Canon S400 $169.99 after Price Match

[richk449]

Originally posted by: howardthehobo

Originally posted by: Siamskunk101
<EM><<This is the "Hot Deals" forum, a place for us to get information on how to buy stuff at a cheaper price.>>


</EM>This is how moral comes into play and shines through the word "Smart Buyer" or "Thief" sigh

I am not a thief. I am just following the rules.

The rules say you can only pricematch with a valid price. You pricematched with a price that was not valid. Therefore you did not follow the rules.

There is a slight distinction in what you did and, say, breaking into a Best Buy at night and stealing the camera, because in your case, a low level employee was tricked into endorsing your action. This might be enough to protect you in a court, but to claim that it makes your actions moral is riduculous.

In general, I am all for screwing Big Corportations, since they screw us all the time. However, you are most likely just screwing a low level employee. If there was a way for me to pull off this deal in which the CEO's salary of $10 million was reduced to $9,999,700 and the other employees were not affected, I would be all over it. Unfortunately, that is not how it works.

 

[SiberianTiger]

bah. leave the guy alone. if you don't like it, move on. if you are trying to do this, good luck.

on the subject of ethics/morals/religious beliefs/philosophical integrity, answer these questions honestly:

- DO YOU BURN MUSIC THAT YOU DO NOT OWN (e.g. MP3s from Kazaa)?
- DO YOU USE A WINDOWS OS THAT YOU DO NOT OWN OUTRIGHT?
- DO YOU OWN PIRATED/CRACKED SOFTWARE?

for the majority of you, i believe you cannot answer the above three questions with all "NO's"

 

[dethman]

you know the funny thing is, if the 199 price had been a price mistake on a website, they'd have thousands of orders by now. many from people who posted in this thread. and noone would be complaining about taking "advantage" of a company.

not that i support this crap, i just notice that people are quite hypocritical.

 

[richk449]

Originally posted by: dethman
you know the funny thing is, if the 199 price had been a price mistake on a website, they'd have thousands of orders by now. many from people who posted in this thread. and noone would be complaining about taking "advantage" of a company.

not that i support this crap, i just notice that people are quite hypocritical.

There is a fundamental difference between the two cases. If compay A makes a mistake, and you take advantage of it by buying the item cheap from company A, that is fine. If company A makes a mistake, and you use company A's mistake to trick company B into selling you the product cheap, that is totally different.

What if you got a flyer in the mail selling this camera for 400 dollars, but the 4 was scratched off to look like a 1. Would it be morally acceptable then? What if you scratched the 4 off yourself? At what point does it go from a hot deal to fraud?

I would say the way to decide is to ask "If company B knew all the details surrouding this, would they still pricematch it?" In all three of the cases described above (two hypothetical, and one real), they would not - hence it is fraud.

Now, I am very much a junior poster here, and so I probably should not be spending so much time arguing with others. Therefore I will take Siberian Tiger's advice, and Let It Be.

 

[Optical]

If you don't feel it's right for your morale scale, then don't do it but please don't shove your morales on to others. Set all your emotions aside, the facts are:

1) It's $199.99 on the ad
2) you see a lower price
3) PM/BVG is suppose to verify this and allow/disallow base on validity of the ad.

 

[howardthehobo]

Originally posted by: richk449

Originally posted by: howardthehobo

Originally posted by: Siamskunk101
<EM><<This is the "Hot Deals" forum, a place for us to get information on how to buy stuff at a cheaper price.>>


</EM>This is how moral comes into play and shines through the word "Smart Buyer" or "Thief" sigh

I am not a thief. I am just following the rules.

The rules say you can only pricematch with a valid price. You pricematched with a price that was not valid. Therefore you did not follow the rules.

There is a slight distinction in what you did and, say, breaking into a Best Buy at night and stealing the camera, because in your case, a low level employee was tricked into endorsing your action. This might be enough to protect you in a court, but to claim that it makes your actions moral is riduculous.

In general, I am all for screwing Big Corportations, since they screw us all the time. However, you are most likely just screwing a low level employee. If there was a way for me to pull off this deal in which the CEO's salary of $10 million was reduced to $9,999,700 and the other employees were not affected, I would be all over it. Unfortunately, that is not how it works.

If Gateway did not bother to check the price after they put it on the ad, then it is a vaild price. Because even if it is a common sense that a camera like this should not be priced at $199.99, since they did put $199.99 price tag on it, then it is $199.99. What you think or what Gateway think does not matter, what matters is what Gateway did.

So again, I am not a thief. I am just following the rules.

Don't get pissed off at me because I got one and you did not.

 

[dethman]

Originally posted by: richk449

Originally posted by: dethman
you know the funny thing is, if the 199 price had been a price mistake on a website, they'd have thousands of orders by now. many from people who posted in this thread. and noone would be complaining about taking "advantage" of a company.

not that i support this crap, i just notice that people are quite hypocritical.

There is a fundamental difference between the two cases. If compay A makes a mistake, and you take advantage of it by buying the item cheap from company A, that is fine. If company A makes a mistake, and you use company A's mistake to trick company B into selling you the product cheap, that is totally different.

What if you got a flyer in the mail selling this camera for 400 dollars, but the 4 was scratched off to look like a 1. Would it be morally acceptable then? What if you scratched the 4 off yourself? At what point does it go from a hot deal to fraud?

I would say the way to decide is to ask "If company B knew all the details surrouding this, would they still pricematch it?" In all three of the cases described above (two hypothetical, and one real), they would not - hence it is fraud.

Now, I am very much a junior poster here, and so I probably should not be spending so much time arguing with others. Therefore I will take Siberian Tiger's advice, and Let It Be.

if they didn't verify gateway's price, they (eg bb/cc whatever) are just as responsible for error as gateway is. so in either case you are still intentionally trying to taking advantage of a mistake that the company you are purchasing from made, whether it be printing a wrong price or not verifying a price.

either way, it's wrong, but it's just interesting that in one scenario everyone would be jumping on the deal and even considering lawsuits if they don't fulfill get their orders fulfilled (which has happened many times) and in another scenario everyone's on their high horse pronouncing their high and mighty morals.

the hypocrisy is ridonkulous.

edit: howardthehobo, though within your own 'moral code' you are fine, you probably got a cashier fired for what you did, so i wouldn't be so proud of it if i were you.

 

[jauling]

i think some of you people kind of miss the point... theres a mistake, im gonna frickin' take advantage of it. if a cashier sells it to you for $199 or $169, im not gonna cry about it. if they get fired, why would i care. only peons and doofus's (doofi?) work retail anyway. retail sucks.

as far as i care, any deal i get is a good deal. sounds to me like half of the peoples here have been drinking too much haterade and just got burned when they tried to price match or maybe you're trying to prove some moral view.. <yawn>

just got mine the other day, didnt bother to get my 10% discount but got the phatty pricematch. cashier even checked with the manager and he OK'd it without calling Gateway. its so totally my fault. i should burn in hell.

 

[flxnimprtmscl]

Nice take troll

 

[deejayshakur]

Originally posted by: howardthehobo

Originally posted by: Gnurb
so..anyone get lucky? (and brave enough to tell us about it)

I got one for $214, the cashier did not do a pricematch. What she did was that she just took the price directly from the ad. So the price was $199.99 plus about $15 tax. Me and my friend got one each.

:Q:Q:Q:Q:Q

and i thought my s230 for $300 the day it came out was hot...

 

[codeyf]

[insert my moral reasoning is better than yours or vice/versa comment here]

 

[Turbo55]

Did the pricematch really work?

 

[TheTechnique]

I scored two at my local CC. I'm keeping one and fleebay'ing the other. :evil:

 

[hollowman]

why the hell is this thread still alive? i don't see any productive post but only flames and morale sh!t.

 

[TheTechnique]

Originally posted by: hollowman
why the hell is this thread still alive? i don't see any productive post but only flames and morale sh!t.

Because the deal is still alive, I just did it today...

 

[shrhaider]

Edit: ok, B&N carries PC Mag. Current issue is June 17th. May try this today.
Edit: Only Gateway ad in June 17th issue shows 499 price, and it's nowhere near pg 72. Perhaps the OP refers to May issue?

 

[ManDeJapan]

Originally posted by: Dre
Good deal for BVG. Thank you.

I tried BVG and it didn't work. Reasoning was that the price in the ad was a mistake. AMEX may have called Gateway to verify this but that's what they told me so I doubt BVG will work unless you get a silly AMEX claim examiner.

 

[Armoth]

The ad is also in the June PC World magazine. I went into the Gateway store in Roseville, MN. No luck. Manager's lame excuse was that "it wasn't a Gateway publication, so weren't not responsible for that magazine's mistake....blah blah blah" He even had us call the 1-800-gat-eway number, but that didn't help as we got the same line from them.

Gee...I sure thought that there were laws against not honoring actual deals in print, it's not like this a webpage that got screwed up. You would think that since this keeps happening to them through various magazines that they would correct the problem so they would stop having to deal with it. Since they seem to be able to avoid consequences for their screw-up, it must not be that big of a deal to them.

I hate when they cop-out like that...grrr....

 

[DSE]

Hmm, only because morality was brought up...

You would do this deal, even by using an obviously invalid price to match with, if the person it screwed were different? Morality of this parable is more dependent on if you use the invalid price to pricematch with someone by deceiving them or not, not how much money the person you trick is making.

 

[gwlam12]

Originally posted by: Armoth
The ad is also in the June PC World magazine. I went into the Gateway store in Roseville, MN. No luck. Manager's lame excuse was that "it wasn't a Gateway publication, so weren't not responsible for that magazine's mistake....blah blah blah" He even had us call the 1-800-gat-eway number, but that didn't help as we got the same line from them.

Gee...I sure thought that there were laws against not honoring actual deals in print, it's not like this a webpage that got screwed up. You would think that since this keeps happening to them through various magazines that they would correct the problem so they would stop having to deal with it. Since they seem to be able to avoid consequences for their screw-up, it must not be that big of a deal to them.

I hate when they cop-out like that...grrr....

this is obviously not an actual deal so there are no laws against not honoring it.

 

[Armoth]

Originally posted by: gwlam12

Originally posted by: Armoth
The ad is also in the June PC World magazine. I went into the Gateway store in Roseville, MN. No luck. Manager's lame excuse was that "it wasn't a Gateway publication, so weren't not responsible for that magazine's mistake....blah blah blah" He even had us call the 1-800-gat-eway number, but that didn't help as we got the same line from them.

Gee...I sure thought that there were laws against not honoring actual deals in print, it's not like this a webpage that got screwed up. You would think that since this keeps happening to them through various magazines that they would correct the problem so they would stop having to deal with it. Since they seem to be able to avoid consequences for their screw-up, it must not be that big of a deal to them.

I hate when they cop-out like that...grrr....

this is obviously not an actual deal so there are no laws against not honoring it.

So this is a typo? Fine, but they need to be held accountable for not proofreading stuff. I know there are no laws for online prices, but if there is a printed national advertisement, then I thought there were some sort of laws for when something is printed and they won't honor it. The managers whine about "honoring it is not good business practice," well, neither is pissing off customers or pulling a bait-n-switch (which is what stuff like this really ends up being). Companies obviously need to experience more consequences so they clean up their act and behave responsibly. I need to go do some research now...

 

[Armoth]

I found this through google which is kinda interesting Consumer Law

Bait and Switch
The bait is an advertisement luring you with the promise of an unbeatable deal, say on an appliance or car. The switch happens at the dealership, when the salesperson tells you that the advertised model isn't available or is "not for you." Invariably, it's a more expensive model that is for you. The salesperson has "switched" you from the one you thought you wanted to buy.

Bait and switch is illegal in most states and under federal law if the advertised model was never available in reasonable quantities. Stores are not necessarily bound by honest mistakes in newspaper ads, such as misprints, or if disparagement of the advertised product is used to discourage you in favor of another model. You probably have the right under state law to see the model that appeared in the newspaper ad. If the store is "fresh out of them" and refuses to offer you a raincheck, it also may be guilty of false advertising. You're allowed to be persuaded, but keep up your guard, and don't let someone talk you into buying a model you can't afford. If insisting on your rights gets you nowhere, keep the ad, get the salesman's name (and that of anyone else you spoke to) and let the merchant know that you'll be contacting the state (and, if there is one, local) consumer affairs authority or attorney general. And then do it! If a "misprint" claim sounds fishy, the local consumer protection authorities may know if this store has a history of such "sloppiness."

Ok, so technically, they made an honest mistake and are not bound by it. I understand, but I still think it's poor. If you're a company doing public advertisements, printed or electronic, I think you should put more time, effort, money into making sure that your ads are correct. How hard is it to proofread?

I think maybe I should have been an adertiser because apparently you put any crap out there and get paid for it. Whether it be typos or just plain stupid ads, commercials, etc., you can do pretty much anything and get away with it. At least that's how it seems sometimes....sorry...done venting/ranting... I know I'm just upset I didn't get the camera for the price I wanted, but I think I do make some good points about "best business practices."