Best Buy Admits To Misleading Customers With Kiosks
Written by Evan SchumanDecember 15th, 2010
After more than three-and-a-half years of courtroom battles with the Connecticut Attorney General's office, Best Buy on Monday (Dec. 13) admitted that its in-store kiosks tricked consumers out of Web price-matching and agreed to pay consumers in that state $399,000. The chain also said it would stop showing higher prices on its in-store kiosks and would "conspicuously disclose to consumers" if the kiosk was displaying lower prices. Although the settlement is unlikely a cause for celebration at Best Buy, the chain actually fared quite well and will sustain little pain from it.
Why little pain? A $399,000 settlement is not a huge deterrent for a $50 billion chain, but it might become more annoying if it spreads to many other states. The actions required—the halting of the deceptive kiosk program—are also trivial, as that program had basically run its course and mobile devices pretty much make it irrelevant.
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One Comment | Read Best Buy Admits To Misleading Customers With Kiosks
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Our Comment SPAM system is getting very aggressive these days and has been blocking legitimate comments. If you post a comment and don't see it appear within 2 hours or so, can you please send a heads-up to customer-service@storefrontbacktalk.com? Ideally, please include the time you posted the comment. That will allow us to try and hunt for it. Thanks! P.S. We're working on fixing the system, but we don't want to lose any valuable comments in the meantime.
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December 15th, 2010 at 6:26 pm
I wonder if the store kiosks configuration were nationwide or if there was any targeting by region/zip.