Son of a bitch!

A few weeks ago, I went into Best Buy looking to buy The Comedians of Comedy on DVD. The website had quoted the price as being $14.99, so I was pretty excited. I saw it on Netflix and it was hilariously funny. Well, I went there and the sticker price was $24.99. This being unacceptable, I asked a floor associate to check the price for me, and he pulled up the Best Buy website on the floor computer, and the page also said $24.99.

"Yeah, the site says $24.99," said the floor guy.
"That's so weird, I just checked it at home earlier today," I replied.
"Hm. Well, I guess they must've changed the price between then and now."

So I put the DVD back, disappointed.

This morning I was looking at the Columbus Underground website, when I came across an article about how Best Buy stores have their own intrastore version of the website, which quotes different prices. They do this to dupe the customers into paying higher prices for the product they want. Apparently, they can choose the public version of the site or the employee-only version as they please.

"Those fuckers!"

So I went back to the Best Buy website and printed off the page for The Comedians of Comedy and went back to the store. I picked up the DVD and sure enough, the sticked still said $24.99. So I took it to the customer service desk and asked the guy to check the price.

"The system says $24.99 here."
"Well, I just checked the price at home, and it said $14.99," I said.
"Ah. Well, let me pull that up."
At this point, the guy asked his co-worker how to pull up the website. Meanwhile, I was thinking, "How do you not know how to pull up the website? Have you never used a computer before?"
Eventually he pulled up the website and kind of hesitated for a minute. "So did you want to pick this up, then?" He said that without telling me what the price was.
"What does the website say?"
"Oh, uh, $14.99."
"Okay, I'll take it."

Now, it didn't happen to me this time around, but I was prepared. Here's my advice if this happens to you.

-First of all, print out the site's page with the proper price on it. Take it with you.
-If they have to do a price check and give you a different price, tell them you just looked it up on the site and that it was whatever price it said it was.
-If they feed you the line about it being changed between the time you checked it and now, don't buy it. Tell them that that doesn't seem likely. They may advise you to go home and print it out and bring it back, but you've already printed it out, haven't you? Show them the paper.
-If this proceeds further, ask to talk to a manager. Tell them that it's a bunch of bull, and that legally, they HAVE to give you the advertised price. Hell, if you want, threaten to call the local news affiliate. I mean, you know about the fake site. I just did a Google news search and there are 30 articles about the fake site. Here are the results of that search.
-Something I also did, which may be of use if you intend to bring up the fact that you know it's a fake site, is I printed off one of the articles.

It may seem like being over-prepared, but fuck it - what they're doing is illegal. I won't stand for it, and neither should you.