CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[MikeEby]

This week Best Buy has a special going on for HD-DVD’s “Buy one Get on Free” on about 14 titles. I really hate BB but I’ll though I would help the “lost cause” and buy a couple disks. Anyway with newspaper flyer in hand I headed to the local Best Buy, entering the store shot towards the HD-DVD rack that was about one third the size of the Bluray rack. The two disks on sale I wanted were “Shrek the Third” and “The Bourne Ultimatum” but to my dismay they were not on the rack. After about 10 minutes of searching for help I found a pimple faced associate in the video games department and asked him if they had the 2 disks in the ad I wanted? He said “I don’t know, if you don’t see it we must be out” then turned away, I headed out the door empty handed.

Not to miss out on this deal I pointed the SUV toward Circuit City, as they claim to have price matching. I quickly found the HD-DVD rack but no Shrek was visible. I then noticed the rack was stocked in alphabetical order all movies starting with the letter “A” were stacked on top of each other. I then looked in the “B” stack and sure enough 3 boxes down was “The Bourne Ultimatum” and in the “S” pile 6 disks down was the beholden “Shrek the Third”. Circuit City actually has a decent selection of HD-DVD movies but the way they are displayed its hell to find them.

Now with a big smile on my face I headed to the checkout. Asked the Clerk, “Do you price match with Best Buy?”, her reply was “Sure if you have a copy of the ad” I handed her my copy and she said “Ok but will have to ask the head casher how to ring it up” she came back after a short discussion with another employee and said “That is a special deal and we cannot match”. Now I am starting to get MAD so I left the disks on the counter and headed to the door. On the way out a manager asked if there was something he could help with? I said “yes…Do you price match?” he replied “Yes if you have the ad with you” I then showed him the ad and he replied “Well that’s a special deal we can’t match that” I just walked away.

Now this quest is becoming personal “I was going to get this deal if it cost me $50 in fuel”. I jumped into the truck and headed back to BB hoping for a rain check. Entered the store and was asked by an employee if I needed any help? I said “Can I get a rain check if you are out of the two disk I want” he responded “ I think we have both of those” he then looked around for about 30 seconds and found both disks mixed in some random fashion with SD disks. He then said “Yeah the rack is too small so we mix them with the other disks”. WTF it's no wonder this format is failing it should not be this hard to buy a f*cking disk.

Mike

[CRT_Ben]

Wow, that's some serious sh*t by Circuit City...about the only legit refusal of a price matching policy I can think of would be a going-out-of-business liquidation sale or the like...NO sh*t it's a "special", sherlock, it's called a "sale" aka a "special" aka a "low price for a limited time"...I would have raised hell about that.

[ecrabb]

Yeah, the rack is too small because they cram all the f*cking HD DVD into half the rack space as the BD's.

I love all that price match bull****. First, it's "Do you have the flyer?", and then when you produce the flyer, then the story changes to "oh, that's a special deal." "Special deal" my ass. These companies need to start getting whacked with some class-action lawsuits.

Did you guys hear about the 54 million dollar lawsuit filed agains Best Buy by some woman? The dumb shits at Best Buy LOST her laptop while it was in for repair then jacked her around for almost SIX months. Somebody finally admitted it was lost, and they started making pathetic offers. She went to an attorney and the rest is history.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080212-victim-54-million-best-buy-lawsuit-stupid-but-necessary.html

SC

[CRT_Ben]

[Bucketfoot]

Yep, even though I'm not a big Best Buy fan, rebates are one of the reasons I've been shopping there more and more. I no longer go to Circuit City of Office Depot, as too many things only have a good price with a rebate.

BB and Office Max must roll the rebate into the price and handle it themselves (I'm quite sure the rebate companies don't screw with them the way they do with customers).

[ecrabb]

Ben's experience notwithstanding... In defense of Staples, I've had REALLY good luck with their rebates. Some of them are even online and pretty much automatic. Go online to your account at Staples, punch in the number from the receipt, and bada bing. Rebate on the way (a month later, of course).

Some other companies' rebates are like a Rube Goldberg contraption of UPC codes to cut out, i's to dot and t's to cross or it gets kicked out. In spite of these companies' most unscrupulous efforts, somehow I've managed to do pretty well with rebates (assuming I actually get them in the mail). Of course, I quit screwing around with every little $5 rebate. That helped a lot. Now, $15-20 is about my threshold, or I don't buy. It's not worth it to me to dick around with, otherwise.

SC

[Ridebreck]

[ecrabb]

Exactly. What, they get to determine whether something is a 'special' sale or a normal 'sale'? Reminds of the scene in The Jerk (one of my all-time favorite movies) when Naven (Steve Martin) is just learning to be the weight guesser, and he's explaining to a guy what he could win:

[MikeEby]