I hope you didn't misunderstand my original post. I have nothing against BB employees. My beef is with their corporate policies (full of abiguities, probably intentional, which mislead the customer, leading to disappointment, frustration, poor customer service, and poor customer satisfaction). If their policy was clarified, and all the details of such were made available in writing, then I think that I would have much less of a problem with them. (I was slightly disappointed, that when I asked to talk to a manager, that I had to wait almost 15 minutes for one to show up, but that complaint is about employee customer-service, and is not directly relevant to my complaint about their misleading PM policy.)
That's the problem. They all do it. They present a "guarantee' to the customer, and then when the customer tries to, in good faith, take advantage of that offer, they are given the run-around. This is not acceptable, not from a customer-service perspective, nor from a legal perspective.
(Please note that I am specifically not talking about customers that try to defraud or otherwise take advantage of an ignorant CSR and obtain a mis-application of a store's price-match policy. I feel that if such a policy exists, and it is clearly and properly defined, inclusive of all legal terms and conditions, and also enforced properly, then it shouldn't be possible for a store to get defrauded, nor should a customer have to suffer from poor customer-service when attempting to take advantage of such a policy.)
I've read other posts from claimed BB employees, and they don't jive with what you present here. They claim that their employee-discount price on such items, is a small percentage or amount above BB's cost on the item. This was stated in the context of how excellent their employee discount is, saving potentially $100's of dollars off of the retail price of such items (TVs, etc). So obviously, BB *is* making a profit/markup on those items. It just wouldn't make *any* economic sense, given BB's enormous overhead for their retail store locations, to be selling high-dollar merchandise only a few dollars above cost.
I was pointing out how hypocritical it was, of them to take the action of visiting a competitor's web site to deny a PM, and yet at the same time, refusing to take the same action to confirm a PM. That is the exact sort of inconsistent treatment that I am talking about.
I also didn't mean to infer that they *had* to call a competitor to phone-verify a PM, but only that they had done so in the past, so it was surprising that they were no longer allowed to do so, per corporate policy. This is even more surprising, considering that they had done so in the past, and that the PM receipt stated "phone verify", and the employee's signature. So obviously, there was a procedure in place for phone verification of price-matches.
However, your statement above, insinuating that BestBuy should NOT have to be held to their offered price-match policy, to a potential customer, only because another potential customer is waiting to make a non-price-matched purchase, is both highly-offensive and discriminatory. Both are potential customers. Why do you feel that you should have a mandate to choose one over another, to offer one proper customer service, and yet deny another. Would you do the same, based on racial, ethnic, gender, appearance, or economic status? Why would you do so to a potential-customer, who only just wants to take advantage of BestBuy's offered policy? Oh, wait, that would actually take time to do your job properly. I'm guessing that you have a lot to learn about proper customer-service in the retail arena. Don't feel too bad though, I can count on my fingers the number of times that I've actually recieved satisfactory and proper customer-service from any retail employee. So you are not alone.
I agree, getting angry, yelling, etc., usually doesn't help all that much. In fact, they were taking so much time, and having so much difficulty trying to find a copy of their PM policy to print out for me, that the store was actually closing by that point. I offered to simply come back the next day instead, because I didn't want to hold up their store schedule. I'm hardly an unreasonable person, I tend to be slightly on the too-polite side. (Granted, that may be a disadvantage in a personal-conflict situation, but I try to resolve things in an intellectual manner.) However, I did arrive at the store at a full half-hour before closing, and there was no line at the customer-service desk (nor any employees staffing it at the moment that I arrived). A full half-hour should have been enough to process a price-match transaction, I've done a sucessful price-match in only five minutes once. It only got close to closing time, because it took 15 minutes before a manager (that I had requested to speak to), appeared. The manager that I did finally get to speak to, appeared to be quite young. I was unsure if he was even out of high school yet, although I would assume that to be a manager, that he must have been.
If you are correct about BB selling TVs and other high-dollar items for only $7 over cost, then how does it make any sense whatsover to sell those same items for 10% off ??? BestBuy is certainly not a charity, and it would make no sense to be selling those items below-cost, regularly, during those sales, and yet use that as an excuse to deny price-matches... don't you think? The facts as you have presented them, are not logically consistent with themselves.
I appreciate your insight into the matter, as a fresh hire, but some of the things that you present seem slightly on the bogus side (mostly on the cost of product relative to BestBuy's retail price, but that's not directly relevant to the topic at hand so I'll ignore that).