Ohio Attorney General investigating BB Ti4600 Deal

[Bob151]

As this is the "Off Topic" forum and its described as "A public meeting place, a Pub, if you will... A place for computer junkies to boldly post Off Topic... Things you might want to tell everyone... ", I believe its within the guidelines of that description to post this here, even though so many people will get pissed off about it.

I didn't get in on this deal, but I thought some people like might to know. Noticed it on TB and read on www.hardocp.com. I'll post the paragraphs below...

Go Betty! I always thought that AGs office was more into consumer protections than normal.
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The Ohio Attorney General's Office seems to have some real interest in the latest Best Buy pricing bungle involving the VisionTek Ti4600 cards that were advertised on a pre-buy for "$200" off retail. As you might know, Best Buy cancelled most of the online orders but did honor some in the stores.

If you live in Ohio, and purchased a pre-buy Ti4600 from Best Buy to be sent to an Ohio address, and then had your ordered cancelled; the Attorney General's Office in Ohio would like to hear from you about your experience. Also, if you live in Ohio and purchased one in Ohio for the pre-buy advertised price, please let us know as well. If this describes YOU, send ardOCP a mail at THIS ADDRESS with your NAME, your SHIPPING ADDRESS, and your AGE. We will help you get in contact with the right folks in Ohio's AG office. The Ohio Attorney General's Office is aware of our actions here and we are simply helping point the right people in the proper direction.

Let me state now that this is not a "witch hunt" in order to get Best Buy to shell out cheap VidCards for everyone involved. This is an attempt to get solid case law on the books in a state court to hold Net retailers to some standard or least be bound by a shard of accountability for their actions online. Precedents set on this will very likely lead to legislation governing inaccurate and misleading pricing online. These kinds of errors by large companies will become nearly nonexistent once there is a circumstance to be faced for their errors. Until they are called on in a court of law they will simply hide behind their terms & conditions statement, that by the way, will be "worthless" in a legal setting.

 

[NFS4]

Ferengi Soup

 

[Russ]

<< Let me state now that this is not a "witch hunt" in order to get Best Buy to shell out cheap VidCards for everyone >>



Yeah, right.

Russ, NCNE

 

[chanfo]

<< These kinds of errors by large companies will become nearly nonexistent once there is a circumstance to be faced for their errors. >>



I guess this is sort of a catch 22. Persuing legal action causing these errors to be nonexistent means less hot deals for us to take advantage of in the future. Though I'm sure these errors will never become nonexistent. Human error is inevitable anywhere. As for me I hope there are many more pricing errors like these. Some of these errors slip thru the cracks and this just happens to be one that didn't. A $30 credit is definately worth the 2 minutes it took for me to fill in the order. Besides my credit card was never charged.

 

[Skel]

Great idea.. let's force companies to bankrupt themselves....

 

[LuDaCriS66]

You have gotta be kidding me.... I thought this thing would have blown over by now. Why can't some people just let this go? Not getting a video card for $129.99 so you can play your computer games faster is not the end of the world..........

 

[gunf1ghter]

Pricing mistakes DO happen. In most states the only hope of getting them to honor that price would be if you could somehow prove that they were INTENTIONALLY advertising that price in an attempt to decieve their customers (bait and switch).

Go into any major retailer after one of their big sunday ads has hit and you will see some price corrections posted (typically)... having worked for a major electronics retailer when I was putting myself through school we regularly had customers go nuclear when we wouldn't honor a price match for an ad typo... once a $3499 Mitsubishi big screen got accidentally advertised as $349 (in that case the newspaper typset it wrong and dropped the last 9 off)... guess what?? we didn't get sued, even if some people got pissed off and demanded compensation.

 

[neomits]

DAMMIT I live in Ohio. I sure as hell wish I would have bought one of these.

HEY, if someone who bought one of these wants, they can use my address to complain to the Ohio AG and we can see if you can get it.

 

[Ornery]

Hey! Where's all the WMC? Aren't they going to come and pat these guys on the back and encourage them? WTF? Or are they going to say their situation was different? They were on the high ground whereas these guys are just lowly whiners?

You guys are all birds of a feather. Take a good look WMC, cause this is an image of YOU! Aren't ya proud?

 

[HappyPuppy]

"Number One, come to my ready room and bring the KY jelly".

 

[richd111]

My god people, let this die.

If you went to the store, and they told you "Sorry sir, we no longer have those, but how about these very expensive cards instead?" and they never had the original card, you might have a case.

If they shipped you the card, and charged you more than you agreed to pay, you might have a case.

Since they did neither one of these things, you have no case. This was a price mistake, plain and simple. Any organization, governmental or otherwise that's looking to get involved in this, should be embarrassed. How did Best Buy gain from this? In fact, they felt the need from a customer service standpoint to give away $60,000 (assuming 2000 orders) in gift cards. Yeah, it sounds like they really got away with something there.

As someone stated in the original thread, how would you like it if you were running an online store, accidentally posted $38 instead of $380, and had a bunch of hot deal vultures pounce on you? How would you react to it? Would you fulfill 2000 orders and put yourself out of business?? And don't tell me it's different because Best Buy can take a hit like that. That's not a reasonable argument.

Get a life. Move on.

Sorry for the rant.

 

[broadwayblue]

i would have let it go if it was just a one time slip up. but i'm convinced that best buy continually engages in questionable (if not illegal) activities. i'm still upset about the way they handled my order for the ddr ram that was on sale in december. how convenient that they cancelled my order because they were out of stock on the crucial ram and were NEVER going to restock it...and yet it's available again on their website less then a month later. yet they refuse to reinstate my order because "they are not responsible for pricing and inventory fluctuations." what the heck does that mean? if they were in fact no longer carrying the item that would be one thing...but for them to cancel my order so they could save some money on an item that no doubt had increased in cost after they placed the add is another story altogether. one that i believe is illegal.

 

[psycaz]

I have had BestBuy cancel different 3 orders of mine where I ordered items they had marked as clearence, stating the item was no longer available - only problem was that the item was listed on their website as available - they just decided that the clearence price was too low and raised it. When called about it, I was told in no uncertain terms too bad, we can't reinstate the order and will not pricematch to the prior price. I have no problem with someone finally being able to get them with their deceptive practices.

 

[Lucky]

pricing mistakes my ass. they are deliberately deceiving folks.

 

[golfreak]

You guys are so ignorant.

The retail price on these cards are $399 so why in the world would you even think Bestbuy was going to sells these for $129 ??
Anyone with common sense can obviously tell its a pricing mistake.

Just think for a minute, Bestbuy is having the best year of any retailer in the US.
Why would they purposely do this and get bad pubilcity and then hand out thousands of FREE $30 GC ??
Theres absolutely no reason why they would purposely do that.

We have been already rewarded for the 2mins that we spent sumbitting the order.
Let it go already.

BTW, this is to show how ignorant Steve at HARDOCP is also.
I sent him this email because he compared the situation at Gateway to Bestbuy:

Steve, this situation is nothing close to the BestBuy situation.

BestBuy made a pricing mistake because the Ti4600 is no where close to $129 that was advertised.
I found it amusing that so many people cried foul about a pricing mistake. People can think otherwise but you know very well $129 is no where close to the retail price of $399 so it has to be a pricing mistake.
I thought BB did more than they had to by giving people a $30 GC.

On the other hand, what Gateway did was just unethical.
The Ti4600 was priced at $389 but alot of us use a $50 off coupon that was floating around.
So it was $339 for a Ti4600 which is reasonable. $339 is $200 more than $129 so I don't see any similarity in this situation.

And also, this Gateway situation goes beyond with just the VisionTek 4600.
Gateway cancelled all orders that was not INSTOCK after the coupon deadline(which was Feb28).
Alot of people placed orders on the 1.6A, Toshiba M81 digital camera, radeon 8500 and among other stuff.
All of these orders were CANCELLED.

Gateway honored these $50 coupons on all items that were INSTOCK but for some ODD reason, after the coupon deadline(Feb 28), any items NOT instock was cancelled.

So the 2 situations are very very different, Gateway just made big blunder.

BTW, the coupon was $50 off 200 with free shipping over $199.
My feeling is that Gateway were going to lose more money by filling all these not instock items that they decided to cancel them all.
Little did they realize this would cause so much bad pubicilty.

GOLFREAK.

And he replied by saying this:

Thanks for the input, I filed it accordingly...right after I read the part where you said you found it "amusing".... I didn't bother reading anything else after that point.

He only choose to only listen to side of the story only.
Just because others have a different opinion about it, he choose not to read about it.

 

[UberNeuman]

Send Steve this...

 

[Amused]

My thoughts on the matter. (well, you're gonna hear tham anyway )

Enforcing price errors is a sticky subject. I own my business and I'm a libertarian, therefore you'd think I'd come down on the side of business, wouldn't you? I don't, here's why:

A displayed and/or advertised price is an agreement. A pledge if you will. To renege on that agreement is fraud. Making companies adhere to displayed prices has it's roots in the old bait and switch con. Businesses would display one price to get the customer to come in, and boost the price once they had the customer in the store. Laws forcing businesses to sell for the price displayed did away with this practice for the most part.

Now, I know everyone says this was a "mistake" by Best Buy. It probably was a mistake. BUT, the law cannot differentiate between a mistake and an intentional bait and switch here. Why? Because EVERY offender will claim their misleading price was a mistake.

Every state I've lived in (I'm not sure about IL) has had a law on the books making marked prices the price a store MUST sell the product for, even if the marked price was a "mistake."

Finally, not selling a product for the advertised or displayed price is immoral. It's a breach of an agreement with your customers. It matters not that you made a mistake. Mistakes have to be paid for by those who make them, not everyone else.

As for knowing or not knowing this was a mistake. Why? Many companies sell things at half price or lower as a promotion or as a deal they got from the manufacturer.

And no, I did not order a card from Best Buy.

 

[Oakenfold]

I don't get this, no one tried to force the Compusa 20 Pack of hard drives last year, no one is doing anything about DELL, I have no idea how many orders I've had cancelled from them and their glorious JIT system.

 

[isildur]

Hmmm...the Ohio AG thinks that BB TOS violates FTC regulations (which it clearly does if any of you sh!t talking fools would bother to read them), but that's okay, keep spouting because clearly all of you guys know better.

 

[Buzzman151]

god damn... this is going way too far... all these people knew it was the wrong price..... The American standard right now..... now just wait..... people are going to start sueing the church b/c "God didnt' save my husband in the card accident"

 

[isildur]

god damn... this is going way too far... all these people knew it was the wrong price..... The American standard right now..... now just wait..... people are going to start sueing the church b/c "God didnt' save my husband in the card accident"

even after calling twice to confirm? Um, NO.

BUT, how about the fact that IT DOESN'T EVEN MATTER.
they agreed to sell and then balked and relied on a TOS that doesn't meet the FTC standards for binding TOS. Thus, they are in breach of contract.

teh ignorant = STFU

 

[isildur]

BTW, this is to show how ignorant Steve at HARDOCP is also.

Actually, no, Steve is cognizant of the details of both of these situations, thus he cannot be deemed "ignorant." Perhaps we need to recap what that word means...

Did you also notice that Gateway made this comparison themselves??!!??

Oh sh!t, they must not understand how the Gateway deal went either, you'd best go and educate them...

 

[911paramedic]

Bait and switch.

That's all I have to say.

 

[CKDragon]

I agree that legally all who attempted to purchase the cards have a right to them. However, I'm happy with my $30 Coupon and it was more than I was expecting. I'm not going to attempt to hurt an American business which made a mistake.

CK

 

[gunf1ghter]

You guys seriously make me LMAO... ya, let's go after every company that has ANY kind of pricing mistake and make them fork over the goods. Do you guys realize that sometimes they make pricing mistakes on CARS where they accidentally get advertised for $10,000 less than they are supposed to cost? What about those big screens that get accidentally advertised for $399 when they are supposed to be $3999?

Companies are apparently supposed to go out of business to satisfy the cheap-ass cravings of a bunch of hot deal vultures... the kind of guy who would come into the electronics store raging about how he wanted his $399 big-screen (which was really $3999 but the newspaper goofed up and dropped a 9 from the price) was really just a crackpot lunatic deadbeat... anyone SANE would know that it was a goof up.

So let's drive all of these companies out of business (because there are 10's of thousands of pricing errors across many retail businesses every year) and pass the new higher cost of doing business on to the consumer!!!

Bunch of morons.