Circuit City advertises flash drive for $4.99, refuses to honor sale price

I just finished filing complaints with the Better Business Bureau and my state's Attorney General after a negative experience this morning.

Long story short, I drove out of my way to pick up a new 1GB flash drive for $5 at the nearest Circuit City after seeing the sale bill this morning.



When I showed up at the store, I found an "advertisement correction" posted by the flash drive area. I asked someone in customer service if they would honor the ad and they said no, they wouldn't.

So, basically, Circuit City refused to honor the price they advertised in a sale bill. The customer service rep claimed that the store did not pull a "bait and switch" even though Circuit City did "bait" me by advertising a great deal on a flash drive then "switched" the sale price with a higher amount.

I may not be a business lawyer, but that sounds like classic bait and switch to me. I can't imagine that's not illegal.

It would be one thing if this was the first advertisement correction I ever saw at a Circuit City. But it's not. The last few times my wife and I have gone to a Circuit City store, there was an advertisement correction every time. Granted, we don't go there often, but I think it warrants suspicion when three separate visits find three separate ad corrections.

Just thought I'd tell anyone thinking about driving out to Circuit City for a cheap thumb drive this afternoon to skip the trip and save yourself some gas money.

My wife and I don't plan to return to Circuit City again. Ever. If I'm not confident that a store is going to honor their advertised prices--if I don't trust them--then I won't shop there.

I don't like Best Buy because they disguise their salesmen as trained computer technicians and grossly overcharge for services, but I can at least expect them to honor the prices advertised in their sale bill.

You should look on the advert and see if they have a disclaimer for the price advertised. I know newegg screwed up awhile back in an add for a very good nokia SLR marked down 500 dollars by accident. They didn't get much beef because they have a notion at the bottom that disclaimed in the event of pricing mistakes.

Still that sux that you drove all the way out there to get shafted.

vibrokatana said:

You should look on the advert and see if they have a disclaimer for the price advertised.

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I don't see any type of disclaimer on the sale bill.

The customer service rep made it sound like an ad correction posted inside the store made everything okay, when I had already driven out there on good faith that they would honor the price advertised in their sale bill.

vibrokatana said:

I know newegg screwed up awhile back in an add for a very good nokia SLR marked down 500 dollars by accident. They didn't get much beef because they have a notion at the bottom that disclaimed in the event of pricing mistakes.

Click to expand...

That, and newegg.com is exclusively an online store. It takes much less effort to type a URL into an address bar and click a few links than it does to drive a few miles out of your way for a bait and switch maneuver.

It's not only the time wasted that aggravates me, it's the money wasted on gas. With gas hovering at $2.75-$3.00 a gallon, I don't want to drive around town for no good reason.

vibrokatana said:

Still that sux that you drove all the way out there to get shafted.

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Agreed.

Holy cow, a 5 dollar 1gb flash drive? Sign me up!

How much was it supposed to be? I think what tips me off a bit is that not only does the ad just say, "4.99"... but it also says, "Save $25". If it were a misprint, It would say, "Save $15" or whatnot.

I used to work in the Buying Office of a retail chain, and believe me when I say that the buyers proof (or SHOULD be proofing) every ad. Something like the "Save $25" would have stuck out at us even if the $4.99 didn't.

BTW, Best Buy has a 2 gig thumb drive for 24.99 and a 4 gig for 39.99 today, if you have one close by.

reminds me of a post some one made a while back about circuit citys customer service a while back : http://cgalliance.org/forums/showthread.php?t=15754&highlight=circuit+city

vibrokatana said:

You should look on the advert and see if they have a disclaimer for the price advertised. I know newegg screwed up awhile back in an add for a very good nokia SLR marked down 500 dollars by accident. They didn't get much beef because they have a notion at the bottom that disclaimed in the event of pricing mistakes.

Still that sux that you drove all the way out there to get shafted.

Click to expand...

I forget if it was newwegg, but a while back, an online store had a new video card for like $300 less then everyone else. Turned out it was a mistake and they changed it within a few hours. They honored the price for everyone that ordered in time. I had a friend that called in after he found you couldn't get it at the price....to which the rep said "you were just too slow"

moxie said:

How much was it supposed to be? I think what tips me off a bit is that not only does the ad just say, "4.99"... but it also says, "Save $25". If it were a misprint, It would say, "Save $15" or whatnot.

Click to expand...

Aye, it wasn't as though there was one misprint; there were two.

What aggravates me isn't the misprint. Misprints happen. No editor or proofreader is perfect.

What aggravates me is (1) that Circuit City refuses to honor the price they advertised and the price that motivated me to drive miles out of my way to visit the store and (2) the frequency with which I saw ad corrections in their store. In the last 3 visits to Circuit City locations, I saw 3 ad corrections posted.

Three out of three? Call my cynical, but that's too frequent to be coincidence. The more logical explanation would be that Circuit City purposely prints bogus sale prices to get people into the store to buy products, then posts an ad correction so they don't have to honor the sale price.

Not only is the practice unethical, it's also illegal. And it's lame--even weaksauce--to hide behind the classic "Oops, it was an accident!" excuse like a 5-year old kid--time after time after time. The difference is, I'd be more likely to believe the 5-year old kid than a national corporation.

Even if they aren't fined by a government organization, customers will start walking out of Circuit City and driving to Best Buy--and never come back. Once you don't trust a business to keep their word, why go back?

Unless, of course, you don't have a choice. Unless the company has spent the last 20 years throwing briefcases of money at politicians to re-establish a telecommunications monopoly originally disbanded by anti-trust legislation in the 1980s. But hey, who would be lame enough to do that?

In most situations when you feel wronged by a local store I would suggest trying to find an address or contact at corporate level to send a report of the issue. You'd be surprised what a simple letter can accomplish and how quickly they may be willing to give you some kind of gift card or discount to make up for it, and if nothing else they will document your complaint and those do add up.

I work for a big electronic manufacturer in a customer relations position and we can give out huge discounts on repair issues and customer complaints and I’m not even at the top of the chain. It's just a matter of getting your issue to the right people.