Circuit City
Deceptive advertisement and sales practices

I wanted to share my experience at Circuit City today, as I thought it might prove entertaining.

There was an advertisement in the Chicago Tribune Sunday paper for a Toshiba for an extremely good good price. We're in the market for a new laptop, so we ended up going to the store to buy the product.

When we got there, our sales guy was obviously a little young and inexperienced. No biggie. When we asked him about the product, he said that they were sold out and had been sold out for 2 weeks.in fact, he said that all of the CCs in the Chicagoland area had been sold out for some time so he "didn't know why they were still running that ad. It's like they're trying to get people in here to buy other computers or something." Ha. Well, at least he scored some points for honesty.

Anyway, against my better judgment, I ended up looking at other computers there. There ended up being one in stock that was also a pretty good deal. The salesguy said it came with a free printer, so even better. They offered the warranty, and my wife wanted it, but I ended up declining after some discussion with her.

The salesguy made a strangely quick phonecall (that couldnt have lasted more than 6-7 seconds) and then claimed that he had just talked to the manager and that we could get $50 off any of the warranties along with a free carrying bag of our choice. Sounded good to me. We ended up choosing the $150 warranty (which was the cheapest one). We picked out our bag. The salesguy left for a while (like 10 minutes). He came back with the manager and said, "Oh sorry, I must have misunderstood. The $50 off wasnt for that warranty, it's only for the other ones." Becoming annoyed, I declined any warranty protection.

The salesguy then pulled out some print ad and said that it turned out that the free printer was not for that computer after all. On the website that he had previously pulled up right in front of us, it clearly stated that the computer came with a free printer. Apparently, the only way to get the free computer is to order the computer through the website for pick-up at the same store.

I ended up not buying anything at that point.

So, to recap:

1.cc ran an advertisement for a computer at a very low cost that was out of stock at all Chicagoland outlets (confirmed by me on their website after my trip today) for several weeks. The saleguy himself thought it sounded like bait and switch.

2. They made an offer for for a discounted warranty service, only to reneg it several minutes later with additional pressure to buy a more expensive plan.

3. Offered an incentive (a printer) to get me to buy a computer, only to reneg it after I refused the warranty.

The latter two are shady and annoying, but probably the kind of stuff that goes on all the time. The first item, though I think deserves a letter to better business.

Company: Circuit City
Country: USA
State: Illinois
City: Chicago
Site: circuitcity.com

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