Can you see what’s wrong with this picture? I took this snapshot this morning on BestBuy.com after hearing rumors about the deal on Twitter from @TJsDJs. I tried to order one of these TVs — normally priced around the $2,000 range — online, but each time I tried to place the order, it was either canceled; was “timed out;” displayed an “error while calculating the shipping price” message; or the TV was mysteriously removed from my shopping cart altogether. Best Buy seemed to have already caught on to deal that was too good to be true and was trying to remove all traces of it from the system.
I decided to print a confirmation page and headed over to the local Best Buy store just in time for it to open at 10 a.m. I expected to see crowds of people lined up, but there were only a few of us, confirmation pages in hand (and on the BlackBerry).
It didn’t surprise me that Best Buy wouldn’t honor the listed price, clearly the mistake of an unfortunate soul probably still recovering from near heart failure. What did surprise me is that although the word got out sometime this morning (some say they found out about it at 4 a.m.) and Best Buy seemed to be aware of the problem, the employees inside the store weren’t briefed before the store opened. The employees, who did well handling the situation, were nonetheless unprepared and scrambling for an appropriate answer. Lucky for them, the $9.99 TV model wasn’t in stock. After a few run-around answers about how they probably wouldn’t be able to honor the price and after looking up other stores’ availability, I decided the deal that was too good to be true was indeed too good to be true. Since then, Best Buy seems to have fixed all instances of the price fail and the Best Buy hotline states at the beginning of a call that the TV in question is, “no longer available.”
(Queue the moral-of-the-story music) Despite not getting an amazing 52″ LCD Hi-Def TV for $9.99 and wasting my lunch hour, somehow it was still a fun experience and I met some new people along the way. See, even a Best Buy FAIL can have a happy ending. At least for some of us. Next time, though, I’m going all class-action on them!
Do you know anyone who was able to purchase the TV for $9.99? Any thoughts on the situation in general? Share them in the comments section!
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