“State officials launched their investigation after a Feb. 9 Watchdog column disclosed that Best Buy stores had a secret intranet site in its stores — one that mirrored the public BestBuy.com Internet site, but with different pricing. The intranet prices usually reflected the individual store’s price, not the public Internet price, which Best Buy since 2005 has promised to honor.Since publication of the Feb. 9 and subsequent Watchdog columns were published, hundreds of Best Buy customers have complained to the newspaper about being charged higher-than-advertised prices. They said they looked up sales on bestbuy.com, but when they went into stores, clerks would show them a bestbuy.com site that would not have the sales price.
Customers were told that the sale must be over, or that they had misread the advertisement.
What in reality was going on was that the salesman was accessing an intranet website that was almost identical to public site. According to current and former employees and managers, some workers knew they were misleading customers, other employees were unaware of the duplicate site.
Of course, Best Buy employed the worst kind of communications and PR when faced with the accusation – they lied about it.In what could result in millions of dollars in penalties and refunds, Connecticut officials have sued Best Buy, accusing the giant electronics retailer of deceiving and cheating its customers using a secret in-store computer network.Consumer Protection Commissioner Jerry Farrell Jr. said Thursday that he believes the suit will result in a “multi-million dollar case” against the Minnesota-based chain, which has 10 outlets in Connecticut.”
