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- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3This Price Gouging is simply ridiculous -- it's funny too because the retailers get hosed when it comes to making a profit -- and they didn't have enough 360's to even make a neat little bundle for themselves. It's very easy to fight back against price gouging -- the people in line should have protested and simply went back home. Trust me, taking your money back with you is the most frightening thing for a retailer to witness. Keeping your money in your wallet is the best form of protest against corporate/retail greed.
- pondster, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Here's the thing. All Retail is Evil. Take it from me, a 15 year veteran of retail management. I fortunatly got out and now I'm working as a sys admin, but Retail is evil plain and simple. Back in the 90's things were good, I was managing for Software Etc. (b4 they became gamestop) All Home Office cared about was getting numbers. Sales are key as in retail. But I found out if you do your own thing and keep the sales then upper management leaves you alone. I had tons of room to play with store setup and how I ran things, but we were in the top 10 in the country.
My experiance showed me that if you were honest with the customers, knew what you were talking about and never really pushed them to anything but suggested add ons then not only did you get the sales but the respect of the consumer. We grew an amazing amount of return customers, it also helps to remember their names (Which I taught my employees).
Like Life, Everything comes to respect. You need to respect people and they will respect you - unforunatly Best Buy has lost the respect because they have none for their bread and butter, the consumer. - jbwillia, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"...In addition, we have taken appropriate measures to ensure this situation will not occur with future Xbox 360 promotions...." - from the Best Buy response
Well then, we get screwed again when the PS3 hits shelves!!! - rmccs0x, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1cant people just wait a few weeks? good lord.
- phil.busch, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"Keeping your money in your wallet is the best form of protest against corporate/retail greed."
Yeah, it is frightening to the higher ups. But to the guy working for $7 /hr behind the counter... he doesn't give two *****. How do I know? Because I am one. As long as I get paid, I don't care where people do their buying... - eclectro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Best buy saw an opportunity, so they went for it, and I cant blame them."
Gee, I can. Switch and baitin' is fraud where I live - fatkid, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5No one is forced into anything you dumb *****. It's an Xbox not food, water or medicine.
- digitalgopher, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1agreed. this and the pricerightphoto fiasco goes to show that consumers can have a lot of power against exploiting retailers.
- pondster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Retail is evil, margin is everything, and when they only make 7 bucks on a $400 system they are gonna figure out a way to add on a $15 faceplate that you also make $7 on."
This brings me back to my point, if they focused on treating their customers right then they wouldn't have to worry about that customer leaving with just the system (Which they make NO money on) and work on finding out how to get that customer back in the door - It's like the old addage - Give a man a fish he eats for a day, teach him how to fish he eats for a lifetime - the same can be brought to retail - Force a sell on a customer you get a sale today, Create customer loyalty you get sales for a lifetime (well atleast a few years lol) - locojones, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1HYPOCRITE ALERT!
Here are (1) consumers, (2) who purchased an electronics product from a retailer, (3) said retailer misrepresented the ultimate price of the item, and (4) attempted a bait & switch on the buyer.
This story is virtually indistinguishable on its facts than the Pricerite story, where only one customer was affected and everyone here went *****. Where are the calls for action to take down the retailer for their reprehensible sales tactics in this situation? Where are the Skype calls? Where are the DDoS attacks against BestBuy.com? Where are the faxes, and spam e-mails, and vampire bandwidth leeching sites? What happened to the holier than thou "we are the internet, we vindicate consumer rights" attitude?
All I see is a bunch of bitching. - vonskippy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You've heard the saying "dumbass beware?", pretty much applies here. Show me someone that was forced to buy one of those bundles with a gun to their head and I'll have a bit of sympathy. For the rest of them, to f*cking bad - don't be so f*cking stupid next time.
- DrEbola, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Guys, bundling is not illegal and it's not cheating and it's not "stupid," it's a part of life. BB is doing what thousands and thousands of other companies do every day, which is charging a higher price to those who will pay a higher price to have the console early. If you don't want to pay up, then wait. You get to buy at the lower price, and the kids who are still addicted to playing video games will buy it at the higher price--that's what bundling is for.
- scutter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Read the comments below the article. According to one, there is an article that claims there was a memo sent from Best Buy headquarters to store managers telling them to force the bundles. If so, it really puts a different light on this thing.
- DrEbola, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1People are willing to pay different prices for the same product, many higher than the price at which the product actually sells. If you think "big corporations" are "screwing their customers" by forcing you to pay the price you're willing to pay, you're just disappointed that you didn't get away with getting a good deal out of them. Cry.
- TimmyK., on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Notice how they say that tey have taken measures to make sure that this type of thing won't happen "in future Xbox 360 promotions". What other 360 promotions? The major promotion is over, because if they tried this later when 360's are pleantiful they wouldn't sell a one. But in other words they still have left themselves the option to do it in other circumstance such as... say the PS3, or Revolution releases? I despise double talk, but I live in the USA where double talk is used everyday in every way, and morons fall for it all in droves. This is an empty promise/appology. It is simply a way to SOUND like they are sincerely sorry, when in fact all it means is that they actually won't promise not to do it again. Any thinking person should take this as a "screw you" from Best Buy, not an appology, or atonement of any kind.
- suMMx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0People that bought that crap deserve what they get. No one forced anyone to stand in line and pay an ungodly price for a GAME MACHINE for God's sake. It's not like they aren't going to be making this thing in six months to a year. If people believed and wanted to buy in to the hype, that's what they get. I don't feel sorry for any of them. Like someone posted earlier, it's not like it's food and water for pity sakes. If people would quit the whole buying into the hype thing it would teach these corporate idiots a lesson. It's all about supply and demand.
hey nutsack, maybe next time before spouting off your ***** you would do some research and realize they advertised the 360 as $299 and $499 and only told consumers that they had to buy the bundles when they were ready to purchase it. - TimmyK., on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Guys, bundling is not illegal and it's not cheating and it's not "stupid," it's a part of life. BB is doing what thousands and thousands of other companies do every day, which is charging a higher price to those who will pay a higher price to have the console early. If you don't want to pay up, then wait. You get to buy at the lower price, and the kids who are still addicted to playing video games will buy it at the higher price--that's what bundling is for."
No you are wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. They ADVERTISED it at the normal price NOT THE BUNDLED price. They advertised it at a lower price, let the people wait 12 hours in line over night, in bellow freezing temperatures, and then at the last second, when they knew that the people were ripe having gone through so much already, said "oh by the way it's gonna cost you more than we said it would because you have to buy all of this useless crap in order to get what you have waited in line all night for". That is not alright. That is highly organized criminal fraud known as "bait and switch", and it is illegal in pretty much every part of the country. If I had been one of those people in line I would have told the store manager that if they didn't sell me and every other person in line a system at the advertised price I was not only NOT leaving, I was calling the police, and the local district attorney's office. The fact that the Memo sent out to the stores told the managers to hold back a few systems to sell to people who were insistant about the advertised price means that they KNEW what they were doing was wrong, and illegal, and wanted to be able to shut up any really bad complainers by sending them off with a system, hoping that they wouldn't push it any further. People should know that the society we live in is capitalist, but pure capitalism doesn't blend 100% with democracy and freedom. The rights of the citizens of this country are greater than the rights of the corporations to abuse those citizens for increased proffits (no matter how much money is "donated" to the polititians to attempt to change that). You can't just say "if you don't like it then too bad" every time a company does something like this. If they had advertised that they were only selling bundles then they wouldn't have done anything illegal (still unethical in my book, but not illegal), but they intentionally didn't advertise this in order to draw people to their stores under false pretenses, and then they took advantage of those people. Anyone who defends them on this is almost as despicable as they are. - chicomdk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Let me ask you this if Best buy did nothign wrong why are they trying so hard to make everything right. If they really didn't do anything wrong i dont see them trying so hard rectify the sitution. I mean i m not goign to stop shopping at best buy but that is messed up.
- scott2342, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1A friend of mine was forced into one of those packages from Best Buy. The worse part was that he was basically getting duplicate pieces, (e.g. a $30 Cat-5 cable in addition to the one that came with the Xbox and other stupid stuff like that) or useless crap like alternative face plates for the Xbox.
- zerolaw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0and to anyone who says what they did is illegal it really isn't at all. what they did sucks and is totally unfair to at least let the people who camped out over night know but it was totally within their right to do so. in the back of their add all the fine print covered their ass to do whatever they wanted. and even so right on the page with the 360s im pretty sure it said bundles may apply. im not 100% sure but i thought i remembered reading that when this whole issue started.
- zerolaw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0i work at best buy and just another example of how much management sucks there. their first f up was the manager who closed decided she would go outside and take down the names of everyone in line (we only had 50 here was more then that outside at the time) she told them to go home and come back in the morning and just show they are on the list. store closed everyone working there left and a new line formed. she decided to not put up a sold out notice a screwed over a whole new group of people who actually waited overnight (including 2 employees)
then our store manager said that no employees were gonna stick one aside if we wanted one we would have to wait in line. so what did he do? he took one. as far as anyone know it wasn't paid for. then about 4 days ago he comes into the store with it and say "you know i don't really like that xbox 360 thing im gonna return it"
since he didn't pay for it he can hardly just return it to the store so he put it out for service. pretty much just throwing it away because "he didn't like it"
don't take out hate towards best buy out on the workers, we are just doing our job. complain to corporate who make the rules and the managers who are total jerks about enforcing them. - digitalgopher, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0agreed. it pisses me off when people say that "people who bought these bundles got what they deserved." whether or not that's true, it doesn't take away from the fact that what best buy (better known as "worst buy") is ILLEGAL. period. no discussions on that matter. it's plain and simple bait and switch and someone can easily take them to court. i only hope that people actually do.
- adml_shake, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1What the hell is wrong with you people? "well they wern't forced to buy it" thats not even the point! The fact that BB did this because they thought they could get away with screwing over their customer base. You think this is the only thing they have done this with? Hell no. I used to work there I read the internal E-mail, they ARE some of the most unethicle people I've ever seen. And to the ***** stick who was going on about how Best Buy is a Great comapany and prices their stuff fair, you obviously work for them or did at some point at time. You have saturday morning "training" writting all over you. I feel sorry for you if you bought into those brain washing session and didn't have enough will power to hang on to your soul. Open your eyes. Read some of your T-owe(i know it's not spelled right I but thats how is sounds)mail, and then you ***** tell me Best Buy is a fair and just company. They are the next Enron of the retail world.
- evanfrey, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I love how people says that they were "forced" in to buying the bundle. No one "forced" anyone. You could have been sane and told best buy to ***** off and waited a month or so. The problem is people want everything to be pro them. Thats not the real world. I am not in ANY way saying that best buy did right by thier customers, they obviously suck ass, I am saying that the choice to walk away, money in tow was YOURS. I know, I know "But I waited in line ALL NIGHT!" well, sucks for you. Welcome to the real world. I am waiting for 3 things to happen before I buy the 360. 1) for the price to drop and 2) for the bugs to be worked out and 3) for more games to come out. If you cant wait to get it so badly that you let some company ***** you up the ass and make you ask for more, then you shouldnt complain. Write a letter to the company. Take out an ad in a newspaper. Stop buying from best buy. But stop saying ANYone forced you to pay high prices. That was your choice when you pulled out your wallet and handed those ***** your hard earned money. Did they at least use lube?
- Glidedon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Why I don't shop at BestBuy anymore
No Best Buy - fabri, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Based on my experiences as a former employee and as a customer, in my opinion, Best Buy engages in some very shady and less than ethical sales tactics. The corporation will publicly say one thing, but tell their sales managers something different with the internal email system. It makes me wonder if the average consumer just doesn't care anymore about being treated fairly and honestly or has just given up any hope of big companies changing their practices.
- bob68k, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0companies often times use this as a scam and knowingly can't afford paying back the rebates they themselves offer.
- hanicus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I find it hard to believe that people are on here defending Best Buy. People who waited in line for hours with the understanding that they would have a 1 in 40 to 1 in 50 chance of getting a 300 or 400 dollar system. After allowing these customers to wait for hours you then either half the odds, or double the cost? That is clearly a bait and switch tactic, and I am disappointed a big retailer like Best Buy would condone it. Among other reasons, this is a great example of why companies set fixed prices for consoles. If I were Microsoft selling these things a loss I would look into taking legal action against any companies that participated in this practice!!
- Detour, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I absolutely loath Best Buy, not only are they on level of Wal-Mart when it comes to dishonesty and unfair controversial business practices, they are a huge GOP contributor. *uck Best Buy with a capital "F."
- supafuzz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"It took me a while to get a response from a Best Buy corporate spokesman, but the company acknowledges that some stores acted inappropriately. It won't confirm the specific stores at which problems occurred. Draw your own conclusions about whether that's good customer PR."
If some stores acted inappropriatley by selling bundles only, why then are they advertising bundles only on their website? - runner91786, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0No, I have always gotten my Best Buy rebates, even when I sent them late.
I have also worked for Best Buy before though, and they are very corrupt. Went to Comp Usa, and honestly its better but its still electronics retail, which sucks. Wouldnt want to do that for a living... - mntpng, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It sounds like they are trying to shift blame to store managers. I thought store managers were simply doing what corporate execs' memo from higher up were telling them to do?
- MasterDwarf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Maybe Sony and Best Buy have some of the same board members? heheh
- drderail, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait-and-switch
Forced or not, the Best Buy commited FRAUD and did an ILLEGAL act under FEDERAL Law. Wheres the FTC in all of this? - DrEbola, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Two words:
Atlas Shrugged.
Think about that one, crybabies. - 16x9, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0My favorite line is in the apology...
> "In addition, we have taken appropriate measures
> to ensure this situation will not occur with future
> Xbox 360 promotions."
Note that this promise is specific to the 360 and won't prevent them from doing exactly the same thing with any other popular product they sale. - Chompy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The only people who shop at Best Buy anymore are the people who don't know any better.
- BBYMGR, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I am a manager for Best Buy, to clear a few things up ( or to try to )
1) it was not a company plan to force bundles at all. In the big picture ( 750 stores ) only around 30ish were reported to have done anything like this. I know for a fact that only one store in my area ( DC baltimore ) did.
2) The reason the company is saying they won't do it again is not because they are afraid of anything , it's because they didn't want it to happen. Those few stores make us look bad, and make the people who visited those stores think that they were all like that. They also are trying to mend things with microsoft because we were a large part of the Xbox release. We don't want a few ( moron managers at select locations ) to ruin our image.
3) "i don't really care about all the 360 stuff, but wanted to say what i hate about best buy is the way the always push warranty's on you no matter what you buy! i bought a mad catz 12 dollar controller once and they tryed to sell me a 7 dollar warranty!! I mean come on, whats next? " bro.. just say no thanks, it's that easy.. in that circumstance I wouldn't buy it either.
4)"If you stand in line for hours to buy something at a given price, it is actually proves that the item is priced too low. the fact that these systems are going for even more on ebay (the worlds best pricing service) substantiates that.
If this truly is a case of bait-and-switch, BB could get in trouble in some jurisdictions, but I'll be really surprised to see it." Agreed... if I owned my own business and got the xbox in , hell i'd have sold it for 1000$ and not let the ebay freaks make the profit... I'd take it for myself. But obviously the big retailers can't do that because of contracts and reputation... to bad.
5)"BestBuy should be force to give gift cards to everyone who who bought the bundles. " Why? you can return the stuff you don't want.... ?
6)"i work at best buy and just another example of how much management sucks there. their first f up was the manager who closed decided she would go outside and take down the names of everyone in line (we only had 50 here was more then that outside at the time) she told them to go home and come back in the morning and just show they are on the list. store closed everyone working there left and a new line formed. she decided to not put up a sold out notice a screwed over a whole new group of people who actually waited overnight (including 2 employees)" Holy cow... your manager is not a smart cookie... when i'm vice president remind me to fire her, LOL
7) "Forced or not, the Best Buy commited FRAUD and did an ILLEGAL act under FEDERAL Law. Wheres the FTC in all of this?" Hmmm those select locations may have, but if corporate holds those stores accountable and shows attempts of this, and also can prove it was not the plan to do things this way, AND allows customers to come back and fix it ( by returning the items ) I think this shows they have done everything they can to make these few bad eggs right again. Not sure what else they can do...?
8)"Notice how they say that tey have taken measures to make sure that this type of thing won't happen "in future Xbox 360 promotions". What other 360 promotions? The major promotion is over, because if they tried this later when 360's are pleantiful they wouldn't sell a one. But in other words they still have left themselves the option to do it in other circumstance such as... say the PS3, or Revolution releases? I despise double talk, but I live in the USA where double talk is used everyday in every way, and morons fall for it all in droves. This is an empty promise/appology. It is simply a way to SOUND like they are sincerely sorry, when in fact all it means is that they actually won't promise not to do it again. Any thinking person should take this as a "screw you" from Best Buy, not an appology, or atonement of any kind." Wow, you really figured us out... I'm sure it's in the plan to do it again and again... * sigh * grow up friend.
9) Most of the negative comments are just from random readers reading about the situation, a select few were actually part of this unfortunate incident. hopefully i've helped clear the truth a little... you can move along now , along to the next hate forum... get your hate out .. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. - spikebuddy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0People that bought that crap deserve what they get. No one forced anyone to stand in line and pay an ungodly price for a GAME MACHINE for God's sake. It's not like they aren't going to be making this thing in six months to a year. If people believed and wanted to buy in to the hype, that's what they get. I don't feel sorry for any of them. Like someone posted earlier, it's not like it's food and water for pity sakes. If people would quit the whole buying into the hype thing it would teach these corporate idiots a lesson. It's all about supply and demand.
- suMMx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0sure but what about the people that were left empty handed because they didnt have $600-900 they were demanding for the bundles? they still dont get a console and are sol
- kidgenius, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0zerolaw wrote:
"and to anyone who says what they did is illegal it really isn't at all. what they did sucks and is totally unfair to at least let the people who camped out over night know but it was totally within their right to do so. in the back of their add all the fine print covered their ass to do whatever they wanted. and even so right on the page with the 360s im pretty sure it said bundles may apply. im not 100% sure but i thought i remembered reading that when this whole issue started."
What Best Buy did is ILLEGAL. It does not matter that people can walk away, or the fact that it is "unfair". Let's break this down. Best Buy printed an ad saying how much the XBox was going to cost. People showed up at the store to pay the advertised price. Next, Best Buy charged over the advertised price. This is where it became illegal. Now, if Best Buy chose to print an ad saying that the XBox was going to cost $500 and that was without anything because they felt they could sell the equipment at that price and make a profit, that's good for them. Nothing illegal. They can charge whatever they want to a consumer for a product, and the consumer has a choice whether or not to go to that company to purchase the product. That is perfectly fair-market economics. The illegal step in all this is advertising one price and charging a higher price. - nogami, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0What they should be doing is allowing people to return unwanted bundeled accessories for a full refund, but still keep the parts of the system they want...
- spikebuddy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Perfect! Exactly !
- rohcky, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0BestBuy should be force to give gift cards to everyone who who bought the bundles.
And to the guy complaining about the ebayers: They are capitalizing on the demand of the consumers. It's not their fault people are willing to spend thousands on a stupid thing like a console. You can harp on them all you want, but in the end they made a $500-600 profit just for waiting in line. You gotta seize the opportunity if its there.
*I'm not an ebayer, but I don't condemn their grasp of supply and demand* - Boondoggle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0If you stand in line for hours to buy something at a given price, it is actually proves that the item is priced too low.
the fact that these systems are going for even more on ebay (the worlds best pricing service) substantiates that.
If this truly is a case of bait-and-switch, BB could get in trouble in some jurisdictions, but I'll be really surprised to see it. - orangetiki, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I always hated best buy, and I always will
- ElCaminoSS, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0
The problems is this: I live in a major city (Nashville, TN) and there isn't a screwdriver shop worth a darn to speak of in the whole area. My nearest Best Buy, in the main county of Nashville, is twenty minutes away plus traffic, and there is really no other place in retail that can do that here, and stay anywhere near competetive.
I went to my hometown of Evansville, In the other day, and they had a terrific screwdriver shop there. I was sooo jealous.
Best Buy is pretty much it. That's why I use pricegrabber anymore. You've convinced all convinced me. Online is the only way to go anymore. - timberfish, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Could this be any more of a canned response? Who else is beginning to tire of the typical corporation methods of commit the crime and apologize later? Ugh!
- lucas05, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0i don't really care about all the 360 stuff, but wanted to say what i hate about best buy is the way the always push warranty's on you no matter what you buy! i bought a mad catz 12 dollar controller once and they tryed to sell me a 7 dollar warranty!! I mean come on, whats next?
Would you like to buy a .80 cent warranty on that 1.79 , 20 ounce Pepsi?? DUMB!!!!! - Glidedon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0oops
http://donon.blogspot.com/2005/09/why-ill-never-shop-at-best-buy-again.html -
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