Best Buy Accused of Deceiving Customers
The Connecticut Attorney General has served Best Buy with a lawsuit claiming that the retailer deceived and overcharged customers through its in-store kiosks.
In the suit AG Richard Blumenthal charged that Best Buy salespeople falsely told consumers seeking to confirm lower online prices that the kiosk connected them to BestBuy.com, when it actually connected them to a look-alike internal Best Buy Web site that showed higher prices. The internal site lists in-store and not online prices, the AG said.
Best Buy denied the “characterization” of its kiosks and said it plans to “vigorously” defend itself in the courtroom.
Blumenthal said consumers were led by salespeople to believe they had misread lower online prices or that the prices had expired. Since 2005, the company’s stores have pledged to match any lower online price, including those from its own site.
“Best Buy gave consumers the worst deal—a bait-and-switch-plus scheme luring consumers into stores with promised online discounts, only to charge higher in-store prices,” Blumenthal said in a statement. “The company commonly kept two sets of prices—one on its Internet site and an often higher set on its in-store, look-alike, available on kiosks. Best Buy broke its promise to give the best price.”
The lawsuit was served to Best Buy on May 18. Best Buy has until June 19 to respond before the suit gets filed in Hartford Superior Court.
In response to the investigation, Best Buy posted banners at the kiosk site that said the kiosk prices reflected in store pricing, but the AG said the kiosks remained deceptive. Officials at Best Buy could not be reached for comment Friday.
“We offered the in-store kiosks to provide our customers with another avenue for obtaining information about products and allow them the benefit of knowing exactly what was available at the store that the customer was presently in,” Best Buy said in a statement. “We used the same Web site platform for these in-store kiosks as we did for our national Web site —we did this to ensure that customers familiar with the national Web site could easily navigate the in-store kiosk. Unfortunately, for all the benefits that the kiosks provided to most of our customers, there was a small percentage who did not receive the best price when they should have.”
The lawsuit requests that Best Buy fix the kiosks, eliminate confusion and fulfill its price match policy. The AG is also seeking consumer restitution and civil penalties.
Best Buy said that as soon as it was notified of the problems it provided employee training to prevent further confusion.
“Best Buy treated its customers like suckers, not patrons to be prized,” Blumenthal said.
The AG’s office was alerted to the problem by a Feb. 9 column in the Hartford Courant written by George Gombossy, followed by consumer complaints, a spokesperson at Blumenthal’s office said.
Blumenthal worked with Jerry Farrell, the commissioner of the Department of Consumer Protection, to bring the lawsuit.
Best Buy has caught the attention of state regulators before.
In 2004, the Ohio AG filed a lawsuit against the company alleging that it repackaged used goods and failed to honor rebates, among other charges. In 2005, Best Buy said it would discontinue mail-in rebates.
