Good for them. I never shop at worst buy.

I might be a minority on this but I never had a problem with there price match ever will except when I asked them to price match Newegg they laughed at me then. But I find that or reps at the bestbuy around here are pretty busy with returns (don't know why they have such a high return rate). So I don't think they really mind price matching items my buggiest complaint is why they don't have prices listed on bestbuy.com in store other then that no complaints from me other then there extremely high prices but thats what price match fixes

Hopefully they will go the way of Circuit City.

it took me about 10 - 15 minutes to get them to price match with a Fry's ad in hand.

Oh boy that brings back memories, We at circuit city did the same thing. Customer wanted a price match id go to the manager to have it done (i cant change prices), than he would go "we cant price match it that far", than id go "so what do i tell the customer" manager- "Tell them we cant do it". Me to the customer- "Unfortunately that is just to good of a deal, we would be losing a lot of money if we matched that" Customer- "Well why in the hell do you have that price matching sign for?", Me- "We do price match, just like Ive said we would be losing a lot of money on this particular price match".

Brings back old times, but yeah anytime Walmart made a deal on a TV, id have an angry customer breathing down my neck, than id try to persuade him to get a TV we had on sale which half the time worked. I miss working there.

You cant beat walmart price wise, its impossible, so Circuit city's advantage was customer service and expertise, you dont get customer service at walmart, no one expects customer service there (they expect 5 Star service at Circuit city though). Yeah some people have bad experiences at Circuit city customer service wise and i dont blame them, its managements fault. Though every day we would have a customer shit all over the floors and walls in the bathroom every day, every god damned day, and i mean every fucking day.

Best buy is going to go out of business in the next 5 years, worst customer service ever. Every manager there never does anything, making $100K salary plus sales bonuses, all he does is talk on a phone, the assistant manager smokes pot (he stinks of it and has fucked up pupples), while their employees goof off, circuit city wasnt great but never that bad (Walmart is even worse).

This is why I don't shop at best buy. Also they shot down my TV price match after telling me that the store would honor it if I brought my online printout with me. So I cancelled the order and bought at Circuit City. Circuit City was a WAY better store and it is a huge shame that they are gone. I won't send my business to best buy, I'll use amazon and buy.com instead.

i work at best buy and haven't caught wind of this yet. price match policy as its implemented in our store is same exact product, same model sold at a retail store within 30 miles. we don't match online prices unless its bestbuy.com

i'd like to see a copy of this anti-price match policy. what are the actual details. this article only says that it exists but doesnt give any specifics.

not that I love best buy or anything, just working there till i finish my engineering degree.

Chaos that is a very engrossing story!

That's why I always bring the competitors flyer with me. I especially enjoy making them price match futureshop.

I think the biggest problem with price matching is when people assume that any price can be matched. If you are looking to get a price matched at a retail store you can really only expect the store to match other nearby retail stores or the stores own website. That said I have never had a price match problem at Best Buy. I showed the associate the flyer and had the price matched on a stereo there within seconds

You haven't tried hard enough if you couldn't get Best Buy to price match. Of course they say no up front but there are definitely things you can do, deceptive or not, to get your price match.

Once I tried to get walmart to price walmart.com and they would not do it. I have gotten Bestbuy to price match Newegg though.

I'm a little sad to see CC go but they did rip me off once on an extended warranty I purchased for a laptop. The laptop hinges both started to crack (common problem on the model I had) and they denied fixing it saying it was cosmetic. I had it for a year, and babied it big time, ask and received a pro-rated return on my 3 year warranty. Best Buy may be bad but they are way better than Frys. Customer service there is non-existent save for the commissioned sales people at the motherboard/ram/CPU area.

PCfreak15 - Just a comment about matching product and model. Most big box stores have "custom" models made for them, thus you will never see a Sony Foo123 at Best Buy, but you'd carry the Sony Sony Bar123 which is just like the Sony Foo123.
Manufactures do this all the time, Costco, Sam's Club, BJ's, Wal-Mart, Target all have smae-but-different SKUs.
(And as bad as the electronics are, mattress are far, far worse.)

I was surprised when they price matched a plasma TV I bought there. I had in hand 2 online plices that had it or $400 dollars cheaper. I think it helped I bought the extended warranty at the time of purchase. If they would have refused the price match I would have just brought the TV back and ordered it from one of the other places that had it cheaper.

I suspect the Best Buy's within 30 miles of any Fry's do a lot of squirming.

If you want great service and product knowledge you have to pay people an actual wage. When I worked retail over 10 years ago I was full commission and averaged about $23.00 an hour. I had clients who would order toners and such and I would personally just drop them off on my way home or at lunch. I would sell PC's and install the upgraded parts right on the floor and install them right there at the register. I had a client who I sold 175 computer to for a school district. I went to the school on a Saturday and helped him install them all into the labs. I saw my old job advertised in the paper it is now non commission and pays $8.00 an hour. You get what you pay for. The customer suffers, the employee suffers, and the company eventually dies so the current managers can earn bonus's on the short term numbers.

Add me to the list - I took a Circuit City ad to a Best Buy (when CC was still in business) and they refused to match the price of my pc game - COD-WW. Their excuse was that the circuit city nearest to that particular Best Buy (on 86th Street in Manhattan) was closed and therefore, they were no longer a "competitor. " Are they insane? There are 4 other CC's within a 3 mile radius. The reason I wanted to get the item at BB was because CC was 15 more blocks away and I didn't want to walk. I ended up tossing the game back and buying it at amazon.com. BB is the worst - their prices were always higher than CC. Why would anyone ever shop there with amazon, newegg, and online retailers? That's why I absolutely hate Gov. Patterson and his idiotic amazon tax.

Who cares? It is a price MATCH, meaning that you already have a place you can get it for that price anyway. Just go back to where you got the ad.
Even if it is out of stock the first store usually allows rainchecks/special orders unless it is something like the black friday ads, but those are excluded from most price matching anyway.

Note, I work at OfficeMax and in over a year there have never ever seen a denial for price match or return, even those that are obviously invalid and shady. Like a guy buying a laser printer and returning it 3 days later with empty toner cartridges saying it didnt work... every month.

LOL Are you joking? Have you ever shopped @ Circuit City? I refused to ever shop at Circuit City because I always knew 100 times more information about the products than the sales staff did. And I'm no expert.

As far as the price matching debacle goes, it's no surprise. It's all about profit margins. If one looks very closely, they'll find that quite often two major box stores will carry the exact same product, except there's a difference in the model number!! This is how they get away with refusing to price match on some occasions. Because it's a "different" product.

Manufacturers don't help the matter either. Since they are the ones who sometimes make the same product with different model numbers. One number being specifically for a certain retailer.

Not just a price match, they actually BEAT the price, and most of the time give you 10% off that price. BTW Call of duty world at war cost $15 for circuit city (thats how much they paid for it), and we sold them for $60 new when they first came out, that's how much profit stores make off games, the Average game cost $12-$20 for the store to purchase it and re-sell it so much higher. Wish i had a direct buy.

Exactly. Though it's a toss up. Pay for shipping on one hand or tax on the other, depending on where and from whom you buy.

Ya i worked there, and you will see this problem every where a dumbass manager works, it all starts at management. But at the same time it doesn't matter how good management or the employee is if the customer is retarded. I had a customer who needed a copy of vista 64 bit so that he could have 8 GB of ram installed for his crysis machine, i told him that's a bit over board for a $50 game and would see no performance increase what so ever, than he bitched me out saying i don't know shit.

Had a customer yelling and CRYING literally crying, "Obama lied to us and now the Russians are gonna nuke the hell out of us, ITS THE END OF THE WORLD" The manager was talking her into leaving while me the assistant manager and all the store supervisors were laughing our asses off.

I had a customer bitch me out cause i didn't know every artist and song we carried because "well you work this department, so you should know every artist and every song". Thats not even humanly possible but ya he bitched me out for not knowing his favorite rap artist (i hate rap).

ChaosGS, I know exactly how you feel. It's impossible to know everything in these stores. All these people who post that they know so much more than the employees is totally full of crap. Sure, you may know more details about the product you're looking to buy, especially if you researched it, but do you know the details of all the TV's, receivers, speakers, stands, mp3 players, printers, cameras, etc? The features of each change dramatically from model to model and then the models get discontinued and new ones appear every 3 months.

I find this piece a little suspect, "alleged that Best Buy provided financial bonuses on denying proper price match requests", how do you track denials? There's no paper trail. "Excuse sir, but before you leave the store pissed off, can I get you to fill out this comment card saying I properly screwed you".

I've had no problems and I've taken advantage of it several times. But as some one has already indicated its probably the domain of the individual store managers. Example: I live outside of Boulder, Co; I bought a 46 inch LCD for my mother in Colorado Springs (90 miles away), found the same TV for $300 less at Circuit City in Boulder, went to the Broomfield, CO Best Buy location and got the refund. So in doing this I used the Broomfield location to collect a discount for a purchase made at the Colorado Springs location.

This is the most bogus nonsense this side of Mars. Do you
honestly think they are going to match other store offers if
the price your after is less than what they actually paid for
an item. Frankly they should get rid of the price match anyway
because all their competition has gone out of buisness because
Best Buy kicked all their butts in prices and service.

Only the lawyers will make any money off this suit. I have no doubt that some of these businesses sue themselves so they can settle for pennies on the dollar. Think Ford Explorer. All the owners got for the roll-over problem was a discount on buying another Explorer. I've signed up for several class action suits, one involving Microsoft, another dealing with a diamond ring I bought. I never saw a dime from it, but I bet the lawyers did. Next time, I'm refusing to take part in one.

I don't know about NY but so far in TX I have never had Best Buy deny a price-match request. There reward zone program used to be really good in the beginning and the only thing I used Circuit City for was their weekly advertisement to get Best Buy to match something in it I wanted and to get my points. Just recently they matched a Fry's add on a Sony TV. Most times they don't even verify the add but on a rare occurrence at certain stores they would call the other store the add was from to verify the item was on sale and in stock (they also did that on the TV of course). Heck, I've even pulled up Fry's on my phone and looked up an item and had Best Buy price match that.

Oh I forgot to mention that CC always honored my price matches, there never was 1 single time that they didn't. Best Buy honored ummm one price match on a pack of DVD-R.. I would recommend that they stop doing price matching, a store is not obligated to price match with other stores. The policy is only there to complete and also in this specific case for example all it is there for is to get unsuspecting customers into the store. They offer price match because they know that most people looking to match price with a competitor will buy the product at their price if they don't honor the price match gurantee just because the customer is already at the bb store. That's how their scheme works.