In a very recent flyer, Best Buy advertised that a Toshiba laptop & Lexmark printer would be on sale for $399 on Sunday, February 4. Since this was a very reasonable price for such a laptop, many people presented themselves at New Jersey Best Buy stores around opening time on the Sunday morning. Expectedly, there were not enough laptops for everyone.
Consequently, Best Buy representatives at the Rockaway, Totowa and Secaucus stores told customers still requiring laptops to travel to either of the two Best Buy stores in Paramus on Monday morning, at which time the price would be honored. (The Paramus stores are at Fashion Center Mall and Garden State Plaza).in addition, one customer was told the same statement by a Best Buy telephone representative on Sunday evening. This appeared to be a rational statement for four reasons.
First, it is common knoledge that the Paramus stores are not allowed to open on Sunday (due to Bergen County's "Blue" laws). Stores that cannot physically sell merchandise on Sunday would plausibly be expected to offer the same deals when the store subsequently opens, i.E. On Monday morning. Second, it is and has been customary practice by many Paramus stores, including Best Buy, to offer the Sunday deals on Monday morning. Third, the employees at Secaucus, Rockaway, Totowa, and the Best Buy's national customer service number, had affirmatively represented this to customers. Fourth, one of the two Paramus BestBuy stores (specifically the Fashion Center Mall store) honored the deal on Monday morning without giving customers any added difficulty.
In reliance on this seemingly rational assertion, no less than fifteen customers showed up at 9 am on Monday morning at the Garden State Plaza store to purchase the aforementioned laptop. Since the store opened at 10 am, they waited for an hour in 8 degree weather. The store personnel refused to allow them to remain in the heated vestibule. Although one customer cradled a baby in her arms, the personnel showed no sympathy for her. Periodically, a store employee popped out and told customers that the mananger will not allow them to buy the laptop at the advertised price, but at a much higher price instead. Shamefully, the manager never presented himself until after the store had opened.
When the manager finally presented himself, he told customers that the computer system would not allow him to override the price. He tried to lend credibilty to that defense by saying "If the 888 customer service knows how I can help you, I will gladly do it for you all." (As you will see from reading further, that was a complete lie).
When the fifteen customers called Best Buy national customer service center using their cellphones, they were told that Paramus stores did NOT have to honor the Sunday price. (The Best Buy case number is #). When told that the Fashion Center Mall store (the other Bergen County store) had immediately and willingly honored the price earlier that morning, the telephone representative supervisor, Angela, said that a store can make an exception if it so chooses. However, Angela said that Best Buy policy was NOT to force the store to make an exception. Armed with this new information, the customers again approached the store manager, who quickly changed his reason for refusing to honor the deal. The manager stated that he had CONSCIOUSLY decided, before the store opened, to NOT honor the price indicated in the flyer. His prior statement, that the computer was incapable of overriding the price, was a complete lie.
The tactics adopted by this manager are grossly inconsistent with professional managerial behavior. An upstanding manager would with justifiable reasoning would have been unafraid to announce his/her true motivations from the outset. At the least, this manager would have retained the respect of customers if he had been truthful from the beginning.
Refusing to honor a deal when fifteen people have showed up and waited in 8 degree weather (with a baby) based on a misrepresentaion made by one's fellow employees amounts to participating in an illegal bait-and-switch fraud. (It is bait and switch because the manager told us that we could get the computer, but at the higher price, hence, the "switch"). The situation is worsened by the fact that the sister store in Paramus honored the price without asking any questions. Best Buy appears to need a lesson in corporate responsibility. According to the news media, they have gotten in trouble in the past for failing to award mail-in-rebate checks to customers, and it appears, from this experience, that their shady business practices have not improved.
While it is okay for a company to be aggressive in its sale practices, Best Buy repeatedly crosses the line, as demonstrated in this instance. All of the customers involved in this incident indicated that they would separate complaints with the NJ Attorney General's Consumer Affairs Office as well as the Better Business Bureau. I have filed complaints with both of those offices, as well as with Best Buy themselves. Best Buy has told the BBB that they will not resolve my report in my favor. Similarly, Best Buy refused to resolve the complaint that I filed directly with them. To date, Best Buy has not apologized to me and I don't expect that they will do so.
Dean
Hawthorne, New Jersey
U.S.A.
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