertised price from a local store with the same item in stock, we want to know about it. Bring it to our attention, and we'll gladly beat their price by 10% of the difference."

Circuit City's Definition of Terms:

Advertised price - Any printed or electronically broadcast price that is verifiable and made available to the general public. Special offers or promotions do not qualify. This includes, but is not limited to, rebates, free-with-purchase offers, and special financing.

Local store - Refers to a location in the same metropolitan area and/or within a reasonable distance of our store, as long as the lower price is advertised.

Same item - Exactly the same model, in the same condition, new, in a box, with applicable manufacturer's warranty available.

In stock - Available for sale and delivery that day.

It is unheard of for a B&M retailer to pricematch outside of their local competitive market nor do they pricematch online offers....unless its their own online offer that is lower.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Dyre
BestBuy is dojgn so well because they don't have stupid policies that make them lose money.

You relieze most PM's end up WAY below cost, right??

So the simple fact that deal hounds like people on this board don't like BB is enough proff to why the company is profitable.

I highly doubt that the result of PM's is a sale at a price "way below cost". The whole point of a PM policy, is an offensive sales tactic, against other stores. The store that PM's, takes a hit from their profit margin, but at the same time, costs a competitor a sale.

And in my particular case, the RAM in question was $100 at OM - $40 IR = $60 final cost. The same exact product at BB, was $100 - $30 MIR = $70 final cost. Not a whole heck of a difference there, certainly not enough to put the end price "way below cost".

The other school of thought behind allowing a PM, is to build "store brand loyalty", although the existance of such a thing seems rather questionable in this day and age of "internet shopping", where people attempt to obtain the lowest price, period, in a short time.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: tcsenter
Wow, I'm shocked! In summary:

- Local Best Buy B&M stores will PM local competitor B&M stores only (pretty standard in the industry)
- Verification of competing advertised price must be in published printed form applicable to the local competitive market (pretty standard in the industry)
- Verification of competing advertised price cannot be a web page printed (and possibly manipulated) by a consumer (pretty standard in the industry)
- Best Buy employees cannot implicitly trust the word of a competitor's employee over the phone, they must see "hard" verification (standard in the industry)

This is outrageous! How can these outrageous policies by justified (other than the fact they are fairly consistent with and representative of PM policies throughout the retail B&M industry)?

Uhh, ok, expert, please point me to this "pretty standard in the industry" price-match policy that all of these retail stores work off of. And this time, when reading them, at least try to apply some reading-comprehension skills. I know you must at least possess some, whether you choose to use them or not is up to you.

Btw, the legal terms and conditions of BestBuy's price-match policy, depend on, well, the legal terms and conditions of their price-match policy (DUH!), not some nebulus "standard in the industry" price-match policy that you seem to be inventing here.

And in those terms and conditions, they do not state what the acceptable forms of verification are. Thus one of the huge loopholes in their misleading policy, hence my post. If you had actually read it, you possibly would have understood that.

Btw. given the large loopholes that I mentioned, combined with the fact that BestBuy themselves, do not have a complete written copy of their pricematch policy available to customers, should tell you something. I was not trying to pricematch to some nebulous "joe's internet bargains site", I was tring to PM the identical product, offered by a local retail B&M competitor. Again, if you had bothered to read the initial post, you would have understood that fact. However, given some of your prior posts, I have found that facts at issue tend to escape your notice, so I'm hardly surprised at your response.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: tcsenter

Circuit City states they will match any competitor, either B+M or online...

BZZZ! Sorry, wrong answer, thank you for playing:

"If you've seen a lower advertised price from a local store with the same item in stock, we want to know about it. Bring it to our attention, and we'll gladly beat their price by 10% of the difference."

Circuit City's Definition of Terms:

Advertised price - Any printed or electronically broadcast price that is verifiable and made available to the general public. Special offers or promotions do not qualify. This includes, but is not limited to, rebates, free-with-purchase offers, and special financing.

Local store - Refers to a location in the same metropolitan area and/or within a reasonable distance of our store, as long as the lower price is advertised.

Same item - Exactly the same model, in the same condition, new, in a box, with applicable manufacturer's warranty available.

In stock - Available for sale and delivery that day.

It is unheard of for a B&M retailer to pricematch outside of their local competitive market nor do they pricematch online offers....unless its their own online offer that is lower.

Just a question - in your opinion, is a price advertised on a store's offical corporate-owned publically-accessable web site, an "electronically broadcast price that is verifiable and made available to the general public" ? It sure sounds like it to me. So it would seem to me, that CC's PM policy would include pricematching web sites, as long as they are the web sites of local retail competitors, not some online-only price. Note that is different that BestBuy's exemption, which does not specify an exemption for "internet-only" offers, but simply "internet offers", of which local retail competitor's store flyers (also available on their web sites) also fall under.

I've actually had a CSR from CC go look up a competitor's web site to verify price and product details for a PM. (I guess I should have made the extra drive to CC to get the RAM, instead of trying to go to BB, since it seems that CC doesn't have an "impossible" PM policy like BB does.) It strikes me that a price on a local retail competitor's web site is indeed "verifiable", if the CSR handling the PM can visit the web site themselves and validate the price being offered on the item. Same with a telephone call to the competitor's store. Unfortunately, BestBuy now has an official corporate policy against doing either, as I have been informed verbally by the manager I spoke to that night. The fact that I cannot find those restrictions in their price-match policy that they had to print out for me from their web site, seems slightly amiss though.

Btw, you are slightly wrong, Staples, OfficeMax, Circuit City, and BestBuy, all explicitly do not price-match their own web sites, for internet-only offers. I've even been denied a PM for offers that were supposed to be good in-store as well. I also almost got denied by CompUSA once, I printed out a page on their web site that said "Unadvertised specials - this week only! print out this page and bring it to our store. Prices valid in-store only", and the local store didn't want to honor the prices, claiming that they were online-only prices. Given the wording on the page, that just didn't jive, so they eventually gave it to me, but it was disturbing that they didn't even want to honor their own corporate-advertised prices.

The fact is that these trends are not in any way limited to a particular store (even though my initial post was specifically about BestBuy), they are very much industry-wide, at least given my personal experiences. All I expect, as a potential-customer, are that the terms and conditions of any offers made, are clear, understandable, and that the entities offering them are also legally held to them. This was not the case at BestBuy, and has not been the case in the past at all of those major retailers I mentioned at the beginning of the prior paragraph.

 

[VulnoX]

Damn it hurts a little when many of you seem ready to kill the employees when most of them are just doing their job so they dont get fired. I just started working at BB about... well... a week ago. All the people I work with are awesome. They joke around with eachother, we have nights where after we close we get to have tournaments on the big projection systems, and I have not yet talked to an employee that was not in, or already graduated from, college (Except for some of the cashiers, they are our 16+ croud).

Someone said they have 16 y/o's selling products they know nothing about. This could be true if BB allowed anyone under 18 to work the floor, but facts are not important right? Also, you are interviewed and asked questions about the section you will be working in. I had to know quite a bit of advanced stuff (for a sales job at least) to get into Computer sales. I still don't know why I had to answer some of them, any customer that knows a proc uses L1 and L2 cache, and what IRQ's are assigned to what devices, probably knows enough that they dont have to talk to me when making their computer choice, but whatever.

As for the price match, I have not yet had a better experience with any other company when compared to them. I am not saying I have had better with BB, just saying that I dont see Circuit City as being any better. For example: I tried to PM a UPS recently, I got the same answer from BB, CC, Comp USA (although a much worse answer, they said they called Office Max and OM said the price in the AD I brought them was not corrent, I went back to OM and they said nobody called, I went back to C USA and talked to a manager and he said they called and talked to the manager at OM I had just got done confirming the price with, and said he (even though it was really a she) said that the price was wrong.), and Office Depot.

Also, you talked about a TV saying that you did not believe that a $300 dollar TV was near cost, well believe it. Did any of you know that when Best Buy sells a Computer, Printer, Video Card, etc, they are selling them AT COST with maybe a 1-7 dollar markup? We do not make our money on stuff like that, we make it on printer ink, USB cables (the markup is huge), service plans, the BB card, and a bunch of other stuff.

I bought a XM Roady setup from them, and went back 2 weeks later and got it PM'd without a single problem, they smiled and put the difference back on my credit card. I have had this experience several times.

My point is, there are a lot of BB's that have bad, no talent employees. There are some in my district, and even the people at my store (the top ranked store in our district) make fun of them. That does not mean BB is out to screw you. Either they are following rules that are made very clear to us, or they are stupid. But stupidity and ignorance is far from limited to BB.

Oh and a bit of info:
1. We DO NOT have to call another store to confirm a PM. We have other customers to deal with and do not feel like arguing with you when someone who is ready to buy something from us is waiting.
2. We DO NOT have easy access to the internet to confirm ads, we have the system setup with the BB intranet, and it is possible to get online, but we are told to keep from doing it if possible.
3. DO NOT explode at whoever you are talking to. Explain the problem and ask why they are not PM'ing. If they say its because you made up the ad, go back to the other store, grab 10 of them and go back, get the manager at the other store to sign the ad and give her phone number. If they still give you that excuse, then find a new BB or shop somewhere else, I really dont care because I know that my BB would not do that, our managers are awesome.
4. I agree, not PM'ing because it is below cost is kind of bogus, but I also have not heard anyone give a story saying that BB would not PM, but CC would. (I did not read all of the posts here, after the 10th "Yeah BB sucks" I thought I got the message.)
5. BB has no restocking fee except on open computer packages, and a couple other big items. Someone made that the only line in their post, and it made me laugh.
6. The Reward Zone is friggin' awesome, and the coupons they send you, like for the customer appreciation 10% off everything in the store weekend was badass, if you have a problem with that you need help.

OK I am done, like I said I am not doing this because of love BB over any other company, I have just seen a lot of BS in this topic and wanted to give some fairly public info that many of you have not taken the time to find out for yourself.