Submission + - Best Buy Says Dual-Site System 'Human Error'
An anonymous reader writes: eWeek is reporting that Best Buy is in a bit of hot water with the Conneticut Attorney General. Evidently, the issue stems from having an intra-store Web site that has different prices than the Web prices, but guarantees customers to be the same. Best Buy has gone on the record as blaming employees. From the story:
"Best Buy officials, while admitting 'human error' among its workers, denies any evil intent and says the false statements apparently made by store employees were a result of confusion and inadequate employee training... The intrastore version is showcased in store kiosks using Internet Explorer and is intended to show customers information about products available in the store, along with their official prices. The problem stems from Best Buy's price-matching policy, which promises to match the price of other retailers, and it explicitly includes BestBuy.com... The problematic scenario happened when customers saw a low Web price and went into a Best Buy physical location to trigger the price match and get that low price. Employees would agree to match the price and would say they are calling up the Web site to verify the claim. Instead of calling up the Web site, though, employees would access the intrastore version of the site, which looked identical (other than its pricing) to the site, and then used that to 'prove' the online pricing didn't exist."
"Best Buy officials, while admitting 'human error' among its workers, denies any evil intent and says the false statements apparently made by store employees were a result of confusion and inadequate employee training... The intrastore version is showcased in store kiosks using Internet Explorer and is intended to show customers information about products available in the store, along with their official prices. The problem stems from Best Buy's price-matching policy, which promises to match the price of other retailers, and it explicitly includes BestBuy.com... The problematic scenario happened when customers saw a low Web price and went into a Best Buy physical location to trigger the price match and get that low price. Employees would agree to match the price and would say they are calling up the Web site to verify the claim. Instead of calling up the Web site, though, employees would access the intrastore version of the site, which looked identical (other than its pricing) to the site, and then used that to 'prove' the online pricing didn't exist."
