Bottom Of The Barrel

BestBuy online or else

Connecticut State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal ordered the investigation into Best Buy's practices based on an article written by George Gombossy in the Febuary 9th edition of the Hartford Courant. According the Gombossy's research, BestBuy has been using an internal website that looks exactly like their public website however the intranet site has different, as in higher, prices. BestBuy spokesman Justin Barber, who in early February denied the existence of the internal website that could be accessed only by employees, says his company is "cooperating fully" with the state attorney general's investigation. Based on what his office has learned, Blumenthal said, it appears the consumer has the burden of informing Best Buy sales people of the cheaper price listed on its Internet site, which he said "is troubling."

This investigation could not happen to a, in my opinion, better company. In my experiences with BestBuy I have found that they are unfriendly and difficult to their customers. We bought a laptop there last fall and we may have actually seen their intranet in action. I know it was very, very difficult for us to purchase the new laptop with the free printer and software incentive and it took us a good hour to convince the customer service folks that the deal was legitimate.

If the AG of Connecticut find them to be at fault for a high-tech bait-and-switch, I would recommend they are charged with larceny in the sixth degree [Class C misdemeanor - which carries up to 3 months of imprisonment and up to $500 fine] for each transaction made by all 11 stores in the state. Let's just say that each store does 1 million annual transactions [which I think is low], then they would be fined $5.5 billion dollars and that should about take care of it. Of course if this logic was applied to the entire corporation across the country then they would be out of business - but it would put an end to these kind of shady practices.

Even if the state doesn't get BestBuy, I'm sure their stockholders will since their stock prices has been steadily declining since Gombossy's February 9th article. The close price on February 8th was $51.12 and they closed yesterday at $47.61 which is a loss of almost 7% in 5 weeks. We might also hear of some sudden retirements from the upper management in the BestBuy organization if this issue doesn't get resolved quickly and the stocks continue to slide.

Labels: Going out of business

posted by TheWino @ 8:56 AM