Worst Buy

Cutriss writes "Steve Lynch of Hypothermia has been running a consumer awareness page following of an Internet pricing disagreement between Best Buy and over 2000 angry customers, where Best Buy refused to honor a web-only sale price of a GeForce4 Ti 4600 for $129.99, at a "Special pre-order price". The situation has escalated further - Rod Hill, Store Manager for Best Buy #513 in Tucker/Dekalb County, GA, had a customer arrested on Friday of last week, citing Fraud and Criminal Trespassing. Hill informed police that Abraham Cherian, an Indian American, was trying to rip off the store, the same store that had conceded to give another customer his video card as requested 10 days earlier. Best Buy is now apparently red-flagging inquiring troublemak^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcustomers who attempt to obtain their purchased cards from Best Buy locations." FWIW, if the description of what happened is accurate, Best Buy has entered into a binding contract to sell the cards at the advertised price, and if they don't want to honor it, the people affected should take them to court (or contact their local Attorney General's office, which is what they appear to be doing). It's Best Buy's obligation to make sure their prices are accurate.

Kodak and others

[56ker]

You'd think after the Kodak fiasco & another online vendor got the price of an X-Box wrong - and in both cases the customer got it (eventually) at the advertised price they'd just cave in and avoid the bad publicity!

Disclaimer?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing they have a disclaimer on their web site. "We reserve the right to cancel sales in the event of errors" or somewhat. Don't know if it'll hold up in court, but it seems somewhat reasonable to me. It's not like they took the money and didn't give it back. Although I guess it would make a difference if the credit card was charged, and that would be the equivalent of money actually changing hands.

Sigh.

[juuri]

Hill informed police that Abraham Cherian, an Indian American

... and what exactly does that last part matter for?

Future Shop

[dunkstr]

Best buy came up to Canada and bought out Future Shop. I was never particularly impressed with their business practices before they were bought out but it looks like things aren't changing. I've heard a few stories of salespeople telling customers that X would be compatible with Y to make the sale and deny any wrongdoing when they tried to return the product.

I had a friend who worked in the complaints department, he was REALLY busy.

The police sided with the customer.

[Hamshrew]

It's not that bad... the police sided with the guy, saying the manager shouldn't have done that. Seems like they're doing just what they should, in this case. Best Buy are being assholes about it, and they're getting slapped for it. No news here.

Re:Cowboys and Indians

[Sunkist]

not that it matters much but doesn't NATIVE AMERICAN refer to the "Indian" part of the "cowboys and indians" mentioned here. So in this case, maybe Indian American means someone from India.

in all, it is just stooopid that ethinicity plays any part b/c labels are not what is at point here.

Bad Buy

[umm qasr]

Best Buy advertising then refusing to sell the GF4 at the low price is actually quite old news. The arrest of the Indian American is actually new. We know Best Buy should honour the low price, but as any company would, they tried to get out of it. Steve @ Hypothermia (and HardOCP) has done alot of work, and indirectly (&directly) got many people their GF4's at the low price, Good Job!

If what has been reported is true about the Indian American being arrested for trying to get his GF4 at the low price. That is a whole new story. Reading up at Hypothermia and the HardOCP Forums [hardforum.com] it seems so. After some of my experiences at Best Buy, and all this nonsense over the GF4 they are definately on My List. This story about arresting a guy over what happened is just the icing on the cake.

What exactly happened still seems a bit unclear, and we should probably what for Best Buy's response, but it really doesn't surprise me that Best Buy acted this way. Their company cultrue seems to foster turning employees into assholes. IMHO, of course.

Re:Disclaimer?

[macrom]

Sure they have a disclaimer, but is the disclaimer legal? They're basically telling you that they can change the price of a product at any time, regardless of when the purchase was made. That sounds rather fishy to me. One would think that Best Buy has a decent legal team, but if it's anything like the team of people in their stores...well, most people here know what I mean.

So the question now (probably) becomes : Does Best Buy really have the right to arbitrarily change the price on any item you purchase, just because the disclaimer says so?

Better Business Bureau?

[ProfMoriarty]

Has anyone who's gotten stiffed from Best Buy called the BBB?

Hmmm ... 2000+ calls may do something about the problem.

Re:Cowboys and Indians

[dattaway]

I would expect the incident report would refer to the "suspect" by his name, after all they have identified him, right? Instead, they make repeated comments to his skin color as if that has any bearing to the case.

"He's not white, so he must be guilty your honor!"

I'm "white," but I do like it when officers that are required to uphold the law know what are important facts from the details. Sometimes police scare me. That guy shouldn't have made it past the interviews for a "security guard," not to mention a police officer. Sounds racist to me if I have seen it.

Re:oh really?

[Viking Coder]

When does this cross the line to bait-and-switch, which is illegal?

I think it's a pretty fine line, not a blatant misunderstanding on the part of the poster. Don't be so critical - there's a real issue at stake, here.

Or, to sum up Best Buy's mistake in Fortune Cookie wisdom :

Measure twice, cut once.

Damn right!

[Rebel Patriot]

It's Best Buy's obligation to make sure their prices are accurate.

This statement is 100% correct. The store manager in Dekalb who had that man arrested should in turn be arrested and sued for false arrest. When I worked for The Home Depot a few years back here in Macon, one of our signs for a 24 foot fiberglass ladder (nice ladder) was priced $100 too low. We honored it without any problems. Why? Two reasons: 1) it was our fault, and 2) it's the law.

Companies that don't honor advertised prices (whether it was an honest mistake or not) are obligated to sell the merchandise at that price. This is not '$199.95 or best offer', this is '$199.95'.

Re:Disclaimer?

[Sokie]

I think the main problem is that they honored the price for some people. IANAL, but it seems like once they did that, they lost the right to refuse to honor it for everyone who ordered before it was corrected. If they had just held firm to begin with and promptly refunded customers their money, then the people complaining wouldn't have much of a leg to stand on.

It's arbitraty discrimination about who does and doesn't get a card that may get them in trouble here.

--Sokie

Re:WRONG

[Rebel Patriot]

You're incorrect. IANAL, but I have talked with some, and here in GA, they are required BY LAW to honor that price, period.

Re:Disclaimer?

[ADRA]

It says it will cancel the order, not jack up the price and still force you to buy it. The difference is VERY important. The worst that can happen is that you have to re-order the product at the higher price.

Re:Now is a good time to boycott Best Buy...

[macrom]

If anything, I would say the author's reference that the man was an Indian American is racist. Why does it matter? We don't know how this guy was carrying on -- he could have threatened to destroy stuff in the store, threatened the manager and/or store associates. Hell, he could have even been approaching customers in an attempt to turn them away. All of these things could get you arrested at a store in America regardless of the country you were born in.

If you're gonna boycott Best Buy, do it because of something more legitimate than an article claiming the arrest of this guy is racist.

Re:Bad Buy

[shren]

Their company cultrue seems to foster turning employees into assholes.

You'd be an asshole too if you worked register there. I have never been in a best buy where each register didn't have at least two people waiting in line. I've stopped shopping there since twice they've had register wait times of over 15 minutes or more.

You'd think that they'd know how bad that is for thier buisness - half of what I bought in Best Buy was impulse buys. You make me wait that long and the impulse fades - I set my 'best buy' on the counter and go see a movie instead.

Re:Out of the woodwork :)

[ryants]

Things I would do if I were you:

• Have the manager arrested for filing a false police report. See how he likes the cuffs.
• Sue Best Buy for "damage to your reputation".

Web pricing mistakes

[cowboy junkie]

I've seen a lot of these pricing mistakes on DVD forums, where folks find them and 'spread the joy' to let other people get in on the deal. Sometimes places honor them, sometimes they don't. I remember buy.com had a real expensive monitor that was mispriced by a few hundred dollars and people were in a state of outrage that Buy wouldn't honor their orders, even though they knew dang well that it was a mistake when they placed their orders.

Personally, my attitude is that if you try to get a sweet deal that you know might be a mistake, don't bitch if it doesn't pan out.

That said, what Best Buy did wrong here was to:

• Deny their mistake (saying the web site receipt was false and that the customer was trying to commit fraud)
• Inconsistently apply their 'remedy'

I don't think it's ridiculous that Best Buy refuses to lose $200 on each misprice, but that they go out of their way to make the customers suffer for it is way out of line.

Look.

[mindstrm]

The cops were called wrongly, yes, but for the right reasons.

The manager saw a guy coming in with a receipt that did not match any price he knew about for the item, including the price on the website at that time.. so he thought it was fake... ergo, the customer was trying to rip them off with a fake receipt for a web order.

Yes, that same manager gave someone the item at the real price 10 days ago.. that's almost 2 weeks of business. How is he supposd to remember every item he signs for?

And why play the race card? Who cares if he's Indian American.

Re:Disclaimer? -- yeah, but....

[enjo13]

Anti-free speech? Are you NUTS?

Fraud is not protected speech, period. False advertising is a form of fraud, as it is an attempt to "trick" the buying public by promising goods or services in a misleading way.

False advertising is very difficult to prove, however. Errors and unintentional ommisions are protected as just that, accidents. In order to win a false advertising suit you have to prove malicious intent.. and that's very very difficult to do.

I'm not really sure what occured in this case. It seems like Best Buy made a listing error, and then refused to honor. That would put them well within their legal rights.

IANAL

[Anonymous Coward]

but, if you are who you say you are, you should talk to a lawyer before talking to anyone else. There's a reason you hear "no comment" in disputes from parties on advice of their lawyer.

Re:Wrongful detention?

[Bilestoad]

Sometimes it's great to live in the land of lawyers. Talk to one, Cherian. If you don't wind up being offered an apology AND a video card I will be very, very surprised. Oh, and if your legal advisor OKs it, talk to your local newspaper too!

"General Manager" Rod is going to be very sorry!

Re:What's even more disturbing...

[enjo13]

The thing is, the data-entry mistake could have occured higher up the chain. The people that they called simply have access to the price listed in the best buy system.

So... if the typo occured when the price was actually listed, then you could call the customer reps 600 times and they would all give you the same price.

What is more interesting to me is that this did seem like some kind of specially designed promotion. I don't know if the 200 dollar off quote is something that is generated by their pricing system (its not uncommon for the suggested retail price and the offering price to be compared and presented to the reps for sale purposes) or if it was part of a really botched promotional campaign that best buy realized was a big mistake, just to late. That to me is the meat of the question.

Re:Best Buy = Best Fraud

[qurob]

This has nothing to do with best buy

It's like that at almost any store

I called them, I encourage you to to the same...

[Anonymous Coward]

I just contacted their customer service department at 1-888-237-8289 and I encourage you to do the same.

I told them that they have lost a customer and that I will be telling everyone I know about this issue and encouraging them to boycott all BestBuy stores. I told that that I will continue to encourage others to boycott until Best Buy:
1) Offers an immediate and formal apology from the president of their company to Abraham Cherian. It should be prominently displayed on the front page of their website and be accompanied with a press release.
2) Contacts the Tucker/Dekalb county law Public Safety Department responsible for the arrest and instructs them to drop all changes against Abraham Cherian.
3) Properly honor all existing valid orders for the disputed card.
4) Immediately terminate Rod Hill's employment at Best Buy #513
5) Immediately terminate the employment of any manager above Rod Hill who may have instructed employees to take the kind of action Rod Hill took.

I hope that Abraham Cherian has already spoken to an attorney and is perusing both Best Buy and the county for the improper handling of this incident. I suspect he won't need the discount after this series of events.

Few things you should do now

[Sycraft-fu]

As always, this does not consitiute formal legal advice, get a lawyer in your jurisdiction for advice.

First off, get a lawyer. Once of the nice ambulence chasing kind. If they like the case, and they probably will, they should do it for a split of the settlement. Of course nothing is ever sure in the court system, but juries are generally sympathetic to cases of consumers suing big corperations for being assholes.

Next, I would talk to your DA about possable criminal charges against the manager. It sounds like he knowling lied to the police to have you arrested, and that's illegal.

Finally continue to do what you are doing now, which is to spread the word. Bad press hurts the company immensly.

Re:But is this really a surprise?

[banuaba]

Dumbasses, please read the article. The reason they should have to honor thier price is beacuse the advert said "GeFORCE CARD! 129.99! $200 SAVINGS!" or something to that effect. if the ad had just said Geforce card, 129.99, I'd agree with you, but the inclusion of the 200 savings bit indicates that it isn't a typo, it was intentional.

More Best Buy Shennanigans

[MAXOMENOS]

Here's another data point to consider, a story about how Best Buy [die.net] gave a customer a hard time, apparently, for buying something besides their top-of-the-line sattelite system.

I know it's going to be years before I make a purchase from Best Buy [die.net] again...they're going to have go to a very long way to recover my confidence as a customer. Issuing a formal apology to their customers would be a start.

Re:Out of the woodwork :)

[Mexican]

Did you say you printed the receipt off the BB site? If so, I wonder if this could be a issue for a federal court - IANAL, blah blah - but if the part of BB that is responsible for the site is in another state, maybe this is something that would be considered to have taken place "in interstate commerce". I once served on a federal grand jury, and the federal prosectors used any link, no matter how tenuous, to haul folks into federal court if the CRIMINAL charges looked like something worthy of federal charges. So you were enticed by something off a out-of-state part of the company(if this is true, and their web site shows a contact address in MN), you try to assert your rights to hold the local representatives of BB to that contract, and you get falsly arrested. While you are shopping for a lawyer, you might want to keep this in mind.

Re:Sigh.

[m3000]

The guy who this happened to went into a little more detail [kuro5hin.org] on Kuro5hin about what happened. According to him he was never rude at all. He asked for the manager, and then was lead to a backroom to wait. He thought it was so that the other managers could confer with one another to see if they would honor the price match or not, but instead it was jsut to keep him from leaving the store until the cops came. I know I won't be stepping in a Best Buy in Tucker, Georgia anytime soon.

Re:The police sided with the customer.

[drinkypoo]

It's not that bad... the police sided with the guy, saying the manager shouldn't have done that. Seems like they're doing just what they should, in this case.

Uh no. They didn't need to cuff him. That was completely unnecessary.

You cuff someone if they're dangerous. He was being completely calm, and the cops could see that. So putting him in cuffs was definitely going overboard.

Once, when I was in my early teens (but I was 6' tall) I punched a sign in a park in Lakeport, CA. A cop (and member of the SWAT team) cuffed me and put me in the front of the car without sliding the seat back; So I was bent over in the FRONT seat with my hands behind my back, bent over so far that my face was about a foot from the dash, because I would otherwise not fit into the car.

Now, I want to tell you that this cop is a bad cop; He's known for predjudice, and for getting into the pants of someone's underage daughter. The guy's in his thirties, mind you, AND A COP. So one hopes that he's atypical...

What's the point of all this crap? He had no right to treat me that way, especially since I did no damage to the sign (of course he claimed that I was the cause of a 2" crack in the wooden sign, which was BEHIND a piece of plexiglass) but he did anyway, and he got away with it. Don't start making excuses and allowances for cops because some of them are DEFINITELY bad guys. This asshole was one of them, and he's still a cop.

We should hold our peace officers to a higher standard of behavior than anyone else in our society. Otherwise, the entire law enforcement system becomes one that is founded on hypocrisy.

Once money changes hands, the contract is final

[Quixote]

Many of the people here seem to be missing one crucial point: once the money changes hands, BestBuy has to honor the price! They advertised a special "pre-order" deal. People who paid for this (and whose payment BestBuy accepted) have a right to get the card at that price. Once the money changes hands, the "contract" is in place.

People who never paid for this "special" pre-order don't have the same rights; they can't force BestBuy to honor the mistake (legally speaking).

Re:Sickening

[Anonymous Coward]

After they sold "us" said land, then decided that no one owned it to be sold, so they still had rights to it... i.e. defrauded "us".

After they attacked settlements on "their" land, that they sold "us" (see above).

After they raped, tortued, kidnapped, and otherwise terrorized "our" families.

It was an ugly time, and no one is perfect, no one is the good guy. "They" just lost the ugly fight.

Re:Disclaimer?

[flatrock]

If you read the letter from the AG which is on the web page, it seems like the issue isn't them canceling all the orders. It seems like the issue is that they are honoring the price for some people and not for others. It seems like that MAY be illegal, and least in some cases.

Does Best Buy really have the right to arbitrarily change the price on any item you purchase, just because the disclaimer says so?

Is anyone really stating that they are arbitrarily doing this? Someone made an error. They don't want to have to honor erroreous prices, which in this case would cost them over half a million dollars for the 2000 customers that placed orders. They are also canceling before the products were shipped.

Racism?

[Otter]

Well, at least you got some Slashdot karma out of it... ;-)

Out of curiosity, the linked article seems to think (on the basis of no evidence they mention) that your ethnicity played a role on this. You don't mention any such thing here. Any idea where that insinuation came from?

Anyway, while I know there are two sides to every story, you seem like a class act and it sounds like you were really treated shabbily. I wouldn't blame you if you sued the pants off Best Buy.

Thank God for the police...

[gdyas]

Maybe a little O/T, but everyone please notice that the police in this instance behaved completely properly throughout the situation, to the point of empathizing with this gentleman.

With the cops, when they fsck up, everyone's on their back. Nobody notices when the system works, and it appears to be working well here.

As for Best Buy, get a good lawyer who'll work for a split of the rewards for such harrassing behavior, and drain them dry.

Make sure you get your GeForce4 out of it, too. Make that manager hand it to you himself.

Re:Disclaimer? -- yeah, but....

[markmoss]

Best Buy not only gave a verbal confirmation of the price, they accepted the order and CHARGED IT to the credit card. IANAL, but I can't imagine any twist to law where this _wasn't_ a valid contract. Generally, a sales contract is made when one party makes an offer to buy or sell at a certain price and the other accepts. More generally, contracts are made when there is "a meeting of minds". The advertising wasn't a valid offer (too many ways advertising can get screwed up, OTOH if there are a lot of such "errors" the state AG should conclude that they weren't errors and prosecute for bait-and-switch). The verbal confirmation of price was an offer, although it might not be possible to prove it really happened. But all that doesn't matter, because if the seller didn't make an offer, then placing the order for such and such at $129 was an offer by the _buyer_, and the seller accepted it by taking the order and the money. About the only way out of that is to claim that it is impossible to fulfill the order due to circumstances beyond your control (you don't have stock, and can't get it), and pretty clearly this isn't the case when stores all over the country have the item...

So what is BB's real defense here? Maybe, "there couldn't have been a meeting of minds because we are mindless"? ;-)

Re:Out of the woodwork :)

[erroneus]

If you don't sue I'm going to get SO PISSED OFF at you it isn't funny.

You need to sue on behalf of every wronged customer on the planet. You need to sue for triple damages based on the humiliation you suffered. You need to sue for wrongful arrest based on the false charges. You need to sue for illegal detainment. You need to sue for them being arrogant assholes.

If people want to run a public business that's great. But there are laws the govern the operation of public businesses. Therefore those laws must be followed in order to continue running a public business.

"Disclaimers" and "EULAs" do NOT supercede the law. Just for emphasis, I will repeat it several times. "Disclaimers" and "EULAs" do NOT supercede the law. "Disclaimers" and "EULAs" do NOT supercede the law. "Disclaimers" and "EULAs" do NOT supercede the law. "Disclaimers" and "EULAs" do NOT supercede the law. "Disclaimers" and "EULAs" do NOT supercede the law. "Disclaimers" and "EULAs" do NOT supercede the law. Only a signed waiver can remove someone from their lawful responsibilities and even that may not be enough.

So how much should you sue for? $1M minimum. Maybe you won't get it... who knows... maybe it'll be $1M in store credit ;) hahaha... but SUE. The story doesn't end here. This will happen to more people than just you. This has happened to more people than just you. This country is shifting into a company-run nation. Business interests come before those of citizens. Hell, we're not even citizens any more... we're "consumers." If that's not an insult to your dignity as a human, I don't know what is!?

SUE THOSE BASTARDS. You have to. DO NOT SETTLE out of court. DO NOT SIGN any agreements to "keep quiet" in exchange for money. It doesn't matter if the amount you sue for is more than you could have hoped to earn in two lifetimes. The point is to damage THEM, not to reward yourself. A company the size of Best Buy will not feel $90,000. It wouldn't even make their lawyers blink...let alone any of their accountants. Make it hurt to a level that will send a message to Best Buy and all other abusive retailers out there that each time they pull some crap like this, they run a serious risk not only of bad P.R. but of losing a whole lot of money.

I'll be happy for you and very jealous when you collect your rewards, but the reward is not what you're suing for -- it's the damages. If they are not damaged by this, then you've lost... we've all lost.

Okay?

(Am I being too passionate about this? Nah.)

Re:What's going on with all this . . .

[/dev/trash]

Now why couldn't Rod have acted in a mature manner such as this instead of calling the police on an innocent man that wanted nothing more than what he originally ordered?

My guess? Sept. 11th.

Re:Future Shop

[Anonymous Coward]

When dealing with Future Shop get it in writing or take your business elsewhere. That applies for any company, but especially Future Shop.

Re:Cowboys and Indians

[Romancer]

How "American" can you get?

The "Indians" were here first, and the only reason they weren't called "Americans" was because some white guy couldn't read a map or take a look around him to see that he wasn't in India.