Tech Tuesday: Best Buy extends price-matching to online sites
BY ROBERT EVATT World Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
2/19/13 at 7:41 AM
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Original Print Headline: Best Buy price-matching to include online sites
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
That's the attitude Best Buy is taking toward "show-rooming" with its new policy to price-match better deals you can find online.
Show-rooming is the practice of finding an item in a physical store and using a smartphone to look up a better price online. Best Buy Co. executives have long complained that the practice is affecting their bottom line.
The new policy probably won't completely fix the problem - in fact, it will make savvy customers even more likely to use their smartphones for on-the-spot comparison of Best Buy's prices with those online. But the company figures that having to sell that "Downton Abbey" DVD set for $10 dollars less than it would like is better than not selling it at all.
It's not quite a free-for-all, according to what tipsters have told the Consumerist website. When Best Buy's policy kicks in March 3, the price matched is before taxes, and the retailer will no longer do price matches after you've already bought the product. Additionally, the time you have to return a product goes down from 30 days to 15 days, although if you're a Reward Zone member you'll have more time.
You'll also be restricted to 19 websites: Amazon.com, Apple.com, Bhphotovideo.com, Buy.com, Crutchfield.com, Dell.com, Frys.com, Hhgregg.com, HP.com, Homedepot.com, Lowes.com, Newegg.com, Officedepot.com, Officemax.com, Sears.com, Staples.com, Target.com, Tigerdirect.com and Walmart.com.
Still, that's a fairly wide spread of sites. Time will tell how this works out for Best Buy, but it sounds like a definite plus for shoppers.
Facebook hacked
You may or may not have heard that Facebook was hacked recently. Not to the extent that crazy hackers held everyone's password hostage and started flooding the main page with porn.
The computers belonging to several Facebook engineers became infected with some malware, the company noticed some bizarre Internet traffic, and it notified the authorities.
It doesn't sound like a big deal, especially since it didn't affect users. But I'm still surprised that users have been so calm about this, when even a rumor about Facebook changing its privacy policy yet again causes people to panic and start reposting dense paragraphs of legalese.
I can only speculate that Facebook users, in general, trust hackers more than the company itself.
Associated Images:
A shopper checks out a Dell laptop at a Best Buy store in Orem, Utah. Bloomberg file
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