price

Best Buy responds to price match accusations

Update: March 19, 2009, 1:00 PDT: Best Buy's replies to our follow-up questions have been added since this article was originally published.

Responding to a March 17 Crave article, which pointed to an article on HDGuru.com describing how Best Buy employees refused to honor the store's own price matching policy, the electronics retailer has supplied a written statement.

According to the statement, "The price match in question was over $700 difference from our pricing at the store; while our pricing may vary from our competition, such huge fluctuations in price are rare and rightfully set off red flags to our employees." The statement encourages dissatisfied shoppers to contact customer service.

We asked the Best Buy representative who sent us the statement whether the policy had a price limit, and he said that it did not.

Since March 17, we have received further information from readers regarding this issue. For example, a February article at StoreFrontTalkBack.com describes a class-action lawsuit filed in 2008 where former Best Buy employees alleged the company's management actively discouraged honoring the policy. According to the deposition of one former employee:

"Best Buy had a corporate undisclosed policy of discouraging and denying customers the benefits of its price match guarantee. Management mandated that all price match requests that resulted in a product being sold at less than 5 percent above cost would be denied. Best Buy provided a financial incentive for denying proper price match requests."

… Read more

Report: Is Best Buy refusing to match prices?

Update March 19: Best Buy has responded with a statement, and we have posted an update.

Web site HDGuru.com has published a report describing three separate visits to Best Buy locations where salespeople refused to comply with the store's own price-matching policy.

The report goes on to provide advice to customers interested in obtaining a price match themselves. Here's the meat of the HDGuru's exchange:

When asked to match the price, salesmen at all three stores said, "no," giving the same excuse: "The advertised Panasonic was on sale for three days, and Best … Read more

Samsung: Solid state will match hard-drive price

Samsung expects solid-state drives to reach price parity with hard-disk drives within the next few years amid steep annual price declines in flash memory chips.

Solid-state drives, which use flash memory chips as the storage medium, typically offer much better performance than hard-disk drives. But they cost more. Currently, opting for an SSD instead of a hard-disk drive will add anywhere between $100 and $600 to the cost of a laptop, depending on the capacity of the SSD.

In a phone interview, Brian Beard, flash marketing manager for Samsung Semiconductor, said reaching price parity with hard-disk drives is just a … Read more

109: How much ethanol can your car stand?

Auto suppliers may pull the rug from under the industry, Toyota finds a new place for an airbag, ethanol producers want to force more of its product into your tank, goodbye Honda S2000.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

SHOW NOTES

• Ethanol producers want to feed more of its product to your car

• Toyota's back seat airbag

• The new green, diesel Land Rover

• Liv Inizio electric car looks a lot like a Tesla

• Think wants to bring their little electric car to the U.S.

20+ tools for price watching and protecting

In the U.S., tax season is well upon us. And with the recession in full tilt, you may be--smartly--biding your time to make a purchase. Fear not though, there are tools aplenty to help you keep an eye on the price of something, and swoop in to get it when it goes on sale or the manufacturer offers a rebate.

We've put together a list of 22 different tools that let you do this with relative ease. Most only work on Amazon.com, but a few will keep an eye on the entirety of the Web to let you know about sales, price drops, and increases.

Amazon Price Watch (aka NukePrice.com) Amazon Price Watch may sound like it's only Amazon.com prices, but it actually works with around 100 online retailers. You can have it watch the price of something by dropping its link into the service's Web form, or by installing a browser add-on that lets you start tracking from the retailer's site. Along with price-watching tools, it's also got a deals finder and a "filler items" tool that will help you find low-priced items to add to your Amazon order to get free shipping.

Apnoti Apnoti watches Amazon for price drops. You can use it either by dropping in the Amazon product link and your e-mail address or installing a tool bar that adds the option to watch a price to Amazon.com. One of Apnoti's strengths is that it refreshes its price index "continuously" so you can be notified when a price drops usually within the hour.

BeatThat! BeatThat is primarily a deals site that lets users add deals they've found in return for cash. However, each product on the site can be watched to see if it drops below whatever price threshold you set. Like PriceGrabber you must be a registered user of the site to make use of this feature.

Buy it Later Buy it Later is a tool that's been designed specifically for Amazon.com. You install a small browser add-on, which will add a new button to Amazon product pages that lets you opt-in to buy it at a later date. Once you click this the tool will start tracking the price. It also gives you the heads up when an item comes back in stock, which can be useful if you're looking to buy something with a low supply.

CamelCamelCamel While camel imagery does not bring price watching to mind, the site does a great job at it. You can search items on Amazon and a few other retailers. It's also got a great grid of products that have had the biggest price drops by day and week both in dollar amount and in percentage. One of the most important things the site does, however, is show you a price history from the past month both from Amazon and third-party retailers. This is a good way to see whether a price is trending up or down, although admittedly its charts can be thrown off by gray market listings.… Read more

Check price guides before unloading old vinyl

I don't consider myself a vinyl collector. Although most of my music is on vinyl--about 700 records, compared with less than 200 CDs and a smattering of digital-only files--I buy it because I like the sound, and pay little attention to original labels versus reissues, imports versus domestic, cover art, and all the other arcana that collectors concern themselves with. Still, like anybody else who haunts record shows, I've always hoped in the back of my mind that I'd stumble on the next Butcher Cover--that's the original cover of the Beatles album "Yesterday and … Read more

Did Apple OK price cut on latest MacBook Air?

No, this isn't a price cut reflected on the Apple Web site. And it's not much. But if you're in the market for a high-end MacBook, every dollar counts. Besides, Apple will probably match the lower price.

At major resellers like Newegg, PC Connection (i.e., Mac Connection), and Buy.com the latest version of the high-end MacBook Air (1.86GHz, 128GB solid-state drive) is now selling for--hold your breath--$2,399 instead of the listed $2,499 on the Apple Web site. Not much. What is best described as a price snip rather than a price … Read more

108: We have the hottest cars fresh from the Geneva auto show

GM associated with the B word again, we have the hottest cars from the Geneva auto show, BMW wants their car keys to work like credit cards, figuring out the Toyota Venza.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

SHOW NOTES

• CNET's Geneva auto show coverage

• Toyota Venza review

• Just try to dent an Aptera 2e

• Electric charging station map

• Artificial intelligence coming to BMW navigation?

• Best Buy to sell Enertia motorcycle?

Pricing on new Sony HDTVs leaked

Next week Sony will hold its annual spring line show detailing new product rollouts for 2009 and supplementing its CES 2009 HDTV announcements with specifics like pricing and availability. A couple days early, HDGuru.com has an article spelling out pricing for a number of Sony's new lines of Bravia-branded LCD TVs.

On a series-by-series basis, the Guru also provides advice to shoppers facing the inevitable question of whether to buy now while the deals on 2008 models are very good, or wait for the '09 versions to come out. In general, given the price difference and closeout deals on '08 versions, he advises shoppers to get a good deal now and not wait. We tend to agree, at least for folks who don't care about Yahoo Widgets or 240Hz.

The Guru leaked prices and estimated release dates for most of the series below. Pricing is listed as MAP, Sony's estimated street price.… Read more