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Have you ever made a purchase on the crafty marketplace, Etsy? If you have, consider checking your privacy settings, since the site is beginning to have more in common with Facebook than an old-fashioned online bazaar. The company behind the site managed to annoy sellers, buyers, and more or less the entire Internet by changing its privacy policy earlier this year.
The changes allow users to search for their friends and marginal acquaintances' Etsy usernames and feedback histories by e-mail address. Not all that different from most social networking sites... but most people who sign up to use Etsy do so to buy things, not to socialize and spy on what their friends are buying. Now, the full names of users who provided them to the site are available to the public and indexed by search engines by default. Users must opt out of these exciting new privacy-defying features. More »
(Ninja M.)
On Valentine's Day, we are expected to show loved ones how much they mean to us by giving them dead plants. For extra style points, we pay strangers to bring these dead plants to the recipient for us. However, florists are unfathomably busy on Valentine's Day. So busy that we almost feel bad criticizing when things go wrong. Almost. The Consumerist's annual Valentine's Day Garden of Discontent is a collection of flower or gift deliveries that aren't what the recipient had in mind—and sometimes aren't even close. More »
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Reader WootAndTheWay tells Consumerist was one of the lucky few who got to order the Bag of Crap from Woot.com during the last Woot-off. Once the package arrived, she found that she was luckier than she had thought. Her box contained the usual assortment of random closeout goodness, and a folded-up envelope containing $609 in cash. Wait, what?
Woot says that they don't know anything about how the envelope got there. It's easy to believe them, since this is a very poor business model. What would you do? More »
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—>What do you do when you're unhappy with a transaction and the merchant wants to make things right, but you think their terms are unreasonable? That's what Raymond wants to know. He tells us that Aldo is willing to price match after sending him a marked down item that he paid full price for online, but thinks they want him to go too far to prove it. More »
—>Michael bought a Sony Pocket Reader last month, but with the exception of $10 bestsellers, he's finding that other books he wants are priced higher than he's willing to pay. For example, Tad Friend's memoir Cheerful Money is $10 on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble, but $17.49 from Sony. Michael wants to know if we have any advice on how to get Sony to lower their prices. More »
—>Last month Best Buy gave Ian a free Xbox 360 due to a snafu while handling his extended warranty. More »
—>Walmart announced yesterday that it will be slashing prices to below wholesale on 10 of the most popular DVDs that will be released soon, says the LA Times. Target announced that it will be matching Walmart. Amazon has not yet responded. More »
—>How casual is too casual for an airplane's first class section? If you paid for first class, and a bald guy in a Puma running outfit sat down across the aisle from you, would you honestly feel short-changed? United seems to think it's inappropriate. More »
—>Best Buy announced a "a Best Buy-branded offering, available starting early next year," that will stream "first-run DVDs" online directly to consumers, says the NYT Bits Blog. More »
—>Amazon's new PayPhrase service has its advantages and disadvantages, but one curious feature is that the system generates sample phrases for you. Usually these are pretty innocuous and uplifting—"Laura's Amazing Effort" and the like. But not for Gil. The PayPhrase system took the opportunity to comment on his private parts, and generated the phrase "Gil's Splendid Balls" for him. More »
—>Kelli bought an HDTV from Best Buy, and the set broke in June. Now it's almost November, and despite scads of phone calls and appointments, her TV is no closer to being fixed today than it was way back when. More »
—>Independent book stores can't even buy new releases for the low prices that Target, Walmart, and Amazon are offering them to the public — which has led to rationing in order to keep the independents from buying and reselling the books at a profit. More »
—>The new music search capabilities that Google introduced today will make it easier to quickly find a song you can't remember the name of, or sample some tracks from an artist you're interested in. But it's not so much a new service as a more efficient combination of a bunch of services already scattered around the web. More »
—>If you have $80 and a lust for video games, Amazon has a deal for you, which was spotted by Joystiq. Spend the money on pre-selected video games and you get a $40 credit. More »
—>Considering the growing amount of credit card fraud, it's not surprising that banks are becoming more and more vigilant about identifying suspicious transactions. It's too bad they haven't been as successful at filtering out false positives or promptly notifying customers, as James Fallows at The Atlantic recently discovered when he got his account frozen for sending files to his Kindle. More »
—>A class action lawsuit has been filed in Illinois against Best Buy. The suit's claims? That the company has an official policy against price-matching their own web site. You don't say. That claim of a special Intranet site to prevent price-matching against the chain's Web site sounds familiar. So do most of the suit's allegations, for loyal readers of Consumerist. More »
Kindle coming to a PC near you next month. Amazon's Kindle software will be available as a free download for PC users starting next month. Versions for Macs and BlackBerrys will be available next year. All will have DRM, though users will be spared the pain of having to download their locked-down lit via AT&T's 3G network, which has replaced Sprint's more reliable data network in recent hardware Kindles. More »
—>One of the big selling points about the Nook, the new ebook reader introduced this week by Barnes & Noble, is that unlike Amazon they'll let you virtually "loan" your ebook to a friend for up to 14 days (if the publisher allows it). What they don't tell you—some smart readers over at MobileRead sussed it out—is that you can only do this one time per book. You'd better lend wisely—and your friend had better finish that book within 14 days. More »
—>Even though it most likely wasn't Amazon's fault that Lucas's iPod arrived in a hippo-flattened package, a company rep stepped in and gave him a $10 credit to say sorry. More »
—>Lucas opened his door one day to find this mangled package, containing an iPod Touch that was a birthday gift for his wife. No doubt he had the same expression as Rosemary when she saw her baby for the first time. More »
—>If you like Best Buy, come to New York City! In November the company will open its first 24-hour store, in the remodeled carcass of the Circuit City that formerly anchored Union Square. In fact, it's probably best we call it the Circuit City Best Buy to avoid confusion. According to Best Buy's PR department, the store will also feature "the largest Best Buy Musical Instruments Department in the United States." More »
Paul is generally speaking a very smart cookie, plus he went to law school, so he sent them a very strongly worded letter noting that Amazon falsely indicated the device's durability in a video (embedded here) that shows it falling to the ground unharmed This is the amazing letter he sent them:
Paul Gowder
[Address omitted]
August 12, 2009
Amazon.com Inc.
Legal Department
1200 12th Avenue South
Suite 1200
Seattle, WA 98144-2734
Dear Sir or Madam:
On June 21, 2009, I purchased an Kindle 2 e-book reader from the Amazon.com website. I purchased this device based, in substantial part, on the expectation that it would be reasonably durable. In particular, I expected that it would be approximately as durable as is ordinary in the consumer electronics market.
Amazon.com advertises the Kindle 2 on the basis of its durability. Notably, Amazon.com displays a "drop test" video on the web page for this product. That video displays the device being dropped twice from thirty inches onto what appears to be tile. That video displays a fall with sufficient force that the device visibly bounces, and deliberately creates the impression that the device will function after impacts similar to that sequence of drops.
Despite those representations, the Kindle 2 is far less durable. On July 26, 2009, I dropped a messenger bag containing the device onto the sidewalk, from approximately two feet above the ground. It was dropped only once, and the messenger bag absorbed enough of the shock that nothing else in the bag, including a Macbook laptop, suffered any damage whatsoever. (Unlike the drop displayed in Amazon.com's video, for example, nothing actually bounced.) Moreover, there was no visible damage on the exterior of the Kindle 2. Nonetheless, the Kindle 2 became completely unusable, with over 50% of its screen no longer able to display any text.
I called Amazon.com support and was told that, because of the accidental drop, you would not be willing to supply a replacement device under warranty. You did, however, offer to sell a new device at a discount, for $200.00. I took advantage of that offer under protest, and explicitly reserved my rights to bring a claim against you based on the unreasonable fragility of the device and the misrepresentations in your advertising. It is that claim that forms the subject of this letter.
I am prepared to offer an immediate settlement of my claims against Amazon.com for a payment of $400.00. That sum represents the $200.00 replacement fee I paid plus $200.00 to compensate me for the diminution of utility and value of the device as well as of the e-books I have purchased for that device, in light of the fact that the replacement device, too, can be expected to be far more fragile than advertised and prone to destruction under the slightest stress. This offer expires thirty days from your receipt of this letter. If you do not accept this offer, I intend to bring suit either individually, or, if I decide it is warranted, as representative for a class of similarly situated plaintiffs. At that time, I will seek the amount noted above, plus punitive damages under the California Consumers Legal Remedies Act, Cal. Civil Code �1750 et. seq., costs, fees, and such other monetary damages as provided for by law, including without limitation Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code �17200 et. seq., the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, and other relevant law.
Also, you have demanded the return of the broken device as a condition to the unreasonable discounted replacement offer which I accepted under protest. Your agent has informed me that you will charge my credit card for the full price if the broken device is not returned to you. I am considering seeking a protective order placing that device in the custody of the Court pending litigation. However, should I instead return the device, you are hereby notified that it is evidence in the anticipated litigation to which this letter refers. Should you modify, destroy, or resell the broken device, I will ask the Court to treat that as deliberate spoliation of evidence and make adverse inferences as appropriate.
Very truly yours,
Paul Gowder
<- And this letter is Amazon completely surrendering.Savvy. It's a great example of having all your facts lined up, knowing exactly what you want from them, and not making your request too outrageous. And Paul's not the only one to have problems with Kindle screen breakage.
Sure, who believes advertising? The thing is, there is an allowance for puffery in advertising, but the drop test video goes beyond puffery (i.e. "The greatest car ever!" Or "World's #1 Gold Buyer!) and creates the warranty that a Kindle 2 can survive as high a drop onto a hard surface. As one commenter said, "If you are at a fast food place and a picture of a hamburger has a bun, cheese, and lettuce on it you expect the hamburger to come with those items on it." If Amazon can't live up, they gotta pay up.
Kindle 2: fragile piece of shit or overpriced fragile piece of shit? [Uncommon Priors]
The Kindle War Begins [Uncommon Priors]
This is what victory looks like. [Uncommon Priors]
More »
—>Ian wants your permission to keep the Xbox 360 Best Buy gave him by accident. More »
—>While shopping at Best Buy, Chris spotted this wacky sticker on Mario Party 8, no doubt an accident, in which the benevolent Geek Squad offers to do the impossible for you and install the game onto your Wii, which doesn't let you install disc-based games. More »
—>Walmart just tried to undercut Amazon on, of all things, books. They've announced that they're now selling the "top 10 pre-selling books" for $9 each, with free home delivery. Amazon has responded by dropping its price to $9 on the same titles, but their free shipping doesn't kick in until you buy $25 worth of merchandise (or pay the annual fee for Amazon Prime). Price war! More »
—>If you live in New York, Seattle, or a handful of other cities, and you've got to have that book, DVD or Zhu Zhu Pets Hamster Funhouse right now, Amazon has a deal for you. The mega-etailer is now offering same-day delivery — for a price that may just send you out to the nearest subway: as much as $19 to get a single book delivered. More »
—>We're a little concerned about Best Buy's employees. Particularly, the employee at reader Eric's local store who posted this shelf tag, thinking that nothing was wrong. More »
—>Joshua had a problem with Amazon. He and his wife bought Kindles, broke one and went for a return/exchange, in which the couple ended up with a new Kindle and $300 of Amazon's money in its account. More »
—>Jameson snapped this photo of a camera "sale" at an Illinois Best Buy. More »
—>It's not often that we get an email from a reader complaining about a company that gives him money and won't take it back, but with Amazon, anything is possible. More »
—>Some people who got away with using a $60 gift certificate on two separate Amazon orders would take the merchandise and run, hoping to get to use it a third time. More »
—>Unbeatable Sale, Inc. is offering a deal on a 47-inch HDTV befitting of its name on Amazon. The company is charging $12,555,000 for the TV which seems a bit outrageous until you consider the following factors: More »
—>James Lileks bought some fancy-ass Electrolux appliances from Best Buy. Unfortunately. they've turned out to be a bit of a headache. Mr. Lileks thought perhaps since he was a valuable customer who bought fancy-ass items, Best Buy would help him out and swap the problematic dishwasher for a more reliable cheaper brand (turns out that that the washer's control panel is susceptible to moisture, of all things.) He was wrong. They'd rather keep fixing it. Over. And Over. And Over. More »
—>As part of a settlement with the customer who sued Amazon over the 1984 fiasco this past summer, Amazon has clarified under what circumstances it can delete your books. Notably, Amazon is not saying that it will never again delete books, which keeps the Kindle in the "do not buy" list for consumers who want unequivocal ownership of the items they purchase. In fact, despite the muted praise Amazon is receiving for doing this, the best we can say about the clarification is that it's about time, but that it still doesn't address the fundamental ownership issues raised by the Kindle licensing system. More »
—>Bryan sent us this photo he shot at a local Best Buy that shows a helpful employee named Kim has opened an Xbox 360, hooked it up to the internet and pressed the "X" button, downloading the latest system update. For all this hard, un-requested work, she also added $29.99 to the sticker price. More »
—>Robert ordered a defective textbook from Amazon, which let him return the book outside its 30-day return policy. Amazon let him do so without trouble, but that wasn't even the coolest thing the e-tailer did for him. When Robert received the next book, with the same defect — it too was missing codes he needed for his lab — he decided to go to the school bookstore to buy a copy with the codes he needed. The CSR told Robert he could keep the second book and gave him a full refund. He writes: More »
—>Shopping for laptops in Missouri, Patrick noticed an odd, unwelcome feature — a sticker on the box, pictured, identified the computer as 'optimized' by the staff. More »
—>According to our friends at HDGuru.com, Best Buy now has drastic price differences on TVs between its web site and stores. The difference can be as much as $200, but Best Buy will price match its own prices for customers who happen to glance at the site before purchasing a TV. More »
—>Reader Len recently found out that it's sort of impossible to order shampoo and a book from Amazon at the same time. They'll just keep sending you a shampoo-covered book until they eventually give up and refund your money. Trouble is, Len didn't want a refund. He wanted a shampoo-less book. More »
—>Amazon sent Will this humongoid package for his tiny little SD card, apparently concerned shipping complications might mutate the SD card into a giant mutant capable of eating a computer. More »
—>Sticking to its proud tradition of charging for services that take a couple button clicks to accomplish, i.e. HDTV and video game console "optimization," Best Buy is now offering to rip music off your CDs and transfer it to an MP3 player or DVD. More »
—>Remember that couple who tried to get Best Buy to fix their CD drive, only to have lost all their data and be charged $1,500? More »
—>A recent flurry of reports on the internets claim that Microsoft has been training Best Buy employees to push customers away from Linux and Mac systems to those running Windows. While some posts claim that the Gatesians are teaching Best Buy workers to become "Linux assassins," most of what's going on looks like typical retail marketing: a deep-pocketed supplier working with a chain to hawk its products more aggressively. However, Linux pros are up in arms about "inaccuracies" in the Microsoft program that walks customers through the advantages of Windows vs. Linux. More »
—>Reader Michael went to Best Buy to pick up a hard drive that he saw on sale. The website said that the item was in stock, but when he got to the store there were none on the shelf. The employee he questioned said that the item was out of stock but explained that the website was slow to update. So Michael went home, ordered it for in store pick up and... can you guess what happened next? More »
—>Waiting for a rebate from TigerDirect? Good luck with that. In a suit filed last Friday, Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum is charging the company with, among other things, promising customers that rebates would arrive in about 8-10 weeks of submission, when in fact "a vast number of customers experienced delays ranging from one to more than eight months, before receiving their promised rebates, if at all." The suit also charges TigerDirect with engaging in "deceptive and unfair trade practices." More »
—>Russ used to have a TV, but now all he has are problems. He summarizes his 52-inch Insignia (Best Buy's House Brand) HDTV's decision to check out, then goes into Best Buy's bumbling attempts to fix it. More »
—>A post on Amazon's Kindle support forum yesterday says the company is sending out emails with offers of $30 to customers who had their George Orwell purchases erased from their devices earlier this summer. More »
—>It all started out as a good-natured, if ill-advised Best Buy promotion to encourage employees to entice customers into signing up for store credit cards. But it ended up in a fracas of verbal and physical assaults. Allow Best Buy employee "X" to tell a tale of mayhem at what was supposed to be a pleasant evening at Best Buy. More »
—>Sarah ordered a book on Amazon, but the package was stolen before she could get to it. She called Amazon and was pleasantly surprised with the results. She writes: More »
—>People just aren't buying ginormous TVs like they used to. At least not from Best Buy. That's why there's going to be some great deals this week at Best Buy on large-screen HDTVs. HDGuru got an advance copy of their Sunday circular, which advertises discounts that bring the big TVs down to an almost reasonable price! More »
—>Diane and Jo say they brought their computer to Best Buy's Geek Squad to get the CD drive fixed, but the Squad had some other ideas. After the dust cleared, the couple had gained a new hard drive they didn't want and lost all their data. More »
—>Let's get straight to the bad news: although Amazon did answer my questions, their answers included "we're working on that," "I don't know," and "I don't know (but it's the publishers' fault)." To be fair to the "Kindle Specialist" I spoke with this morning, he has promised to talk to the Kindle marketing department—why marketing? these are DRM issues!—and get back to me with better answers. Until then, this is what the average consumer can expect from a Kindle ebook license. More »
—>The PS3 Slim is hitting stores next week, or even sooner at some stores, so it's natural that recent buyers of older-model, fatter, more expensive PS3s will be returning their consoles en masse. More »
—>Check out these ridiculous corporate propaganda films from poor, sweet Circuit City, back when it was still struggling to differentiate itself from Best Buy in some way other than "worse." More »
—>If you work at Best Buy, don't tackle any knife-wielding shoplifters or you'll be fired. That's what happened to two Best Buy employees who chased a couple shoplifters who were fleeing with armloads of merchandise towards a waiting car. More »
—>Best Buy has been downgraded to neutral from "buy" by Goldman Sachs on concerns that Amazon.com and Walmart are poised to begin a serious asskicking. More »
—>It looks like Best Buy's servers decided to call in sick this morning—Casey writes, "This was on their site this morning for about 45 minutes before they corrected the ad." We have a feeling Best Buy isn't going to pull a neat "just keep it, our bad" maneuver like ThinkGeek, however. More »
—>It took an Executive Email Carpet Bomb to convince Best Buy to replace Bryan's Panasonic LiFi LCD Projection TV after it ate through four lamps. Bryan had purchased Best Buy's extended warranty, which contains a no lemon clause that promises a replacement after three failed repairs. Best Buy conveniently insisted that replacing the broken lamp did not count as a "qualified repair." Bryan first escalated his complaint through normal channels; when he had no other choice, he launched the mighty EECB. More »
—>Valerie got married about a year and a half ago. While planning the wedding, she had a registry on Amazon.com, but no longer had a use for it after the wedding. About a month ago, suddenly, mysteriously, she started receiving Brides Magazine. She received three issues in a span of three weeks. Not planning another wedding anytime soon, she has no need for a subscription, and called to cancel. What followed was a voyage into the mysterious intersection of magazines and third-party subscription vendors, since nobody can tell Valerie where the subscription really originated. More »
Later this month, Sony will start selling a $199 ebook reader through Walmart and other retailers ($100 less than the Kindle). They're also dropping the price of new releases to $9.99, which is what Amazon sells ebook licenses for. [Consumer Reports] More »
—>I was never much for writing in books in school, though I did use Post-Its frequently. Which is a precursor to leaving digital notes in a Kindle edition of the book. A Michigan high school student is one of the parties in a class action suit against Amazon because in deleting the unauthorized MobileReference edition of 1984, the company effectively ate his homework. More »
—>HD Guru took a deeper look at the extended warranties and service plans Best Buy pushes on customers who buy expensive electronics like hi-def TVs. You probably won't be surprised to find out that the fine print negates a lot of what the person or pamphlet on the sales floor will try to promise you—but you might be surprised at just how useless these plans can be when you get right down to it. More »
—>I noticed something interesting recently when signing up for a RewardZone account at Best Buy. Either it was a glitch or this is an ongoing issue, but I couldn't tie together my RewardZone number and my account to purchase things on the site. More »
—>For a brief, shining moment, in-store ads at Best Buy stores advertised a Palm Pre for $99 with a new two-year Sprint contract. Potential Pre customers were stoked. Recent Pre purchasers were incensed. And today, Best Buy was scrambling to fix the situation, since the price drop was really due to an error in the system. Oops. More »
—>No, Amazon is not contacting its members and performing regular fraud checks. Jason received this e-mail, which is associated with a rather convincing Amazon phishing site. More »
—>Nearly a week after Amazon remotely deleted 1984 and Animal Farm from customers' Kindles because they weren't licensed, head Kindle-cheerleader Jeff Bezos posted this statement on the Kindle Community discussion board on Amazon.com. More »
—>According to the San Francisco Business Times a report by PrivateEquityHub citing "two sources close to the company" claims that Zappos wanted to remain independent, but was forced to sell to Amazon by venture capitalists who had invested in the company. More »
—>Amazon has purchased Zappos for $807 million. Reaction around Consumerist's (virtual) newsroom: "Oh, no." Then we started locking up our shoes in case our right to own them is revoked. No, no, we kid. Maybe. More »
—>Oh jeez, AT&T, don't you have enough on your plate? You can't handle your iPhone customers as it is. TechCrunch says some customers' voicemails go missing for days or even weeks, you can't enable MMS because there's no room for it on your system, and the "faster" 3GS isn't any faster at all on your network. Now comes word that you'll be the one providing so-called "connectitivty" for Barnes & Noble's new ebook reader coming out next year. The result: more congestion for every AT&T customer. More »
—>Best Buy is an electronics store. The purpose of such a store is to allow customers to exchange money for electronic devices, then take those devices home and use them. Unfortunately, the Best Buy in Yuma, Arizona doesn't seem to take this mission seriously, and has given reader Elizabeth such a run-around that she isn't interested in buying a computer at all anymore. More »
—>Have you ever wished that you could combine the competent, organized staff of your local Best Buy with the gentle, no-pressure sales environment of a vehicle showroom? You're in luck! Best Buy is now selling motorcycles. Motorcycles? More »
—>So you've got a Kindle, and you have books on it, and you want to keep those books—no matter what Amazon or a publisher decides you deserve in the future. Your legal options are limited, but you do have some. More »
—>Sure, electronic books are portable and have all sorts of advantages. But Borders has not, to date, broken into my house and stolen back my copy of The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide. More »
—>Victor got an email from Best Buy telling him "up to 100" PC games were on sale for members of the company's Gamers Club, so he took his son down to their local store to see what was available. Nothing, that's what, because the store hadn't been told about the sale, even though it's been going on for nearly a week. More »
—>Ah, the perils of having a credit card issued by an electronic store that dies a slow, painful death, only to come back, haunt you and resist all attempts at seances and exorcisms. More »
Received my new Kindle today, same day I heard about their price drop to $299. Obviously I wanted to see if I could get some cash back. Did their customer callback and got a call as soon as I hit OK. CSR said the shipping cutoff for a partial refund was July 8th and that they'd be crediting me $60 in 2-3 days. More »
—>This story is a little old, but was just brought to our attention this weekend. Elsevier, which is sort of the Death Star of academic publishing, was caught offering $25 Amazon gift cards to professors who gave the book five-star reviews on Amazon. More »
Everyone keeps reporting it, so we feel like we should also mention it here: Amazon has dropped the price on its normal-sized Kindle to $299. [Consumer Reports] More »
—>Gizmodo paired up a former Best Buy employee with a professional illustrator and created a taxonomy of seven Best Buy employees you're likely to meet whenever you shop there. The two who probably get the most coverage on our site (and who are probably the most annoying in general): Pervy Geek Squad Guy and Slick Careerist Manager. More »
—>Instead of paying outsiders to give their products fake positive reviews on Amazon product pages like Belkin and other companies, DeLonghi cut out the middleman. Their communications manager, Tara Carpenter, simply went on Amazon and gave a variety of DeLonghi products five-star rave reviews herself. More »
—>Disregarding our sage advice, former Best Buy employee Patrick wanted to cash out his 401(k) when he left the company. But he found getting ahold of the money was tougher than getting out of the store without being offered an extended service plan: More »
—>Reader IfThenElvis forwarded us the following email he received alerting him to changes in the Reward Zone program from Best Buy. He adds, "I can't tell if this is good new or not. I suspect not." It's not the end of the world or anything, but it definitely marks a slight constriction in the program. More »
—>Owners of Best Buy credit cards (via HSBC) are being charged $15 to pay their bill on time online. The only way to avoid the fee? Pay at least two business days early. More »
—>Not to be outdone by Wal-Mart, Best Buy is rolling out a used-game kiosk program that sucks up your abandoned discs and spits out store credit in return. More »
—>Dan, the Kindle owner who last week found that some of the books he'd purchased were no longer available to download due to unspecified limitations set by the publisher, spoke to more Amazon reps on Sunday. They clarified the DRM policy. Well, sort of. More »
[The CSR said] that there is always a limit to the number of times you can download a given book. Sometimes, he said, it's five or six times but at other times it may only be once or twice. And, here's the kicker folks, once you reach the cap you need to repurchase the book if you want to download it again. More »
—>If a man says he's a police officer and flashes a badge at you, then tells you to have sex with him or he'll arrest you, make sure the badge doesn't say Geek Squad on it first. That's what a woman says happened to her in Parsippany, New Jersey last week. More »
—>Best Buy is still selling a defective Harry Potter Blu-Ray set that contains a HD-DVD version of the Goblet of Fire. The bumbled bundles were first discovered in 2007, but reader Bill found one sitting on a Best Buy shelf in Grand Junction, CO. More »
—>Jon wrote back with the results of his attempt to redeem a gift certificate that's over a decade old. More »
—>Funny or Die has a pretty funny, nsfw parody of the current Microsoft "You find it, you keep it" commercials. Jake's in the market for a decent laptop that can meet his needs, which include a big screen, the ability to go online, and enough cash left over for some subscriptions to certain adult websites. It's basically what the real commercial would look like in a world without TV censors. More »
—>Jon writes:
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—>Sure, Best Buy emerged victorious over Circuit City in the Battle of the Big-Box Electronics Stores, but they still have to compete with general discounters like Walmart. Which is why in a new ad campaign, Best Buy calls out Walmart specifically, attacking their employees' presumed lack of product knowledge compared to Best Buy employees. More »
—>This morning, Amazon e-mailed all North Carolina residents who are part of its Associates program to notify them that their accounts will be terminated in the next few weeks. More »
—>The new CircuitCity.com is already disappointing customers, this time by shipping a half-complete TV mount that looks like it was wrapped by an over-caffeinated octopus. Unsurprisingly, our anonymous tipster had to slog his way through two customer service departments before extracting a promise to ship out the missing parts. Why can't CircuitCity.com just ship him a new mount? Apparently, they have to first botch the parts shipment. Our tipster decided this wasn't worth his time, and instead ordered a second mount. Circuit City promises to refund his money once they receive back the defective mount... More »
—>Reader Phil is annoyed. He called Best Buy to see if they carried MiniSD memory cards. He was told that they did, but when he got to the store — all they had was MicroSD. Instead of just apologizing and letting Phil get on with his day — they tried to convince him that he was wrong, and his camera took MicroSD. It doesn't. More »
—>Over on CNET, blogger and former Best Buy salesperson Sharon Vaknin shares her acquired wisdom with the Internet, putting together a list of the "7 things electronics salespeople won't tell you." What are they? More »
—>A Consumerist reader (actually, several of you) e-mailed us the shipping confirmation message that is sent out by CDBaby, the 'utopian' online music site that promotes independent musicians (yet is partnered with Best Buy). More »
—>Looking for an insane deal on a laptop? Look no further than Best Buy. They have a sale going on now that you wouldn't believe. We got a screencap just in case you miss it. More »
—>Jan bought a keyboard from Circuit City last year. Since then, the company filed Chapter 11, the stores liquidated and closed, and another company bought the name. But last week, Jan finally-FINALLY-received her rebate check. Now she wants to know: is cashing this thing a good idea? More »
—>Amazon.com has released the latest batch of special coupon codes and Probargainhunter has the roundup. This month, they seem to all be for groceries. More »
—>Although eMusic is a great service—for a flat monthly fee, you get a set number of downloads per month of DRM-free music tracks—it's about to get better. Or maybe worse, depending on the breadth of your musical tastes. Today eMusic will announce that Sony is adding its back catalog of songs to eMusic's library. The bad news is that eMusic also plans to slightly raise prices and/or drop the number of downloads per month. Even if it works out to between 50-60 cents per track, though, that's still far less than iTunes Music Store or Amazon, and probably the cheapest way to grab music from Sony artists without resorting to piracy. More »
—>Brent was ready to order two-day shipping from Amazon merchant Electronics Expo for a set of Boston Acoustics speakers until he realized it would cost an extra $186. The speakers were only $49, and standard shipping was available for $14.99. More »
—>A man in St. Louis dropped off his computer for repair at the area Best Buy, but apparently forgot that he was also using it as a bank. "Employees at a Best Buy store in South County discovered about $10,000 cash inside," writes the St. Louis Post Dispatch. More »
—>Just like the ending of a horror movie, Circuit City has gone and plunged its soil-covered claw from its grave. Its site may have new owners, but that doesn't mean it's lost all of your tasty personal info. More »
If you own a Kindle, you can now access your notes and highlights via the web at kindle.amazon.com. [TechCrunch] More »
—>CircuitCity.com is back, and it looks eerily familiar. The zombie website is now controlled by Systemax, the same folks who own Tiger Direct. Though the new site may look similar to the old, no doubt part of Systemax's goal to keep alive a "proud brand that America has grown to count on," it isn't nearly as consumer-friendly as we would like... More »
Circuit City is dead. Long live Circuit City! Circuitcity.com is already about to relaunch. They'll let everyone know via Twitter when they open. No word whether they will actually be distinguishable from TigerDirect. More »
—>Today's "Toothpaste For Dinner" Web comic features a visit from the Stupid Shipping Gang. A bigger version of the comic, and more adventures of the Stupid Shipping Gang, inside. More »
—>Our reader The_Lone_Gunman just had a great experience with the Best Buy in Irving, Texas. Snark fails us at a time like this, so we'll just humbly print his email. More »
—>Systemax Inc., parent company to discount electronics retailer TigerDirect and the new owner of CompUSA, has purchased Circuit City's brand, trademarks and e-commerce business, to the surprise of exactly no one. More »
—>Why does HSBC charge $15 to make a payment over the phone? Other, often smaller, companies charge $3 or less, as MG notes in his email below. In this case, since the alternative is so unwelcome—a possible late payment, and a corresponding hit on MG's credit score—it seems pretty outrageous to hold him hostage to a $15 fee. More »
—>The Circuit City death watch is long over, but now there's a way to preserve those memories forever—maybe even to outfit an entire troupe of Circuit City re-enactors. Reader chainofcommand02 was shopping in a grocery outlet store when he discovered several cases of Circuit City polo shirts. Yours, for only $1.00. More »
—>Best-practices guru Joel Spolsky thinks Circuit City imploded because of their terrible customer service, not any "recession" or "macroeconomic conditions" nonsense. To prove his point, he looks at thriving New York electronics retailer B&H, which succeeds because they understand that stellar service leads to healthy profit margins. More »
—>One of the hotter indie flicks of the summer, Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience, debuted on Amazon's rental service this week, way before the movie opens in theaters May 22. At $9.99 for a three-day rental, the movie is also cheaper to rent than it will be to see at many theaters. More »
—>An anonymous tipster sent in an updated list of contact info for some of the people working at the top of the Best Buy food chain. Remember, don't bug them until you've exhausted all other options. More »
—>We're no fans of fake customer reviews here at Consumerist, it's true, but obviously goofy reviews are one of my very favorite things. (The reviews for this gallon of milk are an Internet classic.) More »
—>Jason's refrigerator wouldn't work correctly, no matter how many times it was repaired. Eventually, Best Buy had to intervene. Yes, that Best Buy. More »
—>Reader Charlton went to Best Buy to buy some games. He successfully accomplished his task, only to find that opening his purchase was going to be a little difficult. More »
—>A lot of readers sent us the story of a Florida teen who received the awesome birthday gift of some rocks and crumpled up Chinese newspapers inside a Nintendo DS box. After some fuss and the discovery that another customer had already returned the same box of rocks, Wal-Mart made the situation right. Reader Ryan found himself in a similar situation, but without the happy ending (yet!): a Texas Best Buy sold him a paving stone instead of a Macbook Pro. More »
—>The notoriously litigious manufacturers of insanely and (some would argue) needlessly expensive cables, Monster Cable, are apparently hurting after the death of Circuit City. USAToday says that the company is slashing prices in order to increase market share. More »
—>Previously: Amazon Deletes Reviews That Mention Pay For Play Review Schemes More »
—>After buying an anti-snoring mouthpiece from a third-party seller on Amazon, reader Bob received an email from the company offering him a free mouthpiece in exchange for a five-star review. He noted this attempted bribe in his Amazon review, and Amazon deleted it. Twice. More »
—>A bittersweet goodbye to an incompetent electronics store? Or a kick in the butt to last years returning champion? More »
—>Sidd tried to fill out a Best Buy post-purchase survey online, but he suspects it might be skewed toward specific ratings. We know, it's just a glitch, but this would explain that report that Best Buy is demoting 8,000 senior sales associates. More »
—>A report from New York investment firm Sanford Bernstein says that Best Buy will be eliminating 1,000 assistant manager positions and demoting 8,000 senior sales associates to regular sales positions that would pay 25 percent to 50 percent less than their current salary — causing some to compare them to Circuit City. More »
—>Amazon recently banned a customer for making what they considered too many returns, and when they did this they also disabled his Kindle account, although the returns were never related to Kindle purchases. So what happens when your Kindle account is taken away? Your Kindle still works, and the books you already bought for it will work, but you can't download those books ever again (better have made a backup on your PC!), you can't receive your magazine, blog, or newspaper subscriptions on it anymore, you can't email documents to Amazon to have them converted and sent to your Kindle, and you can't buy any new books for the device. That $360 device only works so long as Amazon decides it will work. More »
—>Was it a hacker? Probably not. Was it a translation error? Who knows. Here's the official #Amazonfail apology email (again) for your reading pleasure. It is, apparently, the final word on the matter. More »
—>Reader Andrew was trying to post a question on Best Buy's forums, but he made the horrible, offensive mistake of putting a space between "Best" and "Buy.com." More »
—>Mike Daisey, the monologist and former employee at Amazon.com, told the Seattle PI that the weekend's gay and feminist book fiasco was actually caused by an employee at Amazon.fr who confused the term "adult"—which refers to porn stuff in Amazon's system—with "erotic" and "sexuality." That sharp-toothed troll who claimed all the credit is going to be pretty miffed to find out about this. More »
—>Systemax, the company behind Tiger Direct (and the buyer of CompUSA's remains when it went out of business over a year ago) has announced it plans to buy the Circuit City e-commerce business for $6.5 million cash plus a share of the revenue over a 30 month period. More »
—>A business ethics institute named Ethisphere has released its annual list of the 99 "World's Most Ethical Companies." We have to take exception to some of their choices. More »
—>UPDATE: Amazon Gay Book Removal Was Massive Prank, I Did It, Claims Troll More »
—>Jon spent $250 on a Western Digital VelociRaptor but what he received from Best Buy was a Quantum Fireball, a discontinued hard drive that hasn't been sold for nine years. Best Buy, of course, took no responsibility for the odd swap, and said that Western Digital must have accidentally sold a competitor's discontinued drive. Western Digital, of course, said that a Best Buy employee stole Jon's hard drive. We've seen this happen before with Best Buy, and Jon has made it clear that he knows how to bite back... More »
—>Is Amazon trying to kill off our "stupid shipping gang" tag? Alex wrote to us today to point out that now there's a new "Packaging Feedback" link under your "My Account" page on their site. Among other things, you can leave feedback on the size of the box relative to what's inside. More »
—> Which big blue monolith bugs you more? More »
—> A mysterious message can be found at the website of recently-defunct retailer Circuit City. More »
—>After Lisa's story of how she bought an ostensibly new DVD player from Best Buy only to find an adult DVD already in it went up on Consumerist, the retailer contacted her and sent her a $30 gift card. The original DVD player cost $29.99. That was nice of them, as Lisa was more amused than bothered at the situation in the first place. She wrote, "It was pretty funny! At first my husband was thinking, "Sweet!!! Score..." when we opened it up. We got a good laugh, but then I started thinking, "Wait a second, we bought it as a regular item, not open boxed. Why is there a DVD in there then?" More »
—>When the Authors Guild successfully agitated for the right to selectively remove the text-to-speech feature from books read on Amazon's Kindle 2, they alienated an entire group of potential consumers: people who have trouble reading normal printed works. Now a group called the Reading Rights Coalition is going to storm the Authors Guild's NYC office tomorrow at noon to protest. More »
—>The death star vs a bankrupt, liquidated retailer in its final year of eligibility? Who makes you angry? More »
—>"Good news about your credit card account," proclaims the letter Wilman recently received from Chase. Starting in May, you'll be able to use that Circuit City card to make purchases at Best Buy. We think this is more like "mixed feelings" news, but on the plus side you won't have an otherwise good credit card account closed (assuming you care about your FICO score). See the Chase letter below. More »
—>Please don't pull the cord on Howard's laptop or it will die. Best Buy's Geek Squad has failed five times to coax his laptop's ailing battery into holding a charge, replacing both the battery and the hard drive, and shipping Howard the same incorrect replacement battery three times. Howard now wants Best Buy to honor their lemon policy by giving him a new laptop, but it seems like every Geek Squad agent has a different copy of the replacement policy, and none of them apply to Howard. It's almost like he's asking for a price match! Let's read his story, inside... More »
—>An international cellphone giant VS the big blue monster... what is your whim? More »
—>It took a while, but Bealls Florida has sent us their official explanation for why people who thought they were buying 12 plates through an Amazon sale received just 1 earlier this month. More »
—>The Best Buy where Toni bought a laptop earlier this month has no record of the sale, and it won't collect the funds that have already been released from her account. This sounds like a fun problem to have—$1500 extra dollars, free laptop, woo hoo!—but it's actually pretty annoying. Toni doesn't want this phantom $1500 messing up her balance indefinitely, and she doesn't want to feel like she's stolen a laptop. More »
More »
- Best Buy provided financial bonuses based, in part, on denying proper price match requests.
- Best Buy denied more than 100 proper price match requests per store per week.
—>Not to be outdone by all the negative publicity Office Depot is getting over their "not in stock" lies, Best Buy stores in the New York area have been uncovered refusing to price match TV prices in accordance with their official policy. When pressed, the sales associates said that the TVs weren't covered due to imaginary exclusions that aren't included in the official policy language. An employee at one of the stores gave in, but then made up a new imaginary policy that said free delivery would cost $100. More »
—>Michael is happy to report that he got a really great resolution from Best Buy, who had sold his grandma a broken camera as new and then accused them of breaking it themselves. The shots of Best Buy employees Michael found on the camera, and the repugnant attitude he encountered when they tried to return it and disinterest when he complained to corporate multiple times, only made the story that much juicier. After Micheal's story went up on Consumerist and hit Digg, Best Buy contacted him. Here's what they did to make nice: More »
—>PC Mag has assembled a list of instructions on how to wipe your account from a long list of websites, including Classmates.com (you'll have to call), Windows Live ID (it's complicated), and Friendster (ha ha ha). In many cases, canceling is as straightforward as clicking a link and authorizing the cancellation, but it's nice to see all the phone numbers and tips collected in one spot. More »
18 million is the number of square feet of retail space vacated by Circuit City. Yikes. [Consumer Reports] More »
Circuit City is dead. [AP] More »
—>Best Buy charged Nicole $99 to backup her data but then replaced her hard drive without backing up a single byte. Nicole's service contract clearly stated that Best Buy would perform the backup before any other service. Now Best Buy is claiming that her old hard drive is their property and that she has no right to the data that they failed to backup or restore. More »
—>Today I went to the doctor. All I wanted was a prescription to continue to go to physical therapy for my pulled groin muscles. The assistant said that the doctor likes to give new patients a full physical, which includes blood tests, EKG, and a chest x-ray. I said I had a physical recently (true) and those tests sounded unnecessary. She seemed disappointed. Unless I have wheezing or chest pains, I don't see the need for a chest x-ray. See, doctors are like Best Buy. If you go in informed knowing exactly what you need, you're fine. Otherwise they're like oh you need Monster Cables and an extended warranty for your heart. More »
—>Reader Eric writes in to let us know that our advice about inspecting Circuit City liquidation merchandise before buying it saved his brother from getting stuck with the wrong item. More »
—>If you don't like GameStop, how about Amazon? On Thursday, they announced their new "Video Games Trade-In" program (www.amazon.com/tradeingames), where you send in your used games for Amazon gift card credit. What we like about this is you don't have to spend the money on more games if you don't want to, so you can convert old games into anything Amazon accepts gift cards for. What we don't like is you can't just get cash back—but hey, if you hate GameStop, here's an option for you. More »
—>UPDATE: Best Buy Goes Above And Beyond To Make Up For Selling Busted Camera As New More »
The Chicago Tribune reports on the sad state of the Circuit City on Elston Ave. Apparently, the remaining stock consists mainly of American Idol themed merchandise and a Sony Viao with 9 missing keys for only $623.99. Don't skip school or anything, kids. [Chicago Tribune] More »
—>After seeing our photo evidence of the sorry state of the St. Peters, MO, Circuit City yesterday, Eric decided to check out the final days of the Circuit City in Poughkeepsie, NY. He writes, "On one clearance table, among the overpriced cables, I saw this. I'm not sure what this was doing there, but it's probably something the Circuit City executives should have read a few years ago, huh?" Yes, but it's never too late! Those executives are going to end up working somewhere after all. By the way, do CC execs get a liquidation discount? More »
—>Reader Adrian emailed this photo of the Circuit City in St. Peters, MO. More »
—>Looks like March 8th will be the last day on earth for many Circuit City stores. A reader saw a sign in a liquidated Circuit City that said the final day would be March 8th. Also, an insider saw a memo that indicated the "bulk" of the stores, 500 or so, would be closed on March 8th. The memo said stores are closing so early because "sales are ahead of schedule." At this point in the liquidation cycle, "It looks like whatever hasn't been picked through is starting to be actually decent prices" writes reader Will. "I scored an XM radio unit for 85 vs. about 110-130 on the net, and a Harmony One remote for 125 vs. 170 on the net." However, he noted, "TV prices were still not cheaper than the internet." So, it's now safe to shop at Circuit City, just make sure to bring your internet price-checking devices. More »
—>The 8,000 member Authors Guild—the RIAA of the publishing world—has complained about the text to speech feature on the Amazon Kindle 2, which can read aloud your ebook in a computerized voice (something text to speech programs have been doing for years). The Guild says that's equivalent to an audio book, and that Amazon can't just allow it without paying extra, so last Friday Amazon caved in and announced they'll let writers and publishers disable the feature on a title by title basis moving forward. More »
—>Kevin couldn't understand why Amazon charged $29.95 for the digital version of Confessions of a Butcher when the paperback cost only $11.95. Amazon tried to gussy up the Kindle edition by offering what looked like a steep 45% discount, but the digital edition still cost $5 more than the print edition. Even the author's wife chimed in to Amazon's discussion forum to pan the discrepancy, adding, "what's really ridiculous is that we sell more ebooks at $20 than we do new paperbacks for $11.95." More »
—>Reader Kenneth stopped by his local post-apocalyptic Circuit City for an evening of bargain hunting. Was he successful, you ask? No, sadly Kenneth did not bag his limit of deals and return home happy. Instead, he found a $30 6' USB cable. More »
—>The Chicago Tribune says that Russell Cole calls his $2.75 million Deerfield, IL home "the house that Best Buy built," but now investigators are claiming that the Best Buy money was obtained through fraud. More »
—>Update: Mike writes back to say that after reading the comments below, he checked his purchase history and the album is indeed listed there. What's confusing is Mike didn't buy it through iTunes, but through Amazon, but he says that other people did have access to his account and may have purchased it without his knowledge. More »
After fifteen minutes of being ignored by Circuit City executives, Pliego decided to try to find the documents himself. Frustrated, Pliego ultimately tapped acting Chief Executive James A. Marcum on the shoulder and told him he couldn't find the financial statements he was looking for. More »
—> WCVB TV in Boston has an interview with two Circuit City liquidation customers who are out $1,100 after they bought a Samsung LCD TV from Circuit City's liquidation sale — only to find out that it was totally shattered. When they tried to return it — Circuit City's liquidator told them the merchandise was sold "as is" and cannot be returned for any reason. WCVB TV says there's a sign in one store telling customers not to open the merchandise, and another that allows customer to check their merchandise only after they've paid for it. Is this ethical? More »
—>Reader Marc would like Amazon to stop shipping bubbles of air all over the country. He ordered two items that would have been fine to ship in an envelope — but instead he got the usual large box with several air bubbles. This makes Marc mad. More »
—>Joel says when he ordered a disc from DVD Planet via Amazon, the company automatically created an account for him on their website. The problem is that the default password they used was so easy to guess that he figured it out on the second try, and he suspects it's the same password they use on every account. Once you guess it, you can see the customer's past orders and credit card billing address. When Joel contacted them to have the account removed, he was told that wasn't possible. More »
—>Porn and Electronics. They go together about as well as Peanut butter and Salmonella. Now Rudy Phillips is intimately aware of this connection; after sending out her phone to be serviced by Best Buy Mobile, she received a loaner phone that was filled with... well, you know. More »
—>Michel Cuhaci ordered a book from Amazon, only to discover it was an unreadable misprint copy. He made sure that the one-star review of the book made this known. Little did he know, the Author of that book was reading the reviews. And little did he know, that author is a Certified Bad Ass. More »
—>We all know that Amazon's review system is kind of a mess. It's plagued by "professional reviewers," reviews from friends, legitimately critical reviews that get yanked after complaints by angry fan groups, and—worst of all—fake reviews, usually written by employees of the manufacturer. Adam found a new fake reviewer named David Jacob, but what really caught our eye was how real Amazon shoppers have picked up on it and left a series of comments to warn future customers to stay away from Gamenamics. More »
—>Uh oh, another Best Buy employee has been caught swiping data from customers. Unlike the woman last August who went on small time shopping sprees, this woman was caught using a card reader to swipe and store info on as many as 4,000 customers at the Best Buy store located at 1880 Palm Beach Lakes Blvd in Palm Beach, Florida. More »
—>Amazon announced the Kindle 2 today and there are already people on eBay trying to sell their "place in line" for a huge markup. The new Kindle will retail for $359.00 (you can pre-order them now) but if you are really impatient can pay some person on eBay $599.99 for their presumably better pre-order spot.. ugh. More »
—>Geek Squad told reader Dave that he didn't have the "technical expertise" to diagnose his clearly-broken iPod. The 30 GB unit wouldn't play when docked or connected by USB cord, something Dave though might be covered by Best Buy's Product Service Plan. Geek Squad first tried replacing the hard drive. This solved nothing. Dave brought the still-broken iPod back and asked the agent to write into the notes a request to call him if the problem was misunderstood. Without calling, Geek Squad again returned the iPod with a note saying that the agent "could not duplicate the problem." With this firm diagnosis in hand, Geek Squad decided they were done and wouldn't perform any additional work. When Dave objected, he was told that his 'only option was to pay for a third-party to test the iPod and prove the Geek Squad technician wrong.' More »
—>The Realtor handing Circuit City's soon to be empty real estate is suggesting that the stores be converted into schools. Awesome. More »
—>An insider tells us the best way to get back at a bad Best Buy employee is a bag of potato chips: More »
—>Amazon.com has released the latest batch of special coupon codes and Probargainhunter has the roundup. More »
The economy might be in a tailspin, but Amazon.com is doing just fine. "Amazon’s net profit rose 9 percent, to $225 million, or 52 cents a share, in the quarter that ended on Dec. 31, up from $207 million, or 48 cents, in the same quarter a year earlier," says the New York Times. More »
—>Reader Sean tried to order a TV that was on sale at Best Buy, but for some reason his order didn't go through. Now the TV isn't on sale anymore and Best Buy is claiming to have no record of the transaction. More »
—> Amazon is selling this item to my left as a Bluetooth headset. Problem is, I don't think it will be very comfortable — Unless you are upgradable. Yes, if your heart resides in a cold, steel compartment, then perhaps this "Bluetooth" headset really is for you. The product revealed, after the jump. More »
—>It's been a little over a year since Amazon released the Kindle, and now publishers are finally getting the chance to set their own pricing on ebook editions. The result has been a slow creep in pricing on some titles—in some cases to levels above the price of a paper edition of the same book—for a digital edition that you can't resell, give away to someone else, or read on any other device. Kindle owners have started to notice, and now some of them are complaining that Amazon overpromised the $9.99 bookstore concept to move Kindles. More »
—>When Circuit City finally went pining for the fjords, we all understood that their extended warranties and service plans would remain in effect. Assurant Solutions, the company servicing these plans, came right out and said so last week (warning: PDF). But the company contracted to service David's TV said they can't reach Circuit City for more info on how to handle in-home support calls, so they're not going to do anything. More »
—>Hey, we're sorry if you're getting sick of hearing about how Circuit City's liquidation sale isn't a good deal, but it's our duty to inform you that yet another local news investigation has determined that CC's sales are crappy. In this case, they found every single item they shopped for, from DVDs to big screen TVs, cheaper on-line — and took a look at a laptop that is now being sold at a sale price that is more than before the store was taken over by liquidators. Let's listen in: More »
—>Sam, a reader who says he is a current Circuit City employee, writes in to offer his advice on navigating the liquidation. More »
—>More and more media outlets are catching on to the fact that Circuit City's liquidation "deals" aren't as hot as normal sale prices. More »
—>With the demise of Circuit City, several of you wondered what's going to happen to The Source (that's how you say Circuit City in Canadian). The answer is that they're on the auction block. [Canoe.Money] (Thanks to Mario Pants!) More »
—>Add this to the Consumerist toolbelt: Star Raids. If a company is pissing off a bunch of customers and refuses to change some aspect of their product, some consumers are finding it effective to band together and thrash the product's rating. An avalanche of "zero" ratings can make a ratings score plummet, and turn away potential customers. The fall-off in sales will definitely grab their attention. More »
—>John ordered a washer and a dryer from Best Buy. First, he says Best Buy showed up early for the delivery, so naturally, John wasn't home. Then they assembled the pedestals for the washer and dryer on some gravel in front of his house, damaging them. After that, they left the appliances with his neighbor. More »
—>If you've tried to check out the so-called liquidation "deals" that might be advertised on Circuit City's website, you've no doubt noticed that the website no longer exists. HDGuru grabbed some prices from the site before it was taken down — and they say that the regular website deals were better than the 10% off being offered at a doomed Circuit City in Massapequa, NY. More »
—>Returning something to Circuit City? All sales are final during the liquidation, but if you bought it between January 1st and the 16th, you have a 14-day return window. However, if you bought it before January 1st, the original 30-day policy still applies. Your cashier might not know this, though, and try to deny the return. That's what happened to Jason today when he tried to return a hard drive. More »
—>Amazon's "White Glove Delivery" seems primarily aimed to combat the sordid state of big-box retail; hand-delivering products, mostly televisions, into your home. However, if you follow their logic, I am not sure it exactly pans out. More »
- We're very sorry this happened;
- We don't condone unethical behavior
- We'll try to remove the fraudulent reviews;
- Our business partners had no role in this fiasco.
—>Now that Circuit City has finally sputtered out, it's fun to talk about what did them in—see their firing-your-best-employees stunt a few years back, for example. But what do former Circuit City employees think? This guy worked with them from 1997 to 2002, and he says for one thing, they should have never stopped carrying appliances. More »
—>Look unto ye, electronic consumers, and gaze upon your ruined world. The abyss swallows yet another false god, with CircuitCity.com stumbling, "Updating", and finally closing all within the last twenty-four hours. Visit the website yourself for proof, as well as a full explanation of what is going on with all those wonderful product service plans you purchased. More »
—>Belkin Business Development Representative Michael Bayard has been caught offering to pay anyone willing to leave perfect reviews of Belkin products on Amazon, Buy.com, and Newegg. Even worse, the highly unethical strategy seems to have worked—almost fifteen pages worth of Belkin products on Amazon have perfect five-star ratings. More »
—>Now that Circuit City is getting liquidated, what happens to your gift cards? What about extended warranties and repairs? These burning questions and more, answered in our Consumers' FAQ to the Circuit City liquidation extravaganza... More »
—>Now that Circuit City is going to be liquidated — it's time to look back on the store that was. Here are our top 10 Circuit City stories of all time, in order of popularity. Enjoy. More »
—>Liquidation is a time for reflection, we guess, so we put together a nice little time line of Circuit City's precipitous decline over the past 2 years. We begin our journey in March of 2007, when Circuit City announced that it was firing everyone who knew what 1080p meant so that they could hire cheaper labor... More »
—>Circuit City has reached an agreement with Gordon Brothers Great American Group LLC, Hudson Capital Partners LLC, SB Capital Group LLC and Tiger Capital Group LLC to start liquidating all of its stores. Sha na na na, na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye, to the dirty, the poorly stocked, the indifferent, the incompetent, the irrelevant. [AP] (Thanks to Jeremey!) More »
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, whose excellent Best Buy and Target coverage we really appreciate, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. [Reuters] More »
—>Although they are accepting offers from buyers who intend to keep the retail operation going — Bloomberg reports that Circuit City is taking bids from liquidators — including the notorious Gordon Brothers (of CompUSA fame.) More »
—>I liked Jim Carrey's portrayal of "song-and-dance-man" Andy Kaufman as much as the next guy, but these Amazon.com glitches are beginning to get to me.[Thanks, Eric!] [Amazon] More »
—>A New York state Supreme Court justice threw out Amazon's sales tax lawsuit earlier today, opening the way for New York to begin collecting sales taxes on Amazon purchases. More »
—>Circuit City announced today that it is close to finalizing a deal to sell all or part of its operation to one of two undisclosed potential buyers— but if the deal falls through— the store could be liquidated. More »
—>Best Buy's same store sales were down 6.5% as their discounts failed to convince you to buy, says Bloomberg. More »
—>Familiarity breeds contempt, and nowhere is that made more explicit than when shopping online. By deleting your cookies and returning to internet stores you've previously bought at, you may find yourself getting discounts usually reserved to lure in first time buyers. More »
—>Circuit City promised that if you ordered from them on December 18th, you'd get free shipping and a guarantee that your order would arrive before Christmas. It turns out that promise was worthless, at least for Brandon—or rather, it's worth exactly $5 in company scrip from Circuit City. (We love apologies that force you to shop at the company that screwed up.) Circuit City's CSR even says that the December 18th offer doesn't exist, despite the fact that their logo is still up on the freeshippingday.com website as of today. More »
—>Reader Erin writes in to warn readers that Best Buy is offering a thirty-dollar firmware update to certain Blu-Ray players, and warning that without the update, some newer titles might not work. Erin checked the manufacturer's website and found no announced firmware updates, and the newer titles play just fine. More »
—>I always love to see a fellow Consumer fight back against large corporations. However, when that consumer is trying to return stolen goods - stolen from me, that is - it's harder to get excited. More »
—>Another electronics store was taken for millions by an invoice-fixing scheme: a buyer for Best Buy and a vendor have been charged with overcharging Best Buy $31 million over four years. More »
—>We'd like to share a personal story: it involves Amazon, Christmas presents, and three broken pizza stones. More »
—>One of the interesting customer service trends of 2008 has been corporate pandering to customers who leave negative feedback on Amazon.com or company sites. Here's a look at the past year in bribery! More »
—> Remember when Best Buy was using HD channels to make "Calibrated" televisions seem miraculously better? Well, their methods have changed, but using different cables to improve definition doesn't mean they've improved. More »
—>Our reader ordered some gifts from Amazon in early December, only to have the post office lose them right before Christmas. Amazon saved his Christmas by overnighting a new package at no charge. More »
Every other retailer in existence may have had an awful holiday season, but Amazon says it was its "best ever." [MarketWatch] More »
—>This Fry's in Texas apparently wants you to pay for them to replace their inventory. Or they think their customers are idiots. Maybe both? More »
—>Buying something from Best Buy? Check your receipt, you may have been signed up for a magazine subscription and you didn't even know it. More »
—>Jen ordered a product on Amazon, but what arrived in the shipment was significantly less than what was promised. More »
—>Intuit will rescind the controversial new $9.95 fee for each additional printed return, in response to angry customers online who, among other things, slammed TurboTax's Amazon rating to one star. [Press Release] (Thanks Craig!) More »
—>"Best Buy Co. Inc. offered voluntary severance packages to virtually all its 4,000 corporate employees Tuesday as the nation's largest consumer electronics chain announced its third-quarter profit skidded 77 percent," says the AP. [Forbes] More »
—>David wrote a very angry letter to Circuit City's CEO. The CEO responded, and used the letter as a learning point in his next staff Town Hall meeting, making David angrier than ever. More »
—>With the launch of monsterminigolftruth.com MonsterCable has offered a wilted olive branch to Monster Mini Golf. In summary: More »
—>Emily bought a very "high quality" pirated copy of Windows from an Amazon seller and didn't realize that anything was amiss for an entire year. More »
—>If you would like to tell Monster Cable that they're jerks for trying to shut down the family owned and operated Monster MiniGolf... More »
—>Rob is mad because Amazon, in the figurative sense, delivered his wife's secret Christmas gift in a see-through glass box: More »
—>UPDATE: TurboTax Price Hike Reversed After Online Outcry More »
Here's a job opportunity for those of you who don't like long commitments. More »
—>Matt would like to let Amazon know that there's no point in gift wrapping a present if you then put the gift wrapped item inside a box that says what the gift is. This should probably be self-evident — but alas — it isn't. More »
—>Reader Michael's fiance experienced first hand what we've been warning you about when it comes to liquidations. Liquidators are notorious for raising prices before "discounting" them, so make sure you know what the real list price is before you try to get a deal a closing Circuit City store. More »
—>Check out the 18 and counting online retailers at freeshippingday.com for stores that will give you free shipping and guarantee delivery by Christmas if you shop there on Thursday, December 18th. The retailers include Amazon, Zappos, Dell, Target, Macy's and other big names, with perhaps more joining before the 18th. Nothing like getting rewarded for waiting until the last minute. More »
—>Yesterday we told you about PrettySinful, a clothing maker on Amazon that was marketing its tween girl tights as being "sexy." Tipster Jasmine also sent a complaint to PrettySinful. A customer service rep responded and pledged that they'll be removing the word "sexy" from all their children's clothes descriptions. More »
—>Monster Cable has decided to sue Monster MiniGolf for trademark infringement. Monster MiniGolf is a family startup by Patrick & Christina Vitagliano glow-in-the-dark monster-themed minigolf franchise with 23 locations. Monster Cable, which has an illustrious history of suing anything and everything with Monster in its name, makes the expensive cables that Best Buy is always trying to upsell you on that are no better than coat hangers. More »
—>I don't think it's ever appropriate to market clothes to tween girls using the term "sexy." Manufacturer "PrettySinful" has a different opinion, as seen in these "sexy" tights sold on Amazon, accompanied by a picture of a prepubescent girl. Perhaps the picture is in error because the rest of the clothier's offerings are along the lines of crotchless bodystockings and various "do-me" adult party costumes. In any event, it's gross and should be fixed. More »
—>Earlier this year when the Sharper Image declared bankruptcy, they briefly stopped accepting gift certificates. Eventually, they did start accepting them again — but with the requirement that consumers buy twice the face value of the card. This, it seems, has caused a fair amount of panic among consumers. Chain emails are circulating warning shoppers not to buy gift cards from various retailers — claiming that they are going out of business. But are they? More »
—> Just in case you were wondering. More »
—>If you have a Circuit City refund check not deposited before 11/10, it's going to bounce. More »
—>Amazon.com is doing holiday PR a little differently this year. They've announced something called the "Holiday Customer Review Team," which is comprised of "six of its top reviewers." More »
—>Reader John writes in with a story about "upselling" at Best Buy. He saw a TomTom GPS unit for $99.99 on sale at Best Buy, so he headed over to the store to pick one up. What follows is his account of how much trouble it was to actually buy the item. We think we counted 9 times that John had to tell various and sundry Best Buy employees that, yes, he was sure that he didn't want to buy a slightly more expensive model of the same device. More »
—>Reader James forwarded us an unsolicited email from Circuit City that we had to post because it's just so chipper about the fact that they've resorted to spamming him out of desperation. It cheerfully proclaims, "Now you'll be the first to hear the latest news," before informing him that he'd been "chosen" as one of their "best customers" to receive spam. More »
—>Here's a good example of how to write an effective Executive Email Carpet Bomb, or EECB, to break through the "please hold" purgatory of the company's phone system. Alicia's car's bumper was scratched by a Best Buy employee, and calling consumer relations as directed proved fruitless. Now she's got a check in her hands from Best Buy to pay for the repairs. More »
—>Reader James is upset. His TV is broken and Geek Squad can't fix it. He bought the TV and Best Buy's performance service plan — which hypothetically should replace his TV in the event that it cannot be repaired. Now, after 2 months, 27 days, a botched repair job and 6 unreturned phone calls, James is annoyed. He's launched an Executive Email Carpet Bomb on Best Buy and CC'd us. The best part comes near the end of the letter, when Best Buy calls James to ask if he was satisfied with a Geek Squad appointment that had never even happened... More »
—>Today Best Buy announced that it was officially freaking out about the current financial meltdown: "In 42 years of retailing, we've never seen such difficult times for the consumer," Brian Dunn, president and chief operating officer of Best Buy, said in a statement. "People are making dramatic changes in how much they spend, and we're not immune from those forces." A Best Buy employee forwarded us an email that went out to all associates this morning — stressing that a renewed commitment to customer service was the way forward during these troubled times. More »
—>Circuit City has secured a loan from Bank of America that will pay for its operating expenses until it emerges from bankruptcy next year, says Bloomberg. This financing gives CC a new lease on life — Yes, we may yet see the bankrupt retailer rise from the ashes to continue its proud tradition of ignoring customers who are standing at the register. More »
—>Reader Scott went to the closing Circuit City in Oklahoma City and found that there weren't many deals to be had. He also noticed that Circuit City's liquidator seems to be having a problem calculating their discounts. More »
—> Bankruptcy is a time for reflection, we guess, so we put together a nice little time line of Circuit City's precipitous decline over the past 2 years. We begin our journey in March of 2007, when Circuit City announced that it was firing everyone who knew what 1080p meant so that they could hire cheaper labor... More »
—>An employee of one of the closing Circuit City stores tells us that they were offered "big bonuses" for sticking around until Dec 31 instead of looking for a new job — but when the liquidator showed up the "bonus" was $0.75 an hour. Ouch. Oh, and yes, the liquidator is raising prices according to this now disgruntled employee. More »
—>The pundits are concerned that shoppers will be reluctant to buy electronics from a retailer that has declared bankruptcy, because they're worried about whether the store will be there to honor their extended warranties and gift cards. (Ew, extended warranties!) More »
—>Circuit City has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. According to their press release, this will allow them to undergo corporate restructuring, cut costs, get out of leases and figure out a way to still make a go of it. The stores will continue to operate, and they will seek to still allow for returns, exchanges, and gift cards. More »
—>Your worst suspicions have been confirmed, the liquidator that ran the notoriously awful CompUSA liquidation (they actually raised prices, click here to see a photo) is conducting the liquidation of 155 Circuit City stores. More »
—>Inside, email addresses, phone numbers, and addresses for over 100 different companies to inject your customer service complaints into their corporate executive offices, and get it well on the way to success. More »
—>A former Circuit City employee says he visited some of his old coworkers and found out about a trick the liquidators are using that you should beware: More »
—>Tom says he went to one of the closing Circuit City stores to check out the liquidation deals and was disappointed. The whole store was marked down, but the deals about the same as normal "sale" prices.
More »
Circuit City's liquidation party supposedly started today. Send your first hand accounts to us at tips@consumerist.com and/or submit your photos to our Flickr Group! Put "Circuit City Death Watch" in the subject of your email, and tag your photos "circuit city." More »
—>Best Buy sold Clif a "new" laptop one of their employees had bought, used, and returned. They made up for it by giving him an actually new laptop with a slightly better configuration, then tried to upsell him to the Best Buy extended warranty. Two things I enjoyed about this story: 1) The clerk he went to return the laptop to was the same employee who had used the laptop (Clif knew this because he saw the guy's resume on the laptop) 2) Clif then subsequently asked to speak to the manager in private and explained the situation there. That's the classy way to do it. More »
—>Is there a difference between a Sony TZ ultraportable laptop and an Asus Eee PC? Reader Ignacio bought Best Buy's accidental damage protection plan for his $2200 Sony TZ laptop, and when he did, indeed, drop it — Best Buy threatened to replace it with a $600 Asus Eee PC, and finally decided to issue a $1200 gift card — the price of a 15" Dell notebook. Fair? More »
—>Retailers are scared this year, what with the whole economy coming crashing down around their ears and all, and the Black Friday marketing frenzy should be crazier than ever this year. Best Buy is even holding an essay contest. The topic? Why Black Friday shopping is an "important family ritual." Yes, seriously. More »
—>The Wall Street Journal took a look at Circuit City's current predicament today and concluded that they're in deep sh*t. But that's great for bargain hunters, right? Nah. Not really. More »
—>In an update and conclusion, reader Sean let us know he finally got satisfaction regarding his story that we posted, "Circuit City Credits Wrong Card For $130 Return, Sends You Away With Nothing." More »
—>David went to Circuit City yesterday to buy a copy of the new Guitar Hero game, which, according to our extensive research, is currently on sale at Circuit City. Unfortunately, the employees at this particular store refused to sell him the game, then lied about its release date, so that they wouldn't have to correct an error in their computer system. Why were they so reluctant to fix the mistake? Because the game was priced at $10,000 in the system, and to mark it down to its actual price would "look bad." More »
—>Everyone seems to agree— this year will be the year of the cheap big-screen tv. The only question remains... will anyone buy them? More »
—>Anyone who was once a child or has been around a child during the holidays knows that toy packages are pure evil straight from hell. Now, according to a letter currently on the front page of Amazon.com, they've decided to dedicate themselves to removing this scourge from your lives. More »
—>I've read some bad Best Buy stories in my time here at The Consumerist, but this one really takes the asshole cake. To sell its special HDTV calibration service, this Best Buy in NC set up two identical model HDTVs, both showing ESPN. As seen in the picture tipster Robert took, the "calibrated" one is noticeably better. That's because it's showing ESPN HD and the one on the left is showing just regular ESPN. You can also see how a set of box have been placed in front of the non-calibrated tv on the left so you can't see that's it not ESPN HD. That, my friends, is quintessential deceptive marketing. Robert's story of what he saw, and the rivers of bullshit and non-answer that came out of the Best Buy employees' mouths when he confronted them about it, inside... More »
—>Inside, as supplied by Circuit City, a complete list of their 155 stores that will be closing, a story we broke yesterday. More »
—>According to anonymous insider tips, Circuit City is closing 155 stores and withdrawing from 12 markets. This will be officially announced tomorrow at 8am, says our source. A scan we received of a letter distributed to CC employees helps corroborate the story. The tipsters say that store employees were told this morning. No information was provided at that time about severance pay. Employees in certain departments, like car installation, and Firedog, will likely be out of a job within 48 hours. Warranties will still be honored. UPDATE 6: Here's the complete official list of closing stores. More »
—>More bad news for Circuit City. Its stock is trading so low that it is in danger of being delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. More »
—>Emails are shooting around to Geek Squad employees, encouraging them to join the Communications Workers of America union, so Best Buy retorts with emails of its own to voice its concerns. In an email sent by corporate management, Best Buy spoke of its concerns about unions, that unions would hinder its ability to speak with and negotiate with each Geek Squad employee individually. For, there's nothing like the closeness created when one employee negotiates with a hydra. That's just one fun piece of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) in the email, posted inside... More »
—>Circuit City sold Ronald a fake camera for $1134.99, and now they're holding the fake and his money hostage. The camera was no Kodak disposable, but a Nikon D90 Digital SLR. When he opened the box at home, inside was a D50 covered with crappy D90 stickers and affixed with a fake serial plate. Circuit City should give him his money back or a new D90. Why should Ronald be punished for Circuit City's inability to maintain control over their supply chain? He shouldn't. He should file a chargeback with his credit card company. Ronald's letter of complaint to Circuit City's consumer affairs group (consumer_affairs@circuitcity.com), inside... More »
—>Best Buy is tired of their logo, so they're testing a new one on those local guinea pigs at the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN. (Best Buy is headquartered in Minnesota, land of lutefisk, Garrison Keillor and Target.) More »
—>The LA Times says that Amazon.com had a mask depicting democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama listed under the search term "terrorist costume." The listing has since been pulled but the LA Times has a screengrab. More »
—>This clip is a sort of medley of all of Circuit City's dashed dreams and hopes, as told through their ads from nearly two decades ago. Look at the first one, the ad that announced their arrival to the New England area. What do the eager young bucks in it promise and how have those promises stood the test of time? More »
—>If you were confused about why Circuit City might close 150 stores, this customer complaint sent in by William O'Donnell makes it pretty clear: Circuit City sucks. They try to get out of price-matching with a nearby B&H, out of the 3 hard drives he went through, one was missing parts and one wasn't even the right drive, and they try to tell him that it's supposed to come missing parts. Basically, when they don't know what they're talking about, they just make some shit up to make their lives easier. That's what happens when you cut costs by firing anyone who knows what they're doing. Here's Will's tale: More »
—>A reader signing off as "Sucker" wants to let the world know that Circuit City's extended warranties/replacement plans aren't living up to the sales pitch. When he bought his XBOX 360, the salesperson assured "Sucker" that if the XBOX broke (as they tend to) that instead of having to wait around for a replacement — he could get a refund in the form of a gift card. He accepted. Guess what didn't happen? More »
—>The Wall Street Journal is reporting that beleaguered retailer Circuit City is considering a plan to close 150 stores and cut thousands of jobs in an effort to avoid bankruptcy. More »
—>UPDATE: Man Finally Gets His $130 Back From Circuit City More »
—>Circuit City has announced that, after extensive research, they've decided that consumers want to see the same prices in the stores as on-line. More »
—>Yes, our pro-consumer bias has its limits. For instance, when a customer service representative tries to help you, don't respond by telling them to "go back to school," or by mentioning that your fourth-grade class can "spell better." Of the tens of thousands of tips you have sent us, this is one of the worst. Do not be this guy. More »
—>Since the end of May, Circuit City's stock has lost about 87% of its value; the company has fired its CEO, lost a $1.3 billion takeover offer from Blockbuster, and posted quarterly losses of $239.2 million. Now the Washington Post says that the company lost a recommendation from a firm that advises manufacturers on whether to ship goods to retailers — meaning that Circuit City may be having trouble paying its vendors. Are they ready to go under? More »
—>32 new Amazon coupon codes for October. Notable: 25% off K-cups, 20% off Silk Soymilk and 15% off Amy's Organic Soups. Mmm, I loves me some Amy's soups, especially that no-chicken noodle. More »
Best Buy has apparently launched a new "woman-friendly" store where the "Home Theater" section is marked "Family Room" and there is a "lower sink for children in the bathroom, lotion near the paper towels, and a private room for new mothers, with carpeting, a rocking chair, free diapers and softer lighting." [Minneapolis Star-Tribune] More »
—>Yesterday, we asked you to tell us how Circuit City's new CEO should fix his stores. It's been a troubled few years for Circuit City. Before the former CEO resigned last week, he'd embarked on an expensive and drastic "turn around" plan that, well, let's be honest — failed. More »
—>Somebody stop the bleeding! After losing $164.8 million in the first quarter, Circuit City has announced that they've taken it to the next level, and, not to be outdone by last quarter's disaster, have managed to lose $240 million dollars. More »
—>Robert bought an extended warranty from Circuit City, but they won't honor it to repair his broken computer because they claim it has water damage. Robert writes, "As God is my witness, this computer has never seen water," and he sent us the photos Circuit City sent him. More »
—>Dell charged this guy's daughter over $200 for replacement batteries that don't even match her laptop. When her battery died, Dell sent her the wrong battery. Since she was out of warranty, Dell insisted that they could only continue to send her the wrong battery. When she asked why, Bill says the a supervisor repeatedly said, "I don't know ma'am, that's not my problem." More »
—>Circuit City's CEO, possibly the last guy left who might have known how to install HDTV , stepped down yesterday. Philip J. Schoonover's efforts to turn around the troubled electronics retailer, which included firing a bunch of long-time employees and replacing them with lower-paid workers without benefits, didn't work out. What with the worsening economy and all, it just didn't seem like a good time to be a CEO. More »
—>Best Buy didn't want to honor the sale price of the 2GB flash drive Matt ordered through their website, so when Matt arrived to pick-up his purchase, the store's assistant manager called customer service and, pretending to be Matt, asked to cancel the order. Let's read Matt's story and see how it violates Massachusetts law, inside... More »
—>Reader Sue saw this sign at Circuit City and snapped a picture of it for us. More »
—>The copy on this Best Buy ad sent in by tipster Jordan reads, "A woman has needs. And right now, I need this wild cherry steam thing." Oh, it's a washer. And a dryer too, you say? Golly! I'll take two. Let me just give you some of these emerald rectangle monetary devices out of my ebony zippery pouch device here... Full size inside. More »
—>Reader Chris spend hours trying to buy God of War 2 from Circuit City, only to get stuck with an empty box. Yuck! More »
Highlights From Dealnews
- Graveyard Mall: Wooden Roll-top Desk Organizer for $9 + $6 s&h
- Amazon.com: Columbia Sportswear Men's Shoes from $19 + $5 s&h
- Amazon.com: Green Mountain K-Cup 50-Packs for $9 + $6 s&h
- Circuit City: Element FLX3711B 37-inch LCD HDTV $600
- American Express: Up to 5% Cash Back on Purchases with SimplyCash Business Card
- Geeks: Refurbished Dual AMD Opteron Rack Mount Servers from $200
- Hewlett Packard: $500 off $1399 HP Pavilion Notebooks w/ code NB0915
- Frys.com: Western Digital GreenPower 500GB Serial ATA/300 Hard Drive for $69.99 + shipping
- Edmund Scientific: $25 Off $50 or more w/ coupon code ES25
—>While we're waiting on our video boys to harvest the clip of Whoopie's rant against DirecTV on The View this morning, here's a little reader-submitted DirecTV install nightmare to tide you over. Andy used to think DirecTV was pretty good, but his experience trying to get them to hook up an HD/DVR to his TV has felt him feeling like he is "going to explode, or destroy pieces of furniture." More »
—>We just got an email from reader Mike, who claims to be a former Best Buy employee who regrets selling all those extended warranties now that he's actually trying to use the one that he purchased. More »
Highlights From Dealhack
- Abt Electronics: Sony Cybershot S750 7.2MP Digital Camera $129 Shipped
- Office Depot: HP AMD Dual Core Widescreen Notebook $550 & Free Shipping
- B&H Photo: Panasonic Viera 42-inch Plasma HDTV $830 Shipped
- Amazon: J.A. Henckels 8 Piece Stylus Block Set for $49.99 w/ Free shipping
- Walmart: Eastsport Mesh Backpack for $9.88 + $0.97 Shipping
- Timberland: 30% Off Coupon w/ coupon code: FALLEVENT4
- Geeks.com: Four Wireless Day / Night Color Security Cameras with receiver for $130 + $11 s&h
- Newegg: Creative ZEN X-Fi 8GB Portable MP3 / MP4 Player for $112 + free shipping
- Buy.com: Refurbished SanDisk Sansa MP3 Players from $22 + free shipping
—>Call it the welcome side of Christmas Creep; manufacturers are discounting LCD and plasma TVs ahead of the traditional year-end holiday sale cluster mess, but you won't find the best deals in retail stores. More »
—>Earlier today, about 2200 reviews of the game Spore disappeared from the product page on Amazon.com, almost all of them negative. Did Amazon censor the reviews because of their anti-DRM nature? Amazon says no, that it was a technical glitch, and they restored the reviews by the end of today. An Amazon spokesperson told Ars Technica, "Amazon doesn't censor or edit customer reviews based [on their content] and we'd only remove a review if it fell outside our guidelines." Spore's rating is back to a single star, and it's #5 on Amazon's video games chart. More »
- Apple: Refurbished iPod touches on sale, 8GB for $180, 16GB for $240, 32GB for $320
- Amazon: Rewards points upgrade for existing Amazon.com Visa holders
- Apple: Free Select iTunes TV Shows in HD (requires iTunes 8
- Travelocity: United Airlines Sale: Round-trip flights from $108
- Amazon.com: Amazon.com Men's Watch Deals: Timex, Marc Ecko, more from $40 + free shipping
- Sears: Seven7 Women's Jeans for $18 + $6 s&h, more
- Budget Truck Rental: $50 Gift card when paying w/American Express
- Reverie: T-Shirt Sale: Buy 1 TEE get 1 free TEE
- BestBuy: Westinghouse 42" 1080p LCD HDTV and portable DVD Player for $749.99 + shipping
- Drugstore.com: New Customers: Save $5 or $10 off First Order
- Vann's: Panasonic FZ28 10.2MP Digital Camera $340 Shipped
- Amazon: Get Savings of up to 75% off Bargain Books
A number of readers chimed in on the Best Buy-branded wishlist browser add-on post with the alternatives they prefer instead. They were: 1) Amazon's Universal Wishlist, 2) Del.icio.us, 3) Wishlist.com, 4) Wishlistr.com. Got any others? As far as what most Consumerist's thought of the Best Buy add-on, commenter dragonfire81 probably captured it best... More »
—>Best Buy launched a new "retailer neutral" gift registry browser add-on Monday called Giftag. The idea is that you can visit any online retailer and click an icon to put it in your gift registry, as well as highlight specific parts of the page for potential gift-givers. In the open-source program, you can choose whether you want to make your gifts public, and shareable via social network sites and the like, or private. However, whether you select private or public, Best Buy will be able to see every purchase you make, whether you buy from them or their competition. Mmm, juicy buckets of data. More »
- 6PM.com: DC Brand Shoes $20 + S/H, all sizes/styles, 856 to choose from
- Nicorette: free pack of Nicorette White Ice Mint (warning, site is slow)
- Circuit City: Panasonic SH-FX85 Wireless Multi-Room Speaker Kit for $44.96, requires in-store pickup
- Hewlett Packard: $400 Off $999 or more for Desktop Purchase w/ coupon code: DT1158 (Good for 2250 uses)
- NewEgg: Targus Notebook Wireless Optical Mouse for $8.99 w/ Free shipping after $20 off coupon code: EMCAKAKAK
- Buy.com: Av Lab Solar Backpack Charger for $29.99 w/ Free shipping after rebate
- Best Buy: Toshiba Satellite Dual Core Notebook PC $500
- Geeks.com: Canon Pixma iP6210D Color Inkjet Photo Printer $35 with Coupon
- Musicnotes.com: 20% or 30% off Guitar Guru Interactive Lessons with Coupons
—>Spore, the long awaited new game from SimCity creator Will Wright, has been critically well-received, so what's up with its Amazon.com score? As of this posting, the game, despite being #1 on Amazon, has 1,494 one star ratings from gamers who are upset about the game's DRM. Here are some excerpts from the angry reviews: More »
- Banana Republic: 30% off today only with coupon code HAPPY30 or printable coupon
- Sears: Free Masterlock with printable coupon
- MusiciansFriend: AKG Handheld Condenser Microphone for $100 + free shipping. Today only.
- Timbuk2: Save up to 60% off Messenger Bags, Backpacks, & More
- New York & Co.: Extra 20% off Store-Wide Women's Apparel
- Office Depot: Viewsonic N3235w 32-inch LCD HDTV $470 & Free Shipping
—>Amazon is having a grocery clearance sale, 55% off regular price with coupon code CLRNCFTY. [Amazon] More »
—>Obviously, stores sell items that has been returned by other customers as "open box" merchandise, but before reader David left the store, he specifically asked if the phone he was buying was "new" and was told it was. When he got home and found addresses saved on the phone and a few scratches he was understandably annoyed. He launched an EECB on Best Buy and after a little negotiation, he got a $120 gift card. Now he's writing to compliment Best Buy on the way they handled his complaint. More »
—> We get a lot of complaints about people buying things from stores like Best Buy and Target and finding that once they get them home — there's a bunch of bathroom tiles in the box instead of the item, or that the item is used, broken or smashed. When they try to return the thing, the store tells them that they're out of luck. When you ask why they think they can get away with selling you a paperweight instead of an XBOX, they point to some bullsh*t policy and send you on your way. You don't have to put up with this. In this post, we'll tell you a) How to keep this from happening to you in the first place. b) How to equip yourself with tools that will help you in the event that this does happen to you. c) How to take advantage of these tools so that you never get stuck with someone's old broken PS3. More »
—>Not that it's any big surprise, but Best Buy has now gotten around to taking back that "elite" status that they accidentally gave all of their Rewards Zone members yesterday. We knew that 45 day return policy was too good to be true... Best Buy's "whoops" email inside: More »
—>Reader Andrew forwarded an email he just got from Best Buy letting him know that he now qualified for an even more special fantastic elite reward zone level. One in which he would be granted access to something called a "Premier Black Concierge." We're assuming this is like Reward Zone Silver but, more so. More »
—>Slickdeal forums members are complaining about a mass-closing of Amazon accounts. The reasons cited vary from having too high a percentage of returns, shipping to too many different addresses, and having too many different Amazon accounts. Guess they're trying to tighten their bottom line and prevent loopholes from being exploited, but the net may have been cast too wide; some of the adversely affected users say the action was unfair and unwarranted. Couple this with the online retailer dropping the post price guarantee at basically the same time and you have to wonder if the boys in the Amazon backroom spent Labor Day Weekend earning their Six Sigma certificates. More »
—>Amazon ended its post order price guarantee this Monday, according to an email a reader and deal forum members received from the online retailer. More »
- Amazon: 37 new coupon codes for September 2008
- Google: Get Chrome for free, Google's new super-minimal browser (still in beta, read review at Lifehacker)
- Apple: Seven refurbished Apple Aluminum iMac Core 2 Duo Desktops from $949 each + free shipping
- Newegg: Nikon Coolpix P60 8.1MP Camera $150 Shipped
- Amazon: Save Extra $20 off Kellogg's, Keebler & other Grocery Products
- 1-800 Contacts: Save $20 to $80 + Bonus $5 off Contact Lenses with Coupon
- Toys "R" Us: BOGO 50% off all video games up to $19.99
- Proctor & Gamble: Free Tide TotalCare sample
- BuyCostumes.com: Sale: Up to 60% off
- Amazon.com: Get three DVDs for $10 when you add all three to your Shopping Cart
- Golden Gadgets: 2 Pack of 9 LED Aluminum Pocket water resistant Flashlight for $3.99 + Shipping ($2.02)
- Newegg.com: A-DATA 16GB Flash Drive WHITE for $24.99 after $15 rebate!
—>On one hand, the mere existence of such a thing as a "ready to ship" box at Amazon leads us to believe that there may be hope for them after all. Sadly, the fact that they packed the "ready to ship" box inside another box before they shipped it does leave us with some nagging doubts. More »
—>Mike's friend gave Best Buy $200 to install anti-virus software and an HDMI input, but Best Buy somehow sent him home with the wrong power adapter. Mike works in IT and knows how to feed and bathe himself, but Best Buy insisted that he had the right adapter and that Mike had to be "doing something wrong." Guess how this ends... More »
- Lenovo: Employee Pricing on ThinkPad and IdeaPad Notebooks, up to 42% off (login with passcode 536686)
- Woot: Sandisk Clip 2GB MP3 Player for $19.99
- Newegg: ESET NOD32 Antivirus Home Edition v3 for $14.99 (Best antivirus around, won't slow down your computer)
- Buy.com: Kingston 4GB USB 2.0 Portable Flash Drive $14 Shipped
- Hanes.com: Save 15% off Complete Order on All Clothing
- Vann's: Sony FX820 Portable 8-inch DVD Player $150 Shipped
- Amazon: Kitchen & Home Labor Day Sale: Save up to 65%
- Linens 'n Things: BOGO 50% off bath furniture, more + 20% off coupon
- American Eagle: 40% off purchases coupon
—>Last week we wrote about a Circuit City customer who was charged $40 without warning for "repairs" to a brand new computer. We received several explanations from Circuit City insiders, both in the comments and through email, that the repair was mandatory—Acer and Circuit City had agreed that instead of pulling the PCs, the retailer's Firedog techs would flash the BIOS in-store upon purchase. What was unclear was how or why this would fall under the Firedog "Quickstart" service, which is optional and includes things like removing shortcuts from your desktop and setting up your background. (Seriously, check it out here.) Yesterday we received the following interesting email from Circuit City HQ. More »
—>It's always fun when you spot people you know in the paper. Like when one reader saw an article about his former Best Buy manager, charged with seventeen counts of third-degree identity thief. Mariusz Paliwoda of Conneticut was arrested recently for stealing over 100 pieces of mail from rural folks', then using the information to create credit card accounts. Only the cream of the crop, or former Domino's managers, make it to the top of Best Buy!
Milford man charged in ID theft operation [New Haven Register] (Photo: Getty) More »
—>In the battle for customer satisfaction, if Mike's letter is any indication, it appears that ASUS is (still) under siege attack by General Incompetence. More »
—>Reader Gibson ordered 8 plates from Amazon, and they arrived in 13 boxes. We're sure the operations research management scientists at Amazon shipping have an answer as to why, in the context of the entire shipping infrastructure, this was the most cost-effective solution, but it escapes us mere mortals. Full pic inside. More »
—>Only use this contact info if you can't get help from the store and the regular customer service line isn't doing it for ya. More »
This Best Buy coupon for free Apple software for students isn't a very good deal after all—you can get educational discounts at the Apple store, and through September 15th you can get a free iPod Touch or Nano with your computer purchase. Our advice: skip Best Buy and go directly through Apple. (Thanks to Matt and yasth!) More »
—>A Customer Associate for a Best Buy in Las Cruces, New Mexico, was indicted on Thursday for credit card fraud—three counts of making fraudulent purchases over $2500, three counts of making fraudulent purchases over $500, over 20 counts of falsely signing credit card slips, and 1 count of disposing of stolen property. More »
—>Update: Circuit City says the repair should have been free. Here's their response. Travis writes that a friend of his just bought a new computer from Circuit City, and after turning down all of the Firedog's "it won't work unless you also buy this" offers, he noticed a $40 fee on his receipt. Turns out the associate claims he had to flash the computer's BIOS or Vista wouldn't work. Travis writes, "Regardless of the fact that Vista booted up just fine with out the update, he was more disturbed with the fact that Circuit City would sell him a computer that they knew didn't work, or so they say." So does Circuit City sell computers that don't work without a preliminary repair, or do they lie in order to generate extra fees? More »
—>An alleged Best Buy employee tells us that the company has stopped including inlet water hoses in some Inglis, Whirlpool and Maytag top-loading washers it sells. According to the blurry photos he sent us, employees are now supposed to push this $27 accessory hose product on customers who buy the washers. Update: we don't know if the decision originated with the manufacturers or Best Buy. More »
Best Buy will start selling the iPhone on September 7th, making it the only retailer other than Apple and AT&T to offer the device. [Associated Press] More »
- Woot: Reebok Precision Trainer XT Heart Rate Monitor with Chest Strap for $19.99
- Circuit City: California Only - all items tax-free Aug 9-10
- Commerce Bank: Kids can earn $10 by reading ten books
- Buy.com: Seagate 500GB USB 2.0 Drive $89 Shipped
- B&H Photo: Sharp 1024x768 DLP Multimedia Projector $519 Shipped
- Shop Adidas: Back to School Sale: Save 20% off Apparel & Shoes
- Levi's Store: 30% off purchases coupon
- Banana Republic: 15% off $150 purchase coupon
- Barnes & Noble: 15% off any purchase coupon
—>Umar bought a DLP in 2005 with a $400 Best Buy Performance Service Plan. The TV keeps blowing through expensive bulbs (Umar has replaced 7 $275 bulbs in 3 years,) and rather than wait 2 weeks for a technician every time this happens, Best Buy provided a telephone number and told him to order and replace the bulbs himself. Now, because he followed their directions, Best Buy is refusing to cover the TV under the "lemon" provision of the service agreement. More »
"We at MAD were shocked and confused by this entire incident — mainly because we had no idea that Circuit City even sells magazines. Nonetheless, we accept their apology but hold out hope that their gesture of a $20 gift card is only an opening offer." More »
—>Reader Michael wants to know what exactly he is expected to buy with this Circuit City coupon? It's for 8% off purchases over $199, but it excludes, um, lots of stuff. More »
—>After driving all over Chicagoland with his 7 month old son looking for a DirecTV receiver, reader Bobby was called an asshole for not stopping and showing his receipt to a Best Buy employee. He's a little ticked off, and he CC'd us on his letter to Best Buy. Let's listen in: More »
- Iams: Free Iams Premium Protection Dog or Cat Food if you give them your address
- Iomega: 3.5" External USB 2.0 Hard Drive shipped for $55.66(250 GB) Or $64.16 (320 GB)
- Newegg: Sennheiser CX300B 3.5mm Connector Canal Headphone (Black) $10 after rebates
- Sierra Trading Post: Extra 10% off Clothing, Footwear, & Gear
- Amazon: Summer Sale: 25% or More off Kitchen Small Appliances
- Dell Home: Save 20% to 30% off Inspiron Notebook PCs
- Torrid: $10 off select Birkenstock
- Toys "R" Us: BOGO $20 off all Wii games
- PayPal: Back to school savings @ Foot Locker, Guess, Tiger Direct, more
—>After a thin-skinned Circuit City exec ordered stores carrying Mad Magazine to search and destroy all copies of a recent issue featuring a 4-page parody of "Sucker City," someone with a brain stopped the madness. Here's the surprisingly classy message we just got from corporate: More »
—>Circuit City headquarters has ordered their stores to "destroy all copies" of the latest issue of Mad Magazine, according to an anonymous tipster. The retailer apparently isn't amused by the 4-page spoof of "Sucker City." Inside, Mad's 1-page preview and headquarters' response. More »
—>Reader Kevin forwarded us this story from Dave, a I.T. consultant friend of his who helps people with their computer problems in exchange for hardware donations to the school he works at. Dave's "propane guy" said he recently took a desktop computer to Geek Squad after it failed, and "great Geek Squad guys were AWESOME and had been able to retrieve all of his family pictures for him," before selling him a new laptop. Dave offered to take a look at the desktop and try to retrieve the rest of the important files— the "7 years of QuickBooks 2005 data" that Best Buy wasn't able to save, but when Dave opened up the computer he says he was surprised to see that someone had cut some important cables. More »
- Amazon: Lego sale. 50% off 8 Different Items
- Walgreens: 6 Sharpies for $2 (in-store only)
- eforcity: iPod/iPhone charging cable for $7.99 (down from $43.99)
- DealExtreme: iPod/iPhone charging cable for $3.46
- Woot: It's a woot-off!
- Best Buy: Dynex DX-LCD32 32-inch LCD HDTV $490
- Tiger Direct: Unlocked Motorola RAZR V3 GSM Cell Phone $100
- Buy.com: Kodak Z1285 12 Megapixel Digital Camera $90 Shipped
Best Buy will start selling musical equipment—guitars, drum kits, sheet music, groupies—in up to 85 stores across the U.S. this year. They'll also offer group music lessons. Is there anything the Geek Squad can't do? [Associated Press] More »
—>While cramming a remote starter into Andrew's new Nissan Altima, Best Buy managed to break the car's locking system, window controls, and a brake light. Andrew hauled the crippled car back to the dealership, which immediately blamed Best Buy for burning out the car's wiring, and told Andrew that the parasitic system had to go. Best Buy defended their quality workmanship, and refused to issue a refund unless Andrew signed a waiver absolving them of any responsibility for damaging the car. More »
—>Reader Nick doesn't want you to pay too much for Apple iPod headphones, so he's asked us to let you know that Best Buy is charging $49.99 for basic white iPod earbuds and they're only $29.99 at the Apple Store. Let it be known that Best Buy is not the best place to buy accessories. More »
—>Colorado Springs police say that the vandal who broke into a closed Circuit City wasn't trying to steal electronics — it was a confused black bear. More »
—>Reader Brandon is obviously familiar with number 3 in the 10 Things You Might Not Know About Your Credit Card post, holding firm in the face of a retailer who wanted Brandon to give his driver's license when he bought something with a credit card: More »
- Kohl's: 80-90% Clearance Sale
- Disney Outlet: Kid's costumes up to 80% off, plus extra 20% off code
- Amazon: Dr. Martens Men's 1914 Cherry Red Size 14 Boots $38
- Tiger Direct: UTStarcom GSM708 Unlocked GSM Phone $20
- Butterfly Photo: Canon Rebel XSi 12MP DSLR & Lens $790 Shipped
- Expedia: Save 30% off Hotels, Cars, Cruises & Other Travel
—>Dries Janssens, a computer repair shop owner in Allen, Texas, is worried that a 2007 law passed by the state legislature requires computer repair technicians to have private investigator licenses to perform "simple computer repairs such as malware removal." We're not sure if the law was just badly written or written on purpose at the urging of the state's private investigator lobby (which Janssens suggests), but it certainly seems like a bad idea. Update: according to this article sent by our weekend editor Carey, it's just badly written ("It needs some tightening up," says one lawmaker) and should only apply to the private security industry. More »
- Amazon: 80lb Crossbow Pistol - Hunting - $19.99 (Reg. $59.99)
- Shirt.Woot: Funny/cool movie snack shirt for $10
- B&H Photo: Drobo DRO4DU10 4-bay, USB2.0 Robotic Storage Array for $350 (down from $500+)
- Performance Bike: Save an Extra 10% off Bikes & Gear with Coupon
- Mwave: OCZ Mini-Kart Micro-Sized 2GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive Free AR
- Buy.com: Save $100: Pentax Optio Z10 8MP Digital Camera $140 Shipped
- Amazon: Aliph Jawbone Bluetooth Headset $60 shipped
- Lane Bryant: 40-50% off storewide
- Ralph Lauren: Extra 25% off select sale items
—>Sarah bought some car chargers from Eforcity through Amazon, and was disappointed to find that the charger plug doesn't stay in the phone unless you hold it in. She said as much in her Amazon feedback. In response, Eforcity said they would be happy to give her a refund, as long as she deleted her negative feedback. In other words, a bribe for self-censorship. Eforcity's email, inside... More »
—>The way coupons are taxed is different in every state— and believe us — it gets really complicated. The general rule, in most (but not all) states is that consumers are taxed on the full amount of the transaction — including any reimbursement that the store gets. More »
—>Yes, folks. It's time for everybody's favorite post: Stupid Shipping Gang! In this episode, Amazon demonstrates how to package a tiny microfiber cloth efficiently. More »
—>Blockbuster has finished snooping around Circuit City's medicine cabinet and the verdict is in: Blockbuster has changed its mind. More »
—>Reader Mike consulted Best Buy about removing a Trojan that was infecting his computer. They suggested that he buy an external hard drive, pay Best Buy to back up his data, and use his computer's restore disc. Mike agreed. 5 days later he got his computer and his external hard drive back — mostly empty, except for the shortcut to the folder where the data was stored. None of the files within the folder had actually been transferred. More »
—>A reader wrote in to tell us that the Western Digital hard drive he recently bought new from Best Buy had hidden dirty pics buried on it. He was running a program to retrieve some accidentally deleted images when he discovered the secret files. Read his story below. [Update: our tipster has written back in to clarify that the HD was not necessarily "brand new."] More »
—>Circuit City wouldn't let Larry redeem his $40 digital transition converter box coupon unless he signed a credit slip agreeing to pay $40. Larry refused, and asked to cancel the transaction. Circuit City's manager responded by calling the police before following Larry into the parking lot to write down his license plate number. More »
—>Circuit City reported yesterday that they've managed to lose $164.8 million in the first quarter, which is even more money than they managed to lose in the previous disastrous quarter. In fact, this will be their 5th straight losing quarter. Same-store sales, considered the most important indicator of the health of a retailer, dropped 11.3 percent. Ow! More »
—>Dustin wrote back to let us know that Circuit City corporate had contacted him about his difficulty with their "24 minute guarantee." It seems that the general manger of the store had misunderstood the guarantee completely. Apologies were given and gift cards were received. More »
—>Is it ok for stores to sell food that's expired? It depends. It is illegal for stores to sell food past its "Use By" date. However, stores are allowed to sell food after it has passed the "Best Until" "Best Before" "Sell By" or "Display Until" dates stamped on the sides of packages. As the name suggests, it just might not be its best, in terms of flavor, consistency, or texture. Still, why get the old stuff when you can get the fresh for the same price? Always check the expiration dates on food packages to make sure you're getting the best value for your dollar. More »
—>A few days ago we reported that Cliff didn't receive a $100 gift card when he purchased a PS3 bundle from Best Buy, despite an unpublicized corporate memo that seemed to say otherwise. The manager at Cliff's Best Buy said "You can buy any other PlayStation and you can get the gift card, but not on that one." This didn't match up with what others were reporting, so Cliff sent an email blast to the executive level asking why the offer wasn't honored. Yesterday a Best Buy rep called Cliff and said that they'd be mailing him a $100 gift card. We're impressed the Best Buy resolved this so quickly. More »
—>When Cliff sent us his story about the denied $100 gift card from Best Buy, he also sent it to over a dozen addresses at Best Buy HQ. A few hours ago we got this email cc'ed to us from a VP of Executive Customer Care: More »
—>According to this conversation over at the SlickDeals forum, Wal-Mart was offering a $100 gift card with any Blu-ray player purchase, including the PS3—and Best Buy Corporate issued a memo saying they would match Wal-Mart's deal and offer $100 gift cards as well. Cliff tried to take advantage of this unadvertised special when he purchased a Metal Gear Solid PS3 bundle a couple of days ago, but the manager of the store refused, saying the bundle was off-limits: "You can buy any other Playstation and you can get the gift card, but not on that one." Oddly, though, other members of SlickDeals were reporting success with the very same bundle around the country. More »
—>Like shopping at Best Buy but don't like their lack of customer service and crappy return policy? They've got an offer for you. Spend $2,500 per calendar year and you'll be considered a "Reward Zone Program Premier Silver Member." The benefits of this membership are immediately apparent. You'll get your own dedicated customer service line that's only for Premier Silver Members, and a more generous return policy as well. Why should good customer service be available to bad customers? We've got the text of a Best Buy Reward Zone Silver Training Document, inside. More »
Amazon.com seems to be back up. A bit slow, but functional. All in all, the site was down for 3 hours, which is very very long for a gigantic online retailer to be down these days. [Amazon] More »
—>Whoa Amazon is down. It just says, "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable." Then I tried again and the front page was there, but when I clicked through, same error message. It looks like it's been this way since at least 1:30 PM, eastern. It was broken for several Consumerist writers who tested it out. More »
—>Reader Dustin is upset with Circuit City because they tried to tell him that their 24 minute guarantee meant he had to be waiting at the store for more than 24 minutes. After Dustin explained that the 24 minute guarantee was supposed to mean that the item would be pulled from the back within 24 minutes of his confirmation email, the supervisor said that Dustin " would have had to come in within 24 minutes to qualify." We're pretty sure that's not how it works, because Circuit City's policy specifically says that's not how the guarantee works. More »
—>Here's something to break the monotony of your day. Reader Jim sends these pictures of the night stand he ordered from Amazon.com. It came packed not in peanuts, but covered in spray foam insulation. He says it took him half an hour to hack through the sticky stuff to get to the furniture. Weird, yes, but the item did arrive intact... so maybe they're on to something. More »
—>ProBargainHunter tells us how to snag 5-15% in extra savings on Amazon by tweaking the "Quick Picks" function. More »
—>EECBs are scoring direct hits on HSBC and Best Buy. Reader Chad was having the same problem with his Best Buy credit card that reader Jason wrote in about. After he saw Jason's successful EECB he launched one of his own. Reade Chad's letter and Best Buy's response inside. More »
—>Emmett writes: Dear Mr. Schoonover: More »
—>If you read yesterday's article Best Buy's "Same As Cash" Credit Card Conceals Major Hidden Fees, you should remember Jason who got socked with some serious fees on his Best Buy/HSBC credit card. Jason wrote back to us to say that within a mere 3 hours after the deployment of his EECB, Best Buy reversed all of his fees. Jason's and Best Buy's letter, inside... More »
Best Buy, Circuit City, and Sears are all contesting the FCC's recent fines against them for not properly following analog transition rules in their stores, reports Ars Technica. Last week, Best Buy submitted a 41-page response (PDF) that claimed among other things that the FCC has no authority to fine them. More »
—>A commenter to our Worst Company in America nominations picked Best Buy, his employer of six years, to win it all. His reasons, including the credit card fraud, phony bundling scams, and other schemes they made him do to keep his job he heard rumors about happening at other Best Buys, inside. UPDATE: The original commenter has contacted us to say that these things did not actually happen to him and he was not trained to do them by Best Buy. Rather, he heard about them happening at other Best Buys or read about them in other Consumerist articles, and, in a pique of anger, wrote a long comment that remixed all this information together and framed it as if it happened to him. Consumerist regrets the error, and the commenter has been banned. More »
—>This is Round 37 in our Worst Company in America contest, Best Buy vs CompUSA!Inside, readers comments from previous rounds on why they hate each company... More »
—>Blockbuster has recently drawn the ire of movie enthusiasts by inking "exclusive" rental deals with the likes of IFC. The upshot of this deal is that Blockbuster will retain the exclusive physical rental distribution rights for IFC titles for three years after each street date. Why is this important? Because Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes wants to buy Circuit City for the following reason: More »
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—>There's something deeply wrong with HP these days. It seems that instead of just fixing your laptop's overheating issue, they'd rather accuse Amazon.com of selling fake HP laptops and deny your warranty. Reader Floria says that even though she got a letter from Amazon stating that there's no possible way they sold her a fake or refurbished laptop, and then escalated her complaint to a "senior case manager" who approved the repair, HP still hasn't fixed her computer. Is anyone in charge over there? More »
—>Amazon.com apparently has a glitch whereby if you have 1-click ordering set up to buy MP3 downloads, and you forget that you canceled your credit card because it had been stolen by a random French person, you'll end up with a bunch of "free music." And, if you're an honest person like Jeff Somogyi, when you try to contact Amazon to pay for the music, they'll chuckle at you. More »
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—>"MyGearStore," a seller on Amazon, tried to bribe reader Michael into remove less-than-stellar feedback. Michael writes, "There were some problems with the order, and I gave them neutral feedback (which was pretty generous)." They said they would give him a partial refund if he took down his feedback. He complained to Amazon, who didn't reply except with a "thanks for emailing us" and to MyGearStore, who didn't respond. One tool consumers use to evaluate the slew of online retailers out there is by looking through feedback left by other customers. If stores are trying to pay off customers to get rid of negative feedback, one, they're stupid because they're going to get caught. Two, it means you should be suspicious if the feedback for one store, product, or seller is overwhelmingly positive. Critical reading, it's a good ability to have. The original bribe note sent by MyGearStore, inside.. More »
Amazon launched a new "BPA-free" baby supply shop (BPA is a chemical found in some plastic bottles that may cause cancer). The only problem was that not all of the bottles were BPA-free. [Z Recommends] More »
—>The Star Tribune reports a woman is suing Best Buy for $50,000 after the Best Buy/Geek Squad repair service stole her naked photos from her computer, shared them with other Geek Squad agents, and even copied them onto the hard drives of other customers (this is hardly the first time Geek Squad has been caught stealing porn from customer's computers). William E. Giffels admitted in a written statement that he copied Kaylee Hall's nude photos from her computer onto his personal flash drive. On this drive, he also kept the most up-to-date version of the Geek Squad diagnostic tools and told other agents to copy from it. Then other Geek Squad made CD copies of the drive and installed the tools, along with Kaylee's photos, onto other customers' computers in the Traverse City, Michigan area. Inside, Giffels's written confession... More »
—>Anthony paid Circuit City $1,271 for a new 40" Samsung LN40A550, but what he received was a "scratched up, dinged to hell, beaten and abused FLOOR MODEL OPEN BOX" LN40A330. As a Circuit City employee, Anthony thought exchanging the TV or receiving a refund would be a cinch. Boy, was he wrong. More »
—>Amazon has filed a complaint in NY's State Supreme Court challenging a new law that forces the retailer to collect sales tax on shipments to residents of NY state. More »
—>Cole discovered that by simply incrementing a numerical string by one in a url Best Buy sent out, he could pull up screen after screen of random customer info. Fortunately, all he could see were customer names, their home addresses, and their order numbers. It's still surprising that Best Buy—or more specifically, Postpublisher.net, the email company they outsourced this to—wasn't more careful with customer security. More »
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—>Have you purchased a computer from Best Buy, only to find that it had no internal parts? No hard drive. No video card. No motherboard? If so, you (allegedly) have Joseph Denice of Silver Spring, MD to thank for your gutted PC. His hobby is buying computers from Best Buy, removing the parts, and then returning the empty shell. Best Buy's employees would then put the computer husks back on store shelves where they would be repurchased by unwitting consumers such as... you. More »
—>Reader John is an Amazon Prime member who can't get anything sent to his house via UPS without a signature after he filed a claim over a $30 DVD that never showed up. He really likes his UPS driver, but the guy says that because of the "blacklist" he's powerless to leave packages when John isn't home. Period. Does anyone know how to get off of a UPS blacklist? More »
—>CouponCodesMall has rounded up some previously published Amazon deal hacks into one Amazon coupon code e-book in three parts: More »
—>Today only, all AT&T phones are on sale at Amazon for only 1 cent with new service plan (Sorry, the iPhone is not included). We don't know whether it's an error or what, but it looks like on some of these you actually make money after rebate. More »
—>A few weeks ago, Zach emailed us to say that his Rewards Zone Mastercard hasn't worked properly in the five months he's had it, and no one at Best Buy had been able to help. We pointed him to our Guide To Fighting Back, and he responded tonight with an update. More »
—>Tiffany Byrd hired Circuit City's Firedog to install her 40-inch Samsung TV over her (fake) fireplace. When she told the Firedog rep that she wanted the TV above a "fireplace," Firedog told her it would cost an extra $169 because fireplaces were often made of brick and other substances that make it difficult to attach TVs. Tiffany told them that her fireplace was fake and the wall above it was normal drywall. Firedog said that if the tech got to her house and found that the fireplace was indeed fake, her extra $169 would be refunded. The tech installed the TV with no problems and noted on her receipt "Basic wall installation. Waive Charge." Now Circuit City is refusing to refund the money and not even a call from her local TV news station could compel Circuit City to change its mind. More »
Tipster Michael writes:
Apparently the local Best Buy has an unbeatable service option for you. Looks like they will come to your house and insert your game to your 360 for you. Wonder how much they would charge to turn it on and put the controller in my hand?Fie on anyone who says these signs are misplaced. This is a revolutionary new service that will do for game installation what Game Genie did for gameplay. Just you wait and see... More »
—>Reader Craig ordered some gym equipment from Amazon, but he accidentally used his debit card instead of his credit card. Realizing his mistake, he immediately tried to correct the problem. He went through the change payment process right away and figured all was well. Of course it wasn't, and he ended up getting charged $2,288.44 for $750 worth of equipment when Amazon got the refund process backwards. Twice. See how it happened after the jump. More »
—>One of the budget-related changes voted in last week by New York State's politicians included a new "Amazon tax":
"Another $50 million will come from requiring online retailers like Amazon that do not have a physical presence in New York to collect sales taxes on purchases made by New Yorkers and remit them to the state.New York's argument, based on a reading of the 1992 Quill vs. North Dakota U.S. Supreme Court ruling, is that because Amazon makes sales through affiliates who live in the state, it can be considered to have a physical presence there—which means the new law wouldn't apply to retailers who don't use affiliate programs. More »
—>This strange little item found its way into our inbox with no explanation or back-story. More »
Blockbuster has offered to buy Circuit City for a little over $1 billion, with the goal of creating "a chain that could sell portable devices and entertainment for them, much like Apple Inc.'s stores." [Chicago Tribune] (Thanks to everyone who sent this in!) More »
I was wandering around Best Buy yesterday here in Missouri when we came across this. Essentially, the back of this "open box" tagged computer was completely broken off. I realize that this may indeed be the nature of "open box" product, but seriously... 1700 dollars for a computer with this kind of blatant damage? More »
—>Save 10% on your visit to Best Buy by bringing along this printable, reusable coupon that doesn't seem to expire. The coupon is accessible to the public, but it is meant to serve as a chintzy government house-warming gift from the Post Office to people who recently moved. More »
UPDATE: Geek Squad Replaces Soaked Computer For Free More »
—>The FCC handed out a whole basketful of fines to electronics retailers today: $1.1 million for Sears and Kmart; $992,000 for Wal-Mart; $712,000 for Circuit City; and amounts between $168,000-384,000 for Target, Best Buy, CompUSA, and Fry's Electronics. What made Christmas come so early? They were all failing to warn consumers that analog-only TVs and tuners will stop working on their own when the digital switchover comes next year. More »
—>Yet another valiant former Firedog writes in to share insider info that will help you successfully navigate the rough waters of big box computer repair. The most important takeaway—Don't let them "preinstall" anything on your new computer. According to our tipster, it's both expensive and pointless. Lots of good stuff inside. More »
This list of Amazon coupon codes for April makes me want to puke, irregardless of the fact that the only thing I ate all day was a small money salad. Only scumbags avoid paying full price. [ProBargainHunters] More »
—>Best Buy leveraging its business acumen into the exciting field of venture capital investing. Called Best Buy Capital, it will, according to several job postings, "serve as a source of innovative growth options for the enterprise rooted in smaller, more innovative, and potentially disruptive opportunities." Sounds great! I have an idea for a new kind of digital tortilla chip clip. You know how you get down to the bottom of the bag of tortillas and you get the chip pieces that are small? And then when you try to dip them in salsa you get salsa all over your fingers? Well with my chip clip you would be able to grab a bunch of the chip pieces together. All dip, no drip! Plus, your fingers won't start to burn from the salsa exposure, irregardless of how long you use it. It would also have a digital timer and be USB-powered. Best Buy Capital, if you're interested, drop me a line. Inside, via DiversityInc Careers, a job posting for Best Buy Capital so maybe one of our readers can get a job there and then invest in my project... More »
—>Some shillyshallying office worker came across some papers jammed in the Best Buy shredder that purport to show that Best Buy is going to buy Wal-Mart. Normally I wouldn't sully the pages of The Conglomerist with such treacherous murk, but, irregardless, the news is just too good to keep to myself. If true, this would be the best thing ever to happen to consumers as two of the most kickass companies in America combine forces. Just thinking of of the cost-saving efficiencies provided by the vertical integration makes pleasure crystals ooze shoot out from my pores and explode all over my cat's face (don't worry, he's ok). Oh, and so he can be fired, this traitor's name is Ryan Smith More »
—>You don't become the number one retailer of electronics to American consumers without getting a few things right awesome, as Daniel shows us in this letter of compliment he sent The Conglomerist about a recent experience at Best Buy:
I stopped in the other night because my old HD DVD player died so I went in hoping to get a deal. On the shelf I found 2 open box Toshiba HD-A30 HD DVD players. Looking around I found the department head Derrik and we went back over to the DVD player aisle. More »
—>When personal finance magazine Kiplinger asked the Geek Squad about our video that caught one of their technicians stealing porn from our harddrive (peeping tomism, hardly limited to Geek Squad, is just as rampant in the computer repair industry as the photo developing industry), an unidentified Geek Squad spokeswoman ingenuously responded, "We have been the target of a blog that prefers to focus on the exceptions to our service and not the overall, vast majority of successful services we provide to clients." That's like saying dirt is unfairly targeted by a broom. Where there's a valid complaint, we'll post. Where there's a consumer whose rights aren't respected, we will defend. We don't have a vendetta against the Geek Squad, or any other company. We have a vendetta against bad customer service. That's our bottom line. After the jump, the original undercover video... More »
Buy It Later is a cool Firefox extension that monitors specific products for you for price drops or for them to come back in stock. [BuyLater via Lifehacker] More »
—>An internal Best Buy training document sent to The Consumerist reveals Best Buy's position on the "Extended Warranty" debate. Best Buy says they don't sell those pesky "extended warranties" that get so much bad press— instead they sell "performance service plans." The document also instructs Best Buy employees on how to sell these warranties to Upscale Suburban "Barry" and "Jill." It's important for consumers to be familiar with these tactics so they are able to recognize them while shopping in a high pressure sales environment such as Best Buy. Understanding the sales pitch puts you on equal ground with the salesperson. More »
—> Reader George is having serious trouble with Geek Squad. It started when he bought a laptop from Best Buy a few years ago. He sent it in to get a loose AC jack replaced. They replace it. Two months later, it's loose again. It's replaced again, but this time, when his picks it up, the door to the DVD/CD drive is warped and won't open. George's in a hurry, so he asked the Geek to make a note about the damage, and he'll bring it back for repair. From here on out, nothing goes right. First they can't find his account, then they can't find the note, then they can't find his computer, then they can't work their own computers. His full story, inside. More »
—>Best Buy called the cops on Alex because he told another shopper that the Jawbone headset he was considering was poor quality and marked up $30 from the manufacturer's price. Alex went to Best Buy to purchase a new Bluetooth headset because the Jawbone he recently purchased from Verizon wasn't cutting it. While browsing the headsets, he struck up a conversation with another customer who was checking out the Jawbone. Alex told his fellow customer that he had been disappointed in the quality of the Jawbone, and that Best Buy was charging $30 more than the manufacturer or Verizon. A sales associate overheard this and told the manager, who asked Alex to leave the store, then threatened to call the police, then did. More »
I saw something a little weird at our local Best Buy [redacted]. While on my break from work I decided to stop by the store and pick up the latest copy of Rainbow Six Vegas 2. While walking through the audio section of the Home Theater department I passed by a computer terminal next to some stereo equipment and an open filing cabinet in the middle with a tray on-top. At first I thought it was just storage for binders, pamphlets, sales ad's and stuff they might need on the floor, but when I looked into the tray I saw completed credit card forms, with peoples names, addresses, social security # and etc...More »
—>The Times is reporting that recession-fearing chain stores like Best Buy, Home Depot, and Circuit City are increasingly more desperate to clinch sales by negotiating prices. Hit the jump to see how ordinary shoppers are wielding research and charisma to knock added savings out of retailers. More »
—> Two days ago, Shawn bought a video card from Amazon and was surprised when the advertised "Instant Rebate" 
wasn't applied to his shopping cart. Turns out, it's a mail-in rebate, sorry for the confusion. Unfortunately Amazon still hasn't corrected the error as of the timestamp on this post, despite assuring him two days ago that they'd remove the icon. Remember to always click the "Rebate" link to see the actual details of the offer—it's not listed on the main product page, and mistakes happen. More »
—>Best Buy is offering $50 gift cards to people who bought HD-DVD players before Feb 23. say CNN.
The retailer said it will identify customers through its Reward Zone program, performance service plans and through online purchases and will mail out the gift cards to those individuals by May 1. More »
—>Attention Profiled Shoppers: Consumerist is now in possession of an internal training document that teaches Best Buy blue shirts how to stereotype customers. While Best Buy's use of personas has been known for several years, our exclusively obtained document contains several brand-new Best Buy personas, including "Maria Middle America" and "Empty Nesters" Helen and Charlie. More »
—>Amazon gives you free shipping if you buy over $25 of qualifying goods so people will sometimes search for "filler" items, little cheap doohickiesand to toss in to bring the total up. Here's three quick ways to find them, courtesy of WiseBread: More »
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I bought a new 46" Sony Bravia TV in January of this year from Circuit City in the Sugarhouse area of Salt Lake City (Store#3350 801-463-4600). Being a pretty technical guy, I tweaked the brightness, contrast, color temperature and other settings to my content. The picture looks great, but I was told from friends that it's good to have the TV calibrated from a professional as they have access to a service panel that your normal everyday consumer can't get to. They're supposed to tweak the settings according to ambient light in the room, and an end result is they also reduce power consumption making the TV last longer. More »
—>The aisles of Best Buy, Home Depot, and other retail stores are beginning to look more like a Turkish bazaar. Haggling is back, baby, at least based on some initial reports we've heard. People are talking about being able to say to walk into a retail store and say to sales people, "Hmm, I like, but it's a little more than I was hoping to pay. Can't you do any better on the price?" It seems the salesmen have some wiggle room on the price, especially if you opt for the extended warranty package. I'm helping out a reporter at a large publication, so if this has happened to you and you're willing to share your story on the record, drop me a line at ben@consumerist.com or leave a comment along with your contact info. More »
I bought two books on Amazon - and my total came to $24.74. So I scouted around and found a site (www.filleritem.com) that lets you choose a small priced item to bump the price over the $25 to qualify for free shipping. I chose a small wooden knob for $0.72. More »
CBC Marketplace compared Monster cables with a midrange and a $12 HDMI cable. Both to the naked eye and to a computerized hardware test all the cable performed flawlessly. The only difference was the price. [CBC Marketplace] More »
—> An employee of Best Buy apparently thinks too many days have gone without us posting something about the store, so he sent in his list of 10 things he thinks every customer should know when shopping there. Items 10 through 7 are all about warranties and service plans, so the usual caveats apply (make sure you know what's really covered, and that it's worth the extra cost to you). #4, however, is good to know: "Its pretty much pointless to call Corporate/Customer Service Hotline—they can not override a store's decision. Best bet is to call or email a District Manager or higher." More »
—> Jon saved up a bunch of PepsiStuff points and decided to redeem them for an item PepsiStuff is promoting on its website. That's how these point redemption programs usually work, you see. PepsiStuff.com apparently thinks otherwise—they'll let you redeem the points for a COBY player (ha ha ha ha), but the Sony alarm clock is just redemption bait. You're not supposed to actually pick that. More »
—>The Best Buy in Secaucus, NJ refused to match J&R's price for a Bluetooth headset, claiming that J&R was not covered by Best Buy's price match guarantee. Best Buy employees first called J&R—a large New York electronics retailer—a wholesaler. A manager later insisted that J&R was a Mom & Pop store and refused to match the lower price. When reader Steven attempted to cut through the absurdity by calling corporate, he was told that the price match is provided at each store's discretion. Read his full story, inside. More »
I'm sure you get a number of these, but here's another one because I know I don't get tired of them. A word of advice to anyone planning on making a purchase from Amazon.com that I overlooked myself; do not order anything glass with anything heavy, as they most likely WILL package them together. More »
—> A fire broke out in a Best Buy in Quincy, Illinois, over the weekend, and although the sprinkler system put it out promptly, it flooded the entire store in an inch and a half of water. The store manager told the local news station that it would take a few days to clean up and restock inventory—but we prefer to imagine that there's going to be an awful lot of CompUSA-style "AS IS" deals in the Quincy Best Buy very soon. More »
—>Can you tell the difference between music that passed through a pricey Monster stereo Cable, and a coat hanger? A reader forwarded us a post from the Audioholics Home Theater Forum and its author says no. He says his brother ran an experiment on him and four other audio aficionados listening to a new CD from a new group blindfolded. Seven different songs were played, each time heard with the speaker hooked up to Monster Cables, and the other time, hooked up to coat hanger wire. Nobody could determine which was the Monster Cable and which was the coat hanger. The kicker? None of the subjects even knew that coat hangers were going to be used. This is, of course, "nothing new," a Google of "monster cables vs coat hangers" shows that some users have been saying this for a while. Still, this is an experiment begging to be recreated under controlled conditions (say, for instance, a double-blind test). Science fair project! Read how it went down, inside... More »
—>Should it take several months and a small claims lawsuit to get Best Buy to take back their defective washing machine? No, but that's what it did take for reader Keith. More »
—>Circuit City lied to Ian about giving him a discounted iPod Touch, but now he has a satisfactory resolution. He writes:
After writing a number of emails to Circuit City and after a making few more (fruitless) calls, I tried something new and posted my story to their public online customer service forums. The forum manager responded very quickly and promised that someone would call me back to resolve things. I received two calls last Thursday from Circuit City staff who wanted to help fix the situation;More »
—>Ian writes:
Last Thursday 2/14, I ordered a 32GB iPod touch from CircuitCity.com at $474 + tax for a total of about $514. After thinking about it for a bit, I logged back in and canceled the order - just a bit too steep for an iPod, you know? I figured I'd have to wait a while for the price to drop, and left it at that. Well, believe it or not, I received a call at work today from a Circuit City sales rep at corporate telling me he'd offer me the iPod at a discount, so CC could keep my business. I was baffled - nothing like this has ever happened to me before, but the price he gave me $420 + tax... was too good to pass up.More »
—>Channel 10 out of Columbus, Ohio recently conducted a sting operation in which they equipped themselves with an easily repaired laptop and took it to Geek Squad, FireDog and Micro Center to see who could figure out what was wrong. More »
—>Silly Bill. He thought Bank of America would let him spend $5,800 on a home theater system just because he had over $10,000 in the bank. He tried to charge the system to his Bank of America Visa Platinum Check Card but was declined. Confused, Bill called Bank of America customer support for an explanation and had the sort of conversation that makes you want to drive a fork through your ear. More »
Best Buy's sales are down.
Best Buy said it expects sales at stores open at least 14 months, or same-store sales, to fall slightly in the fourth quarter on lower revenue for advanced televisions, MP3 devices and video games. More »
To help fill New York State's budget gap, Gov. Eliot Spitzer has revived a plan to impose sales tax on some goods purchased online that are not currently taxed, notably things bought from Amazon.com. The state estimates this will bring in $47 million a year. More »
—> On November 26th, a 35-year-old woman was shopping at Best Buy in Daytona Beach, Florida when there was some sort of communication breakdown, and a police officer who was at the store tasered her. We wrote about it here, and it turns out there's a video of the event here. At the time there were few details, but the full story has since been pieced together and resolved, and last week the Florida state attorney said "charges won't be pursued because there is no evidence that Beeland committed a crime." More »
—>Raelyn Campbell is suing Best Buy for $54 million for losing her laptop and lying to her for months about it. She bought a laptop from Best Buy with an extended warranty, it broke, she sent it in for repairs, months later she didn't have her laptop and after getting the runaround the store finally said it had lost her laptop and offered her a $900 gift card. She paid over $1,100 for the laptop, she paid for software on it, and it had irreplaceable photos, music, and personal information, including her tax returns. She freely admits she chose the high figure to attract media attention. She tells the Red Tape Chronicles "I can't help but wonder how many other people have had their computer stolen (or) lost by Best Buy and then been bullied into accepting lowball compensation offers for replacement expenses and no compensation for identity theft protection expenses." She also has a blog. More »
—>On May 3, 2007 a reader wrote in to explain an issue he was having with Best Buy's Geek Squad. His computer was randomly shutting off and generally acting crazy. His warranty was with Geek Squad so he took the computer in for repair. Geek Squad wiped his hard drive and returned the computer without fixing the problem. More »
—>Reader Jennifer wanted a new stove so she could cook delicious vittles for noshing during the SuperBowl. Sadly, she bought her stove from Best Buy, so instead of having a new stove for her party, she had a new stove delivered during the SuperBowl while she had a house full of guests. She launched an EECB (Executive Email Carpet Bomb) on them and CC'd us so we could listen in. More »
—>Stewart spent $105 on what he thought was a spindle of Memorex burnable DVDs. What he actually received was one burnable DVD sitting proudly atop a stack of CDs. More »
—>KNBC did an undercover investigation into tech repair services and found that, yep, they routinely overcharge customers, charge for services not rendered, make shit up, and look through your personal videos and pictures. They tested Circuit City, Fry's, some local repair places, and Best Buy. Surprisingly enough, Best Buy is the only place that correctly diagnosed the problem and didn't peek through their pictures (Probably because bossman Robert Stephens had vowed to fry peepers with the giant laser he has hidden on top of the Geek Squad HQ if any more techs got caught). More »
I found this on Amazon's video outlet. No wonder it's on sale.We're not, like, Barry Bonds or Sammy Sosa or anything, but yeah. Something seems a little off. More »
—>Reader and Flickr Pool member Steve has 6 kids and no fridge thanks to Best Buy. He's currently waiting around the house for his 4th repair guy in 8 months. More »
—>A FireDog Technician writes in with the following confessions. More »
—> Jed's Gateway MX6030 laptop worked pretty well for a couple of years, then the problems started—faulty power adapter, kaput motherboard, dead hard drive. Luckily, he'd bought a 3-year extended service plan. Unluckily, when his motherboard was replaced, the bottom of the laptop—where the serial and model numbers are located—was swapped out with one from a different model, so that when he brought it back for the hard drive repair, the store manager accused him of fraud. More »
—> Amazon sent out some unexpected bundles of email joy earlier this week, when it let unsuspecting couples know that not only did they have a baby gift registry, but that someone had bought them something off of it. Julee writes, "I was shocked to find out we were expecting a child. So was my husband. And that someone had been stalking us online early enough in the process to know to buy us a gift!" She asked her married friends and found out that they, too, had received similar good news. Babies for everyone! Hooray! More »
—>A few days ago Jason's story about Best Buy's bait-and-switch shot to internet prominence (137,166 pageviews on Consumerist and 4668 diggs), and now he's happy, has a $200 gift card to Best Buy, and a free copy of Saw IV. Let's recap: Jason went to Best Buy and saw a tag in-store advertising 2 DVDs for $25. He chose to buy two copies of 3:10 to Yuma. At checkout, it rang up for $19.99 a piece. When contested, the clerk pulled out a different circular that said "Buy Saw IV with any of these 3 movies for $25." Jason and a series of store employees disagreed for a long time about whether the circular applied to the tag, and Jason left the store with a $19.99 copy of 3:10 to Yuma, and a story, which he sent to The Consumerist. Then the internets happened. How did he go from screwed to elated? Find out in the exciting conclusion to his customer service misadventure, inside... More »
—> Matt writes in with a tip if you're unlucky enough to have a Best Buy credit card and plan on using it any time soon: check whether the brick and mortar store near you has any special promotions running first. If so, buy the item from their store instead of online or you'll be bound by Best Buy's 90 days same-as-cash terms regardless of whether or not the store is offering a better deal. More »
—>Ex-Best Buy manager Michael Oliveri, may "suck," but he's pretty darn clever. After he was fired from Best Buy he applied with Circuit City and Target, but became suspicious when job offers from those companies were abruptly terminated. More »
—>"I wonder if other readers have experienced the wasteful excessive packaging used by Amazon.com. I recently ordered a Gel Wrist Rest and a hardcover book (to qualify for free shipping). The two items were shipped to me separately, probably because they were coming from different warehouses. Though that itself is wasteful, I can understand why it may be necessary. But when the Wrist Rest arrived, it came in a GIANT box filled with paper stuffing (see photo). The box measured 24" x 12" x 18". The wrist rest is about 20" long, but flat. Is it possible that a company that sells all of its various products by mail doesn't have a long flat box that could have been used instead?" More »
—>Silly Jason. He thought a Best Buy sign reading "2 for $25" meant he could buy two DVDs for $25. He obviously didn't read the part of the sign that requires customers to buy Saw IV. More »
—> A reader over at Best Week Ever spotted this little makeshift "tribute" to recently deceased actor Heath Ledger in a San Diego Best Buy. More »
—>Amazon's new "Subscribe & Save" service lets you sign up to receive shipments of certain goods on a regular basis, meaning that now it's possible to subscribe to your toilet paper. Or cereal. Or Priolsec. They're also offering a 15% discount to subscribers. You can choose whether to have the items shipped once every one, two, three or six months. Shipping is free. The service also sends out emails reminding you of an upcoming shipment, with an option to cancel. GTPD: Getting toilet paper done. Nice! More »
—>Engadget reports that they have a leaked internal memo from Best Buy about a digital photo frame that shipped with a Trojan pre-installed More »
—>Best Buy's Geek Squad tech repair service helped bust a middle-school custodian for having child porn on his hard-drive. Fox9 reports:
Geek Squad employees viewed over 800 images contained in a folder titled XXXYOUNGS. The images featured young girls believed to be between the ages of 7 and 15. In some of the pictures the children were nude; in others, they were engaged in sexual acts with adult males.You would think they could stop after the first couple or so. Pedophiles should die a thousand deaths, but no doubt police appreciate that some tech services are now performing warrantless searches of citizen's hard drives for them. More »
—>Reader Travis would like to purchase an XM radio from Best Buy. Sadly for him, Best Buy refused to sell him the radio without first learning his phone number. Travis does not want to share his phone number with Best Buy, therefore Travis has no radio. More »
—>Matt writes:
Yesterday I went through the horror of taking my 15 year old brother to the Best Buy in Orland Park, IL on LaGrange Ave. I had close to $100 in Best Buy Gift Certificates given to me for Christmas. My brother and I were en route to dinner and we decided to swing by the aforementioned Best Buy to pick up a video game, Assassin's Creed, and XBOX Live Gold. We entered the store. I browsed the camera aisle looking for a cable to possibly purchase for our flat screen then headed to the video game section. I picked up the said items and headed to check out where hell will shortly ensue.More »
—>Circuit City's same store sales for the month of December are down 12% in the U.S., causing some to speculate that firing all the people who understand the products you carry might not be a winning sales strategy. More »
—>Chris writes: "I had been last minute Christmas shopping on Saturday morning with my younger brother and sister and we happened upon Best Buy where we were looking for a digital picture frame for my Dad as a Christmas present. We got to the section near the digital cameras and noticed a decent deal. "7" Digital Picture Frame Touch" 79.99 was the label. A whole slew of product (NuTouch 7" Touch button Frames) were neatly stocked on the shelf. Note: STOCKED not STACKED. I quickly picked one up and proceeded to the register. At the register- the product rung up for the incorrect price (179.99)- here in CT, when that happens, so long as the item is labeled as such in the store (mistake or not) the retailer is legally supposed to give you the product for free (if food items) or at the marked price if it is any other type of consumer product..." More »
—>For those of you who were wondering why you recently bought an empty box from Best Buy, look no further for your answer. Three Best Buy employees from a Bridgewater, NJ store were busted for removing items from their boxes and placing them inside the boxes of less expensive items, which they would then buy. More »
Hey guys, More »
—> Happy New Year, Canada! Here's a special treat for our neighbors to the north: More »
—>"On November 29th, 2007, I purchased a Phillips HTS3544 HTIB (Home Theater in-a-box) online at circuit city.com for $197.47. This included the extra that I paid for expedited 3-day shipping. Done. I thought with the weekend coming up I would receive it around December 3rd-4th. And thats when the problems started rolling on it. The first problem was that the circuit city warehouse didn't even notify FedEx until December 4th, and I didn't receive the item until December 7th (which is 3-day on FedEx's part). Okay, fine, I think Ill just call and have the extra charges refunded. But no way did I know this would spiral into what it has become." More »
—> Starting today, Warner Music songs are now available on the Amazon MP3 music store, in DRM-free formats and at prices competitive to what iTunes charges. According to Reuters, Amazon has now reached "deals with music labels Universal Music Group, part of Vivendi, and EMI. The remaining major recording group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, has yet to offer its songs for the service." Sony BMG, you guys are very, very old dorks. More »
—>Once again a reader contacts us to complain about Best Buy misleading their customers with an in-store only website that looks identical to the "real" website—except for the prices. More »
—>Reader Nick writes in with a bit of social engineering. More »
—>Best Buy still uses a secret internal website to deceive customers, according to the L.A. Times. The website appearing on in-store kiosks resembles Best Buy's official site in every way, except for the prices. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal was surprised to hear that his investigation failed to end Best Buy's bait-and-switch, telling the L.A. Times: "We thought Best Buy had addressed this. That's what they said to us. Apparently that's not the case." A tipster in Virginia also reports the continued existence of the secret website. More »
—>Circuit City President Philip Schoonover responded to 3rd quarter losses of $207.3 million by unveiling a retention program that will reward each top executive with $1 million. This is the same management team that axed 3,400 experienced salespeople leading to 2nd quarter losses of $62.8 million. Circuit City has already lost three (3) top executives this year, and Schoonover warns that the future earnings will be imperiled unless his management team remains intact. More »
—>Products don't advertise their drawbacks leaving shoppers to rely on online reviews as one of the only ways to determine a product's true worth. Salon argues in an article heavy on fluff and light on content that reviews are just a meaningless muddle of questionable opinions. We disagree, but the article does raise one good question: how do you judge the value online reviews? More »
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Dear Editors, More »
—>Evidence uncovered by retail store technicians (i.e. kiddie porn), is legally admissible as evidence in court because, "If a person is aware of, or freely grants to a third party, potential access to his computer contents, he has knowingly exposed the contents of his computer to the public and has lost any reasonable expectation of privacy in those contents...," the Superior Court of Pennsylvania ruled December 5th. The case hinged on the question of whether kiddie porn a Circuit City tech found could be admitted as evidence, overturning a lower court's decision. The Superior Court of PA also referred to codecs, computer video compression and decompression software, as "code X." More »
—>Amazon should take a closer look at how they're shipping hard drives, because the current plan just isn't working. More »
—>We get quite a few photos of funny open box "mistakes," but this is the first one that came with a complaint. More »
—>Mitch writes:
There are several types of people out there, but I'm the kind of person who believes people should stick with what they say. Circuit City offered a Sharp 46" Aquos on Black Friday this year, but they weren't about to let me have it easily. Now, having done Black Friday in the past I knew I would be in for a fight to get my TV, but what I had to go through was just ridiculous. More »
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I read consumerist everyday and your tips help me procure a Wii for xmas. I had bought one through Amazon, and it was delivered when I wasn't home. By the time I got home, someone had stolen it off my porch... More »
—> The XBOX that I bought on Black Friday had recently been scratching my discs. More »
—>Best Buy has backed off and apologized for sending the Laughing Squid blog a cease and desist letter over their posting on other group's Best Buy parody shirts. Initially, Best Buy didn't feel the blogger's free speech rights were of importance, saying Laughing Squid was "promoting" rather than reporting." Now Best Buy says, "...we do not object to fair and accurate reporting of fact, and respect the First Amendment rights of Laughing Squid and other bloggers to provide articles or commentary on current events. Now that we have a better understanding of your website, we regret sending you the demand letter." Hooray, the internet wins again! More »
—>BusinessWeek says Amazon is buying a stake in "Bill Me Later" a firm that offers open lines of credit to customers so they can shop without using a credit card. More »
—>My problem started yesterday morning when my wife and I decided we would either purchase 3 Microsoft Zunes or 3 iPods from Best Buy for part of our children's Christmas gifts. I checked prices by going to bestbuy.com and searching Zune. [ed.note— item no longer on sale.] More »
—>Ok, so there's these guys called Improv Everywhere and they like to do mass coordinated pranks inside stores. They did one where they sent a whole bunch of people in blue polo shirts and khakis to go to Best Buy and stand around. Genius. Anyway, they made some Tshirts that parody the Best Buy logo. Unfortunately, they're selling them, so they're infringing on Best Buy's intellectual copyright. They get a cease and desist letter. Fair enough. Where it gets freaky is that Laughing Squid blogged about their Tshirts, and Laughing Squid got a cease and desist letter too. Bwuh? Best Buy PR said the problem was that Laughing Squid wasn't "reporting" but was "promoting." Ok... So bloggers aren't journalists now, we're promoters? Duly noted. We'll get right on ordering kilos of coke and cutting up our enemies and dumping them in the East River. More »
On Black Friday, Amazon.com held a raffle of sorts. Essentially, they had several awesome items at insane prices, and people were randomly selected to get these details. One of these items was a really nice laptop, regularly $1000, discounted to $300 for 250 lucky people. I was not one of those lucky people. That didn't stop me from winning in my own sort of way. More »
—>Last Tuesday, based on industry-insider information provided "on background," we told you that this could be coming, and here it is: CompUSA announced Friday it will close all its stores after the Christmas shopping season. So to all you doubters, we offer a rousing, "nyah, nyah." Rumor of the impending shutdown was also given to The Boy Genius Report via a leaked internal Best Buy memo. More »
—>Best Buy, Sears, and Circuit City all promise fast and easy in-store pickup for online orders and are willing to pay if they fail to deliver. Mouseprint scoured the fine print of each guarantee in search of loopholes. More »
—>Dell is going to start selling laptop and desktop computers at 900 Best Buy locations in the U.S. says the WSJ. Dell has already started hocking their wares at Walmart, and has deals with "Staples Inc., France's Carrefour SA and Gome, China's largest electronics retailer." More »
—> Amazon either ran out of inventory or didn't catch several pricing errors on their Black Friday sale until after they'd already begun to ship products, but either way a lot of customers just had their orders canceled. One customer even got tricked into re-purchasing a wireless mouse at full price because the CSR promised him Amazon would honor the sale price—then after placing the order received an email from another CSR saying that the promise was no good and he'd be charged the full $89.99. Then the CSRs continued their all-drinking, all-smoking holiday office party over at Amazon Customer Service. More »
—>The Daytona Beach Police Department say that a woman was tasered last Monday inside of a Best Buy store after attempting to use someone else's credit card to make a purchase. More »
—>After reading "How Geek Squad Investigated Its Own Porn Thieves," another fired Geek Squad tech has chimed in to tell us how the internal witch hunt for porn thieves proceeded.
I had worked for Geek Squad for over a year, and Best Buy a year and a half before that and was recently let go. Back when they started scanning computers, they said they found downloaded music and movies on our machine and we were to send them the hard drives. So we boxed them up and sent them out. More »
—>Best Buy launched a nation-wide internal investigation after we published a video sting op capturing one of their techs stealing porn from our computer. A fired Geek Squad supervisor tells how it all went down...Innocents fired... Liars kept jobs... Store hard drives seized... Pants shat...
The start of the internal Geek Squad investigation began this summer as all of the locations throughout the country were entered through remote connection and scanned for violations. The Geek Squad "precincts" that had bench machines containing serious violations had their hard drives removed and shipped to the corporate office. All of this was done rapidly and under the watchful eye of salary managers who had their jobs threatened if this was not executed properly. My store was lucky enough to have scored well enough on the remote scans to keep our hard drives. I knew at this point that there was serious cause for concern if Best Buy was willing to spend the kind of cash necessary to execute remote scans throughout ALL of its stores in one day.More »
We don't necessarily agree that this Circuit City customer should have gotten a purple thumb drive for the same price as the same black one, or gotten a deal after it had expired, but two things are certain: One, he pursued his deal beyond the point of reason, and Two, the complaint's ornate tone and its litany of gripes makes for an entertaining read. [CheapAssGamer] More »
An LA resident reports he was verbally threatened and banned from Circuit City after insisting that the store honor its car audio installation guarantee. [Atwater Village Newbie] More »
—>HowItSucks.com is an interesting project that scrapes just the negative consumer electronic productive reviews from Amazon.com. Search by type or brand, and a red bar shows you how much it "sucks," based on the negative feedback. Pass the mouse over the item and the popup lists the essential statement from three of the reviews. Could be an interesting tool for comparison shopping. Negative reviews are a good starting point if you're trying to choose between similar products. You always need to be a critical reader, though. I bought an iPod sports band once and on the Apple site were all these people complaining about how it was too big and was falling off their arm. I then thought about how a number of Apple users are very picky and have twig-like bodies, whereas I have chunky biceps. I bought the sport-band and it fit perfectly. More »
—>The Los Angeles Times is reporting that traffic was up in stores around the country, but that shoppers were spending about 3.5% less per person than last year, or about $347.44. More »
—>Circuit City fired 3,400 of its highest-paid store employees in March, claiming that it needed to hire cheaper help in order to stop hemorrhaging money. It didn't work. Only a few months later, analysts blamed the ill-advised job cuts for Circuit City's poor sales. More »
—>Here's a letter that just goes to show that customer service depends on which employee you get. Reader Cody works at Best Buy (in the Apple department, apparently) and his brother is getting the runaround at the Apple store. Is this the ultimate retail showdown? More »
—>What's the deal with Best Buy? Reader Brian ordered the first eight seasons of Seinfeld, but instead of shipping seasons one, two, or seven, Best Buy decided to send two copies of seasons three and eight. Best Buy was willing to correct its shipping error, but when Brian noticed that several DVD cases were crumpled, Best Buy asked him to keep all eight seasons wrapped for eight business days while UPS conducted an investigation. More »
According to one reader's report, Amazon free shipping for Prime users and free Super Saver shipping isn't working. An Amazon rep told that their system is experiencing a major problem and that his account is among the first to be affected. Anyone else seeing this? More »
—>Amazon's "customers vote" shopping game is back and it seems very fun. More »
—>There's a forum on social networking site Myspace where Best Buy employees share the dumbest things customers have ever said to them. They range from the "I probably should find another job:"
wheres the bathroom More »
—>Could there actually be a secret program afoot to improve Best Buy's customer service and make amends for their bad ways? Marjorie writes:
Something is going on at Best Buy. I noticed that the phone for the local store, which used to be maddening with it's endless options that never seemed to route to a real live person, is actually answered by a real live person now. On top of that, I actually got good customer service from corporate. And it wasn't a hassle!More »
—>Reader John tells us that he witnessed some Best Buy employees announcing "the very last Wii" over and over again. Oh those crafty kids at Best Buy! More »
—>Dan bought an Aquos LC-32D40U 32" LCD TV' and one month out of warranty it developed a thin black line on the right side of the screen. Sharp didn't want to talk to him. Best Buy wanted to charge him $100 just to come out and look at it. Something had to be done. Dan writes: More »
—>Adam writes us to say that Circuit City has apologized for not honoring their advertisement and have offered to compensate him with both games for free. More »
—>Circuit City sent us the email address for their consumer affairs division. You can contact them there if you have a complaint not resolvable at the store level or by calling regular customer service. More »
—>Reader Zak writes to tell us that his copy of Call of Duty 4 was blank. Thankfully, he opened it while he was still inside the Best Buy, so exchanging it wasn't a problem. (Though some random Geek Squad guy did accuse him of being a scammer.)
I generally read a few of the network sites, Giz, LH and of course for a chuckle I also read Consumerist. Now I lack photo proof of this as I immediately did an illegal u-turn and took my product back to the store, but I'll let you know anyways. More »
—>If you have a problem with Circuit City, and you've called customer service, and you've escalated to a supervisor, and maybe even hung up and tried a different person, and you're still getting nowhere, here are some executive email addresses you could use to launch an Executive Email Carpet Bomb against Circuit City. More »
—>Mike Antonucci from the Mercury News tells us that Amazon.com has pulled the lead-tainted Fisher-Price Medical Kit from its website after fielding questions about a Consumer Reports investigation that found "troubling" levels of lead in the blood pressure cuff. More »
—>The RIAA defendant who lost her jury trial, Jammie Thomas, is telling her side of the story on p2pnet. Of particular interest: She claims that Best Buy made the decision to replace her hard drive, under the terms of her extended warranty, 6 months before she was served with the RIAA's subpoena. More »
—>Best Buy met one of Walmart's "secret deals" punch for punch but soon found itself in a bind trying to go up against the discount retailer. Walmart was selling Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD players for $98.97. BestBuy countered by dropping the price on theirs to $99.99. There was a run in-store and online quickly ran into backorders, backorders which would probably be never fulfilled, seeing as the Toshiba HD-A2 is a discontinued product. BestBuy could have told all the shoppers to shove it, but instead Best Buy said they would fulfill the orders with the HD-A3, retailing normally for $299.99. More »
After getting my items added with the sales rep on the phone, when it was time to use the coupon I was again told that it was invalid - this time, however, I was a given a reason. The sales rep told me that the coupon was not good for video games or movies (I was ordering a game and the flight of the conchords DVD). I told the rep that the coupon stated neither video games OR movies as restrictions for use and he got a manager. Three managers and supervisors later, they wouldn't budge. Needless to say, I didn't make the purchase through them. I told them that I had previously worked in retail, knew that they had the power to manually take $15 off of my purchase if the coupon wouldn't go through, and would not be making my purchase unless they honored the coupon as it was stated in their own promotion. More »
—>We love a happy ending. Sam has written in with the good news that Amex was able to get a full refund from Best Buy after they sold him a box of bathroom tiles instead of a hard drive. More »
—>It's always important to check the price tags in the store to make sure you're not getting ripped off. Alan writes:
I was in Best Buy yesterday, purchasing an external hard drive at Best Buy, and caught this little pricing glitch. Nothing like paying an extra $10 and not even getting the original packaging or the "new out of the box" feeling.Hey maybe that's the fee for insuring that there's actually a hard drive inside instead of ceramic bath tiles. More »
Amazon will supposedly sell a unspecified but large number of Wii game consoles on Wednesday, October 31st at 10 am PDT (1 pm EDT). [NintendoWiiFanboy] More »
—>Sam says that he went to BestBuy.com and bought a hard drive for in-store pick up. What he got was a box of bathroom tiles. Now Best Buy is saying he'd better take it up with manufacturer and that they're not going to issue a refund and that Sam should just take his loss. We don't think he should. We think it's not legal to sell someone a box full of bathroom tiles instead of a hard drive. More »
Sean writes:
I am "The Computer Guy" in my family and my mother needed a laptop for work. My wife and I went to Best Buy in Bel Air, MD with her to pick out one that would fit her budget and allowed her to work from home. I found a Compaq for a little more than $700 on sale without rebates. I signaled for an employee and told her the laptop we wanted. The employee got the laptop and went on about needing the service plan. I let her drone on because I wanted to see if it covered accidental breakage (it doesn't). During the speech she talked about the battery, how it's like a cell phone battery, and that they would replace it once a year for the length of the contract. She then mentioned that the battery would cost my Mother $500 if she had to buy it separately...More »
—>Best Buy has recently come under fire for selling people "restoration cds" at the ridiculous price of $29 dollars. PC World caught 3 of 5 Best Buy salespeople insisting that consumers couldn't make the recovery discs themselves and would either need to buy them from Best Buy or the manufacturer (for more than Best Buy charges.) This just simply isn't true. More »
Consumerist, More »
—> At first when reader Brian sent this photo of an open item that cost more than a new one, we thought, "HA! Stupid!" More »
Hi Ben & Meghann, More »
—>Best Buy has decided to (finally) stop selling soon-to-be-obsolete analog televisions, according to the AP. The FCC has been on the war path, sending secret agents to surf the web and inspect product displays to make sure that consumers are being warned not to buy analog TVs with the expectation that they will work properly without a converter box after 2009. More »
A friend of ours bought a Sharp Aquos LC-32D40U last year. Its warranty expired in August. Naturally, this month, it developed a strange liberation. There's a thin black line on the right side of the screen. It sorta looks like it's not completely hiding the letter boxes when you go to full screen format. When he called Sharp, they didn't want to help him because his warranty was over. Best Buy, where he bought it, will charge $100 to come out and look and it. More »
—>Mark writes:
Saw a great deal at Circuit City in yesterday's Sunday ad. Not crazy, but great. $5 for a Sony 1G Microvault Flash drive... The ad said, "Save $25. Reg. 29.95." More »
I just wanted to let you guys know that Amazon has been tracking reviews posted for possible safety concerns. I had a rice cooker that decided to shock me several times, so I wrote an anonymous review back in January. Unexpectedly, a few weeks ago, I get an email from Amazon asking about the incident. Given the gap between the review and the email, I suspect this is a new program on their part. A copy of their email is below. More »
Previously, Carey posted a photograph of a Geek Squad car on a sidewalk as if it were some sort of problem. We have informed Carey that this is in fact a Best Buy sidewalk, and it's done to promote Geek Squad services inside the store. This has been so noted this on the original post, and we've encouraged him to get out into the countryside more often. The Consumerist regrets the error. More »
A man got 135 months in jail and a $10,000 fine after Geek Squad reported the computer he brought in for servicing had child pornography on it. More »
—>Best Buy hired a firm to take a survey of the state of the American public's knowledge of HDTV, and sad results are in. You don't know what the hell is going on with your television. More »
—> In response to being sued and humiliated on the internet over their "secret website," reader MK says Best Buy has added a disclaimer that warns customers that the in-store kiosk doesn't display the same prices as the public website. More »
—>[September 22. Image thanks to Roche!] More »
—>Several of our readers received this email from Best Buy, explaining that they won't be honoring a mistake in the upcoming September 23, 2007 Best Buy ad. More »
—>Legal charges have been dropped against Michael Righi (pictured), the guy arrested after refusing to show his receipt to Circuit City, and his driver's license to a police officer, in exchange for Righi's pledge to not sue the city. On his blog, Righi writes that he was willing to fight the city to the end without forfeiting any rights whatsoever, but he wanted to spare his family, who would have been principal witnesses, from a protracted legal battle. More »
—>Here's a weird situation from Orland Park, IL. Mike Quilty, who works for a subcontractor for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, went to Best Buy to purchase a refrigerator. More »
—>A former Best Buy employee and Consumerist tipster in good standing shared some insider insights about why store employees are so zealous in checking your receipt, and so zealously underinformed as to how they have no legal right to make you show it. More »
—> The "promise" of e-books is so old it's got hair on it, but now two online giants are stepping up to the plate with their own spin on how best to sell books digitally. Next month, Amazon will finally release its long-rumored Kindle, an e-ink reader which will wirelessly connect to Amazon via EVDO, so you can purchase books even more easily than new iPod Touch owners can buy songs while they're at Starbucks. And before the end of the year, Google will start charging for full online access to some digital copies of books in its database. More »
—>Michael Righi got in trouble this Saturday for refusing to voluntarily show his receipt when exiting a Ohio Circuit City. According to his account, the manager and security guard followed him into the parking lot and prevented the car door from being shut or the car from moving. When Michael called 911, the cop ended up arresting him for not providing his driver's license. More »
—>Best Buy employee Olivia Bailey, 18, was accused last week of stealing $13,000 from a Best Buy store in Lawrence, NY by using fraudulently obtained credit card numbers to purchase gift cards. More »
—>PC World wants to let you know that you don't need to buy the "recovery disks" that Best Buy and Circuit City are always trying to sell you. PC World says they've heard from consumers that Circuit City is telling people that they need FireDog to create these disks and that they can't do it themselves. More »
—>In addition to having Best Buy Geeks Squad locations hook up store computers to headquarters to check for porn and music stolen from customer's computers, and pirated software, they're also sending "audit teams" to investigate hard-drives at the stores in-person, reports an insider. More »
—>As of July 25, Lorraine still didn't have her original laptop back from Best Buy. It seems to have vanished into the nether of a 3rd party repair center. Inside, you can read the update to her story posted on July 13th More »
—>Jenn's husband Dave bought a game on BestBuy.com then picked it up in store. By doing this he saved $10. Sadly for Dave and Jenn, the game was missing its manual and you need a code from the manual to play the game. Simple, enough, right? Just exchange the defective game for a new one at Best Buy. More »
—>If you love the great porn-stealing and privacy-invading services currently offered by Geek Squad's in-store and in-home tech support, have cheer: Best Buy is rebranding all its service departments into Geek Squads, according to an inside source. They're testing it out in the New York metro area in preparation for a possible nation-wide rollout. More »
—>According to Consumerist's sister-site Kotaku, CheapAssGamer.com has been sued subpoenaed by Circuit City over some leaked advertisements posted to their forum. More »
—> Josh realized he forgot to click a "web only special" link when ordering something from CircuitCity.com, so he suspected that his order was not processed correctly. He called customer service as a precaution and sure enough, because he didn't click the link they said he wouldn't be getting the the deal and there was nothing they could do about it. More »
—>Best Buy is scanning Geek Squad computers for signs of porn infestation, as part of their continuing witch hunt. According to reports from four different Geek Squad employees, an edict was issued from corporate requiring precincts to connect every computer in every precinct to Agent Johnny Utah. More »
—>Agent Johnny Utah, aside from being the name of Keanu Reeves' character in Point Break, is an outsourcing technique used by Geek Squad to keep labor costs low. More »
—>Best Buy is on the offense, launching an internal witch hunt to unmask the "rogue employees" responsible for exposing Geek Squad's pervasive culture of porn pilfering. Their first victim is the Geek Squad supervisor of the Santa Clarita store, one of the only Best Buy locations whose former employees were quoted in recent articles, print as being a center for porn pilfering. More »
—>A Circuit City manager told reader Ryan that the "unbeatable price guarantee" will soon be eliminated. Ryan was asking the Circuit City in Hicksville, NY to match Best Buy's price for an Arrested Development DVD; though the cashier refused to honor the policy - which beats the advertised price of any local competitor by 10% - the manager explained that it was just a huge tiny mistake, and that so long as signs advertising the policy are up, the policy will be honored. After the jump, we ask Circuit City when the signs are coming down. More »
Word on the street is that following negative stories in the LA Daily News, and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Best Buy interrogated employees at the Santa Clarita store where former Geek Squad agent and Consumerist reader Brett Haddock used to work, and could be gearing up, or at least, wants people to think it's gearing up, to seek damages against Geeks who spoke out about the porn pilfering. More »
Just did a phone interview with CBS2 in LA. Looks like they're picking up our Geek Squad sting operation story. The piece might air at 6, but it could be later, too. We know many of you are sick of hearing about it but there's a whole bunch of America that hasn't. A still image of monsieur Popken with a crackly phone conversation playing underneath shall be their reward. More »
—>Reader Jeff could not convince Circuit City to honor its "Unbeatable Price Guarantee." Circuit City's stated policy is to beat any competitor's price by 10%. Jeff found the same 19" Acer monitor retailing for $219 at Circuit City for only $129 at a nearby Best Buy, yet Circuit City: "would not price match this item because the cost was too low." Jeff writes: More »
—>David brought two laptops to Best Buy for repair; neither was ever seen or heard from again. Best Buy sent David's first laptop, a Sony Vaio, back to Sony for repairs. Unable to find the laptop after one month, Best Buy declared it irretrievably lost and offered David an upgraded Vaio for $200. One year later, the second laptop broke. Like the first, it disappeared forever after being dispatched to Sony. David writes:
I just recently started reading The Consumerist, and Lorraine's nightmare with her laptop repair reminded me of my own nightmare of Best Buy completely losing two laptops I sent in for repair, leaving me without any laptop for a total of 4 months, as well as all the data I lost on the first laptop. It all started a little over 3 years ago when a relative bought me a top-of-the-line Sony Vaio at a Best Buy. More »
—>Jason Kottke was home Saturday at 3:36 pm when UPS claims they attempted to deliver his copy of Harry Potter. No notice was left on Kottke's door; the neighboring doorman saw no UPS truck; UPS' own website shows that the package never transitioned from the penultimate status of "In Transit To Final Destination" to "Out For Delivery." Why would UPS lie about delivering a copy of Harry Potter? More »
—>Today's Minneapolis Star Tribune confirmed our reports of widespread privacy violations and thievery at Best Buy's Geek Squad. The Star Tribune interviewed several Geek Squad agents on the record, and their findings mirror our own:
More »
—> Reader Scott points out that the number one item on the "Movers & Shakers List" in the toy category (like, kids toys) on Amazon.com is the above pictured "cigarette dispensing donkey." More »
—>According to an insider, these are the tools, programs, and procedures one Geek Squad precinct exploits to snarf up your porn: More »
—>"Hi, my name is Holly Forman-Petersen and I used to be a Special Agent at The Geek Squad. I am eBaying my Special Agent badge. More »
—>"I worked for Best Buy 285 several years ago (2003-2005) and was both a Blackshirt and an Agent once the Geek Squad rolled out. More »
Antonio Cangiano says he bought a brand new Aspire 5100 as a gift for his wife and barely touched it before a giant crystal liquid leak appeared on its screen. A Best Buy tech insisted it was customer abuse, but after an hour of arguing, he got them to agree to look at it in the warranty inspection depot. There is no lesson here, no takeaway, only one man's vented spleen. More »
—>hashand: I used to work at a computer repair place. All the stuff you're finding isn't limited to Best Buy. We had a 2 TB [terabyte] server of mp3s. More »
—>Two more individuals identifying themselves as former Geek Squad employees have stepped forward with allegations about the repair company's employees unauthorized copying of personal information from customer's hard-drives. More »
A sampling of what they're saying on the Geek Squad internal message board about "Consumerist Catches Geek Squad Stealing Porn From Customer's Computer." More »
—>Here's how we rigged our computer to make a video of itself and caught the Geek Squad stealing porn from it. More »
It's coming so very soon. Technology, the politics of delegation, in-vain attempts at perfection, all these slowed what we thought was gonna be a lot quicker. Sorry for the delay, we know some of you've been antsy. Bear with us! More »
—>• Amazon.com offers $30 credit if you get their Visa card. Are there reasons not to get it? More »
—>
I took my nephew to our local Circuit City in Bainbridge Twp, Ohio on Thursday June 21st, 2007. He checked the website the night before on what he was going to get and when he went to go get the product off of the shelf the price was posted wrong on the shelf. He took it up to the register and the lady that waited on him said that will be $184.99 with $25.00 rebate. More »
Let me state clearly what they are having us do: I had to return the camera at the store, the cost of which will be refunded to my brother's card. Then I have to call my brother and explain to him why I am exchanging his gift and ask him to please go back online and purchase a different camera for me. Talk about a pain for my brother who was just trying to get me a nice wedding gift! More »
—>Here's something of a "eff you" to consumers, according to Pitchfork Media. More »
Still working on the video. Here's a small taste of what's to come... More »
—>I had worked at Circuit City for quite some time, until recently when I could no longer stand the shady operations of its business. While working at Circuit City I worked in the Media and Technology department. I believe there are a few things that people should know about Circuit City... More »
—>The racketeering case against Best Buy and Microsoft has taken an ugly turn. An attorney for Best Buy has admitted to altering emails that were to be used as evidence in the case. If you're new to this class action lawsuit, Microsoft is accused of paying Best Buy to collect and use customer's credit card information without their permission, signing them up for "free trials" of MSN that they didn't want and or weren't aware existed. When the free trial period was up, MSN began to bill them without their knowledge or consent. A former Best Buy employee wrote in to confess to pulling this sort of scheme on customers, if you're looking for more detail on how it all worked. More »
—>Geek Squad CEO Robert Stephens just emailed us: More »
—>The Connecticut Attorney General has announced a lawsuit against Best Buy in regards to a secret internal website that is identical to their public website except for the prices. Consumerist has received reports of this website being used to attempt to trick our readers as recently as March 19, 2007. More »
The young man behind the counter told me that the techs weren't in yet, but that he would take down my info by hand and the computer and that they would call me when they came in for the day. (I figured if it was more then a couple hundred I would just spring for a new one). Well, at noon today having not heard back I called over to find out the status, and the gentleman who I spoke to told me, and this is a quote "We dont have that computer".Uh. What? Read E's entire email inside. More »
—>When Charlie's iPod died, again, she took it to Best Buy, again, as it was under one of those extended warranties they push. What she got back in the mail was an even more messed up iPod. When she took it to the store, they were kinda jerks about it. After her complaint got posted here, Best Buy swooped in. More »
—>Is Chase enrolling customers in paperless billing without their consent and then charging them late fees when they fail to pay? That's what seems to have happened to Jack, who writes: More »
—>When you think RICO you think Al Capone, or maybe Tony Soprano if you watch too much HBO. You don't really think of Best Buy and Microsoft, do you? James Odom does. He's the original plaintiff in a now 4 year old class action lawsuit that just won't go away for Best Buy and Microsoft, one that now includes racketeering charges. More »
—>Here at the Consumerist we tell you not to spend your hard-earned money on things like "Extended Warranties" or "Replacement Plans." Why? Because you can get a credit card with extended warranty protection and double your warranty for free. Still, many people buy into the replacement/warranty plans and then are disappointed when using them is a hassle. Like Reader Matt, for example. Matt found out the hard way that Best Buy will go out of their way to sell you the plan, but are uninterested in helping you take advantage of it. More »
—>Charlie gave her 4th gen iPod to Geek Squad for warranty repair. They promised her a new iPod in return. Instead, she received an iPod with a sad face screen. When she shook it, its hard drive rattled around. There was a ding in the side. The back of the iPod was buffed shiny, so much so you couldn't hardly see the iPod logo. When she took it back to the store, she says they were kinda obnoxious to her. The iPod is sent away again, but her hopes are not high. More »
—>Child porn is a most heinous exploitation and its publishers and consumers should be boiled in blood, then stabbed in the face, then fed to wolverines. The Geek Squad is helping feed those wolverines by reporting child porn they find on customer's computers to the police, the St Louis Dispatch reports: More »
The results were varied and shocking: More »
A Minneapolis news site decided to follow up on whether Geek Squad really harvests your porn from your computer when you take it in for repairs. Since Geek Squad started amidst the state's frozen drifts, its denizens take a special interest in its doings. More »
—>Looking through comments both here and on Digg, it seems that finding and saving customer's porn from their laptops is one of the perks of the job, and it's hardly limited to the Geek Squad. More »
—>This is the ultimate Geek Squad insider confession. It's 10 pages long. More »
In past decades, deejays and music critics helped shape musical trends. Today, many music industry executives agree, the big boxes have become the new tastemakers. Even as compact disc sales fall, their choices dictate which CDs are widely available on store shelves across the U.S. Big boxes are the industry's biggest distribution channel — and the rock, hip-hop, jazz and classical music titles they choose not to carry face drastically reduced chances of reaching mass audiences. More »
—>UPDATE: Dan gets sweet sweet resolution. More »
—>We just received the court transcript detailing former Geek Squad Agent Hao Kuo Chi "no-contest" plea in the case of his alleged setting up a cameraphone while on call in a customer's house and recording a young woman taking a shower. More »
—>When reached for comment, Geek Squad founder Robert Stephens said he knew nothing about 40% tech staff reduction / have-more-repairs-done-remotely-by-techs-in-India memo as described by our tipster. In fact, he said he'd like to see it if we did ever end up getting it. Anyhow, as far as staff reductions go Stephens said, "There has been restructuring since we launched within Best Buy and the most recent was back in Jan/Feb but that's old news - and quite public." More »
—>UPDATE: 40% Geek Squad Downsizing Memo? Not That I Know Of, Says Founder More »
—>When former Geek Squad Agent Hao Kuo Chi appeared in court on April 3rd, 2007, he plead "no contest" to one count of unlawful invasion of privacy, according to the LA County DA's office. He received this sentence: More »
—>Though he stands accused of a disgusting act, secretly recording a customer taking a shower, Geek Squad Agent Hao Kuo Chi was held in high esteem by customers and among his fellow employees. More »
—>If Hao Kuo Chi really did tape the 22-year-old daughter of a customer taking a shower, the phone propped up in the bathroom might have been a PPC-6700. These PocketPC phones are standard-issue to the Geek Squad techs who perform in-home repairs — known as "DA's" or "Double Agents" in Geek Squad parlance. More »
Hao Kuo Chi was paying a house call when Sarah Vasquez says he set his camera phone up in the bathroom, left it running, and recorded her bathing. More »
In the ensuing months, through May 2005 and up until the present, three separate installation companies hired and retained by Best Buy to deliver and install the purchased goods made some effort to install the Morris' home theater, including: National Installation Company, K.A.T. Communications, and Digital Technology, Inc.," the suit says. More »
—>56% of Geek Squad employees responding to a poll on a company online forum said they found "no reason" to use anti-static wrist straps when repairing customer's computers. More »
—>Here's 6 more Geek Squad manuals. Combine this with the 6 we've already posted and soon we'll have enough info to open our own franchise. More »
—>Etymotic ER6is are good iPod headphone replacements/upgrades. More »
Best Buy said consumers can expect to see prices remain low because the consumer electronics industry is so highly competitive. Instead of seeing fewer discounts, it could mean both retailers and suppliers take a hit on their bottom line. "I think you're going to see us eat a little bit of it and the vendors eat a little bit of it," Lotman said. More »
—>Five ways Best Buy drives the costs out of the system, sullying Geek Squad CEO Robert Stephen's vision of superlative computer repair, as told by a former Geek Squad Senior Agent. More »
—>Here's 5 more Geek Squad manuals. They're not a fascinating as the troubleshooting manual, but perhaps if you use the Geek Squad you can use them to make sure they're doing their job right. Or you could learn how to open up your own Geek Squad store. Sort of like a lemonade stand, except instead of turning lemons into a tasty beverage, you turn laptops into lemons. More »
—>EnjoyDeals helps you find hidden Amazon deals. More »
—>Best Buy today agreed to purchase leading independent DSL provider Speakeasy, starting Q1 2008. More »
The clerk told the customer that Microsoft handles all warranties on the Xbox360 and that Microsoft would not allow BestBuy to exchange the device. More »
I have read on your website about deceptive practices involving Best Buy where they advertise one thing on their website for a price, and then it is different when you go in the store. More »
—>The Auburn Hills, MI Circuit City refuses to exchange Eric's broken TV, even though, according to Circuit City's help desk, he is eligible for an exchange under his service plan. Eric purchased an open-box 17" Magnavox LCD with built-in DVD player; it stopped ejecting disks, trapping his daughter's sign-language DVD inside. Circuit City sent the unit for repair, but the TV was totaled. Eric was told to go back for an exchange unit.
Upon returning to the store, I was not happy to hear that the store would not exchange my TV because (1) it was an open box item, and (2) the only similar unit to mine cost $200 more than what I paid. I asked for and was given a copy of the service plan guidelines, which clearly state that items covered under a service plan are treated like new, sealed box items and qualify for the usual Circuit City exchange and return policy. I then called the phone number on the service plan and was told that the exchange should happen even if the replacement was a greater cost than the original. However, Greg (the store director) said there was no way he was exchanging the TV in his store. Left with no other option, and per the service agreement, I then asked for a gift card in the amount of purchase so I could pick out another TV. Greg also refused this, saying that gift cards are not issued for these issues, and that I would have to find another open-box item as a replacement.Great service, Greg. Eric's email and our suggestion, inside... More »
Saks, whose flagship is down the street, generates sales of $362 per square foot a year. Best Buy (Charts) stores turn $930 - tops for electronics retailers - while Tiffany & Co. (Charts) takes in $2,666.Fortune also says that if Apple sells its goal of 10 million iPhones in 2008, Apple stores will make as much as Best Buy overall, in a fraction of the space. More »
—>A common refrain we hear from the former and current Geek Squad employees we've been talking to is that Geek Squad used to be awesome. Robert Stephens built up an award-winning company with a reputation for being the best in the business. Then he sold it to Best Buy and they turned it to garbage. More »
—>The people behind BugMeNot and RetailMeNot have a new creation, JungleCrazy, designed to help you find the 70% off and up Amazon deals. More »
—>Chris has a parry and thrust to the Geek Squad founder's response to his original confession. More »
—>Did you know Best Buy got rid of their robot menus? Now when you call 1-888-BEST-BUY, all you have to do is press 2 and a human operator will direct your call. This is fantastic. Customers often cite being enraged by pushing button after button, especially when they're already pissed off to begin with. More »
—>Amazon failed to deliver a $75 gift card reader Michael purchased for a business associate in 2004. Michael was notified of the failure in 2006, and issued a claim code worth $75. When Michael tried to use the code, it came up as invalid. Michael called Amazon and went through three representatives before reaching a supervisor.
She eventually decided that the reason the claim code was not working was because Amazon had expired it after sending it to me, and there was nothing she could do. It didn't matter that Amazon's web site said that gift certificates sold to people in Massachusetts don't expire. It didn't matter that Massachusetts state law required that the gift certificate remain valid for a minimum of 7 years (or forever if it doesn't clearly state an expiration date, which is what actually applies to this case). It didn't matter that Amazon had never sent the gift certificate to the original intended recipient, it didn't matter that Amazon had told me it was valid right before expiring it, what mattered was that the gift certificate had expired and so there was nothing that could be done.The resolution, and Michael's email, inside... More »
—>Best Buy quoted four different policies to Mark when he tried to exchange his step-daugher's iPod speaker. The speaker was purchased as a gift from BestBuy.com by her father, who is currently serving in Afghanistan.
After we received the items, we decided that she would take back the iPod speaker set because we already had one in the house. That way she could get something that she would enjoy, and she could still use our speakers. It sounded simple, just return the item, get a store credit, and let her pick something out. We were so wrong on that one.Mark brought the speaker to Best Buy, where he was told that the stores could only return, not exchange items purchased through the website. Not wanting to argue, Mark went home and called customer service. A supervisor said only the corporate office could help. When Mark reached corporate, he was told stores could accept exchanges. The CSR gave Mark a case number and an 800 number to call if there was a problem exchanging the speaker at the store. More »
—>We don't want to rain on their parade, but we think the new IMDB website's recommendation engine could use some work. Just because a movie is about someone returning home, and contains the word...well, you get the idea. —MEGHANN MARCO More »
—>Working mom/WSJ reporter Suzanne Barlyn discovered it wasn't easy to return a busted Tamagotchi. The Journal also tried to return a Target shirt that didn't make it through the wash, a $13 camera from Toys "R" Us that broke after one use, a broken flat-panel TV from Amazon, a coat that didn't fit from BabyGap, and an oversize duffel from L.L. Bean. At each turn, they discovered retailers tossing road-blocks in their way.
Who can blame them? Return fraud soaked retailers for an estimated $9.6 billion in 2006, according to the National Retail Federation. Returning stolen merchandise for a refund is the most flagrant offense, affecting 95% of retailers last year. Computer-generated, counterfeit receipts make the practice easier. So-called wardrobing — the unethical practice of returning nondefective, used merchandise — affected 56% of companies. About 69% of retailers have modified their return policies in response to fraud, according to NRF. Changes include shorter time limits, restocking fees and requirements for original packaging.The Journal recommends making purchases with a credit card (paid in full each month,) since retailers look up purchases electronically. We agree, but for a different reason: credit cards allow you to dispute charges. Tell us about your fun experiences returning products in the comments. — CAREY GREENBERG-BERGER More »
—>The prevailing trends in web design say go minimal or go home, so why then is Amazon's front page cluster bomb of choices? It sells more, writes Alex Moskalyuk. More »
—>Amazon.com has put together a list of bad gift ideas, and we must say we enjoyed it. Of particular interest is the Fresh Whole Rabbit that we posted about previously. Other bad ideas we like: More »
On the day after Thanksgiving, Mr. Sollitto, the chairman and chief executive of Syntax-Brillian, had 32-inch Olevia liquid-crystal display TV sets selling at Circuit City for $475, almost half its regular price. More »
The state attorney general's office has started an investigation into whether Best Buy maintains a secret intranet site that may have been used by some salesmen to deny customers discounts that appear on the company's public Internet site.We applaud the CT State's Attorney for moving so quickly on this, but wonder if the investigation will have any teeth. As commenter something_amazing pointed out, Best Buy's price matching guidelines explicitly state that the website does not match store pricing, and the store only matches "a lower advertised price offered by a local retail competitor on the same available brand and model." More »
Come Monday, Circuit City will close seven U.S. stores, which can only mean one thing: clearance sale on Wednesday. More »
—>Have you ever found a deal at Best Buy's website only to travel to the store and find that the "sale" is over? Did the Best Buy employee show you "proof" on their "website"? It now seems that there are really TWO websites, and they're identical except for the prices. Here's the deal: More »
- • Most CompUSA stores will be open from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. (New Jersey stores will not be open because of state retailing laws.) More »
—>Amazon's semi-annual dress shirt sale is going on now. Quality shirts by Arrow, Izod, Geoffrey Beene, Calvin Klein, Kenneth Cole, and more for just $12.99-$29.99. More »
—>UPDATE: More Walmart Porn Found More »
- Had some trouble getting them, apparently me doing this 2 other times has sparked the interest of the management and they've received an e-mail not to let anyone do this anymore. I'd like to think this is solely because of me because this was an original idea of mine. I'm sure someone may have done this before, but I have not heard of anyone else doing such a thing. In any case, I was informed about not being able to do such a thing last night when I tried, my mom went in a quite a rage and I told her we'll just try again today and hopefully it will be like when Hillary did it for me the 2nd time with no questions of whether or not you can do it. Nikki (left) was more than happy to, we got to around 38 when another cashier recognized me from last night, she said we couldn't and she called up the manager. The manager tried telling us that we couldn't do this without us even giving a say in the matter. Thats when my mom became upset again and she pointed out how often we come here and how much we spend, and that she had talked to the number they gave us last night to give it approved and they said it was okay. The manager was silent after that, I wanted to laugh, but I held it in.
Jorge spends over $2000 for a new JVC TV from Best Buy, based on an ad which said the price included a stand. TV arrives, no stand. Jorge goes to his Best Buy in Denver, Co, asks for it, and the assistant manager refuses to honor the ad. More »
—>Why go to the trouble of manually hacking Amazon's URLs to search for bargains when we've got all the messy work done for you? More »
—>Seriously what is up with people putting porn in boxes and returning them to the store? A 14 year-old kid in Utah bought Madden '07, opened it up and found porn. EA has apologized and both they and Circuit City are looking into how porn got into the Madden game. More »
—>Amazon has launched a new site, Endless.com, specializing in shoes and handbags. The site has 250 brands and 15,000 styles and makes the unusual, but tempting, offer of "Free Overnight Shipping." Really? Really. More »
—>Amazon sells everything. It's too bad Elmer Fudd didn't know about this service. It could have saved him a lot of trouble.—MEGHANN MARCO More »
Reader something_amazing was having less than amazing luck reaching Best Buy. He wanted to know what Roombas they had in stock. When he called, he would wait on hold for five minutes, only to be disconnected. He could actually hear the phone being picked up and then hung up. He had success after we told him to dial extension 2180. More »
—>This is the Amazon UK warehouse a week before Christmas. Click to enlarge. That is a lot of freaking merchandise. How do they handle it all? Answer: Get the small things right, then scale huge. — BEN POPKEN More »
Best Buy calls 911 after Consumerist reader RJH asks for a refund on a nonworking Tony Bennet CD. More »
Charles Yu wanted a plasma tv, so when he learned about Best Buy's reward program, he thought he'd better sign up. Trouble is, Best Buy's website requires a last name to be at least 3 letters long. When he called to complain, the Best Buy CSR suggested he change his last name. More »
You can save up to 80% off at Amazon.com's year-end clearance going on now. More »
—>Amazon has a policy that if you buy something from them, and the price drops within 30 days, they will refund you the difference. More »
—>Help reader OnoSideboard achieve the third level of tzedakah: More »
Best Buy drills its salespeople to size up incoming customers, label based on type, and sell accordingly. This news is two years old but is new to us. Here's the breakdown: More »
By insisting on his consumer rights, Sandar got Best Buy to sell him a $1999 plasma HDTV for $1499. More »
If you need traction on a thorny Amazon.com customer service issue, and you feel regular customer service isn't cutting it, you can reach their executive customer service team by email, at ecr@amazon.com. More »
Reader Alex sends us a tip about the a scam that he learned about while working at Best Buy. Here's the scam: More »
Finally, a spaghetti western that doesn't end in a flurry of bullets. — BEN POPKEN More »
Retailers are getting stricter with their return policies this year. If you're not hot about the Marshmallow Shooter or Toshiba SD-4990 DVD Player grams got you, keep the receipt and don't take it out of the package. Here's the return policies of some of the major retailers. — BEN POPKEN More »
After looking at a variety of laptops on-line, we went to Best Buy to see some IRL, so we'd know what to order from whomever we decided to order from. This is a tactic we use often, because a picture of a laptop is not enough information for us. After wandering down to the crowded laptop section, we noticed that the small Toshiba laptop that we'd wanted to check out was not working. It appeared to be locked down by some sort of BestBuyWare. So, we broke our cardinal rule of shopping and asked for "help." More »
Remember, don't go to Best Buy without doing your product research first. The only thing you should ask a BB employee is "where is this item located?" Or, "where is the exit?" — BEN POPKEN More »
—>ProBargainHunter analyzed Amazon's URLs and found ways to easily find hidden clearance and deal items by department. For instance, 75% off cameras: More »
—>UPDATE: According to KTVI/Fox in St. Louis, "A Sony representative has confirmed to Fox 2, the company is processing the shipment of a replacement camera to the Rittenbergs. They just have to send in the box as they found it — sauce and all." (Thanks to Triteon!) More »
Flat panel TVs are shaping up to be the most popular purchase this holiday season. Why? You consumers are too "confused" (read: too smart to get drawn in) by the format wars between HD DVD and Blu-ray, and you can't get your hands on a Wii or a PS3. That leaves your ugly, bulky old TV. Ugh! Time for a new one. Also, in addition to a flat screen, you want a bigger TV. "Screen size is very important to consumers this season, with a majority of them looking at screens of 30 inches or more and spending an average of $1,950. The 42-inch size will be the most popular of all, IDC said. " More »
With hidden camera, we prowled the aisles of Best Buy and absorbed the horror and glory of Black Friday. More »
Reader Carlton writes in with a query: More »
According to the Globe and Mail, Canadian Best Buys are holding back part of their shipment of Nintendo Wiis. Why are they doing this? More »
—>All the newscasts seem determined to show Black Friday shoppers as an orderly stream of value-conscious consumers, en masse as they are. More »
NORTHEASTERN ILLINOIS - Reader Humphrmi reports on how his Best Buy handled demand for the doorbuster deals. More »
—>PINEVILLE, NC - When we reached the Best Buy checkout, we asked the clerk what time they made her get there that morning. "4:30" she said. More »
—>PINEVILLE, NC - A goodly number of people said that a great way to skip lines at Best Buy on Black Friday is go to the customer service desk. More »
—>PINEVILLE, NC - More than 500 shoppers lined up at the doors of Best Buy this morning for their chance at Black Friday savings. Some had been there since 8pm last night. More »
Sheridan's girlfriend hoped to buy him Simpson Season 8 for $19.99 from Circuit City, based off this week's flyer. She ordered online, only to find herself charged $39.99. More »
—>Reader Ryan writes in with a link to some extra Best Buy Black Friday action. All deals expire at noon on Black Friday. Enjoy!—MEGHANN MARCO More »
"Readers who bought electronics products online were happier than those who bought at stores. That was the case for every product category we have data about. It proved especially true for digital cameras, audio gear, camcorders, DVD players, and digital video recorders. The top overall e-tailer was Crutchfield, closely followed by Costco.com, BuyDig.com, Amazon, Buy.com, and JR.com."More »
Dethroner's tagline may be, "where every man is king," but their take on Amazon's Friday sale can even be enjoyed by hermaphrodites. — BEN POPKEN More »
—>Amazon launched a new program that lets customers vote on the deals the online retailer offers this holiday season. More »
CRMLowdown sifted through countless customer service surveys, studies, and real-life experiences to come up with a pretty damn impressive list of the best/worst companies for customer service. More »
The mob shopping savings just keep rolling in. Hooray. We may show up at one of these sales, just to document the depravity. — BEN POPKEN More »
—>Like.com is a brand-new search engine that allows you to search by looking at shoes and accessories featured in celebrity photos. Sounds lame, and it is, until you realize that you can draw a box around the exact part of the featured accessory you like... and like.com searches for other products that have that same feature. More »
—>With the image fidelity of a Sasquatch sighting, Best Buy's Black Friday Ad has arrived. More »
If you were one of the lucky few who ordered a PS3 at Best Buy's website...guess what? They fucked up. "Best Buy never intended for customers to preorder a PS3 on its website, and so all those orders have been canceled by the retailer. As compensation for the mistake, Best Buy will be giving US$10 coupons to those folks who preordered the system" Ha HA HAHA HA, geeks. Enjoy your ten bucks. More »
Online megastore Amazon.com won top honors in a national customer service survey released last Thursday. Here's the top ten list, according to a National Retail Federation/American Express study. More »
—>Reader Ben sends us this camera phone shot of the in-store Circuit City price list for their various home installation services. Holy Shit! More »
—>David ordered a 70 lb smoker from Amazon. For some reason, it shipped back and forth between Washington and Nevada 3 times, over 3 weeks, a total of 4500 miles. When it finally, arrived, it was in pieces. More »
Will Walmart's extremely early holiday price cuts, or "rollbacks," inspire other retailers to follow suit? More »
—>Hand in glove with our independently arrived Fabio wunderloveness this morning, it seems Gizmodo was actually at that darn Geek Squad city unveiling. They got to interview Fabio (he loves Xbox360) and watch him solder. More »
This is a Multivu PR newsreel about the unveiling of Best Buy's Geek Squad new central headquarters. Geek Squad City sounds awesome. By all appearances, the video is an upload of the footage supplied to TV news stations that helps them from having to do any reporting of their own. More »
Does Best Buy have a policy designed to trick you into not using your gift card? More »
—>PCWorld today posted an article on circumnavigating hassles while shopping online. More »
He recorded the call, made in Colorado, a one-party consent state, and uploaded it to YouTube. A slideshow of Colorado scenery plays in the background. More »
Up in Canuckville, Best Buy is an amazing institution. No, we're just kidding: crossing the border does not actually take you to another dimension. It's still one of the worst companies in the world. More »
If you're trying to call Best Buy and none of the blue shirts will pick up the damn phone, here's a lil' trick that may help. More »
For some reason, we never really pieced it together when we posted about Best Buy's gremlin-like pilfering of a reader hard drive chock full of personal information, but we've previously reported on Best Buy's practice of selling these reclaimed hard drives. More »
—> More »
—>Reader Kelly drops a dime on Circuit City, whose call center will be moving, presumably to reduce expenses. The new location won't have dividers between desks or running water on Sundays. More »
—>Those copyfighters over at BoingBoing have uncovered some tasty tidbits in the user agreement of Amazon's new Video-on-Demand service. The gist? More »
—>On Friday, we noted an underhanded tactic Circuit City appeared to be foisting on unsuspecting Xbox 360 customers. A sign in their Newport Beach offered to charge customers $29.95 for a product upgrade they would get for free via Live Update or from a Microsoft patch CD. More »
—>Kotaku's got the drop on another sleazy Circuit City in-store service. For $28.99, Circuit City will upgrade your Xbox360 so it's backwards compatible with Xbox games. The problem is this already occurs if your Xbox360 is set up for Xbox Live. If you don't have it connected to a phone line, Windows will also send you a patch disc for free. More »
—>The number one rule of responsible consumerism: know more about what you're buying than the guy selling it to you. But it's a counterintuitive one. After all, you buy based on someone's pitch to you, that you need what he's selling. You get something repaired with the understanding that you don't have the knowledge to fix a problem yourself. But it's the number one rule of consumerism for a reason: you just can't trust the guy taking your money to be honest. More »
Over the weekend, an error on the Best Buy website returned very curious results. Searching for "Cybershot 7.2" returned not only no direct results, but what they suggested instead was quite, shall we say, unbecoming. More »
Instead, he used the oldest black hat consumer trick and bought a new video ipod, put the old ipod in, and returned it. More »
—>Hey, we're all for Circuit City flouting the DMCA. It's a bogus law, as anti-consumer as they come. So we were a bit disappointed when Bill Cimino, director of corporate communications, clarified that the sign wasn't the opening jab in a legal title fight between Circuit City and the RIAA/MPAA, but was instead a disconnect between the wishes of corporate and that particular Circuit City's store manager. More »
—>Despite the sign we posted on Friday, Circuit City says they are not offering a copyright-breaking DVD to iPod service. More »
—>Loyal Consumerist Danilo slowly accrued Best Buy points, only to be foiled by retarded web design. More »
—>Well, well, well! Look who's violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act! For only a couple of fins, Circuit City will take your DVD and an iPod and flagrantly breach copyright at your behest. More »
At least, that's what Amazon.com reviewers are saying. Currently, over three-hundred people have reviewed "milk." More »
—>There's at least one cock fighting in this legal battle: the U.S. Humane Society is threatening to sue Amazon for selling magazines for aficionados of the chicken, the razor and the plume. More »
—>At first we were excited by Lisa's story. It seemed that Best Buy was running a scam, tricking consumers into buying vacuums and service plans and then not fixing the vacuums when they broke. Lisa complained, "until she was blue in the face" to multiple supervisors, to no avail More »
Last month, Nikki wrote in complaining about her refrigerator, and Best Buy's, failings. After finally getting her frigo fixed, it went out again (we think you have a bum frigo, Nikki) and all her food, especially 4th of July meats, was spoiled. Subsequently, she squeezed the Best Buy and Frigidarie people until ekking out food gift cards as reimbursement, though we've seen bloodier stones. Nikki writes: More »
—>Our most popular posts this week that had nothing to do with retention policies or call centers. More »
—>Here at Gawker Tower (actually, a giant disused school bus turned vertically that was used by local teens for sex parties until the smell got too bad), we really love the circle jerk. So it was nice when our geeky, mouth-breathing colleagues over at Kotaku took time out of their busy schedule of writing about video games and wondering what it might be like to touch the soft mound of a woman's breast while she was conscious to pass on a reader email, indicating a new protection plan scam from our buddies at Best Buy. More »
—>Ectoplasmic, barely visible air quotes waggle over Circuit City's new "24/24" guarantee. Or, put more succinctly by reader Jon M: "Circuit City's new '24/24' guarantee is a load of hooey." More »
—>Being an environmentally conscious good Samaritan, Erika Anders recycled her cell phone after she was done with it at a local Best Buy. The next month, she received a bill for $20,590.67. Many of the calls originated from Brazil. More »
—>Heroic cripple motors to local Circuit City, drags his limbless torso in by a combination of Prince Randian-like body undulations and chin dragging. Purchases new battery for tongue-controlled wheelchair. Declines service plan. Vengeful Circuit City employee, denied a commission, cackles evilly as blasts of lightning streak behind him, casting him in penumbric silhouette. Makes handicapped customer carry wheelchair battery to the car himself. More »
—>We definitely love you guys, but it's not all snuggles all the time here at The Consumerist. If you send us something, we're not afraid to post it and say when you're being a jerk. We don't want to lose you as a reader... and as much of a jerk as you may or may not have been, we can nine times out of ten understand your frustration. But we also want you guys to be reasonable, polite, responsible consumers, and that means the occasional light slap. More »
—>Conclusive proof that signing your credit card slip is completely irrelevant: The Credit Card Prank II. More »
There is some use crying over spilt ice cream, though Best Buy won't shed too many tears over it. That's just as well. The resulting mix would leave a bad taste in your mouth, just like their customer service, as Nikki found when trying to get her refrigerator repaired. More »
—>To tell this story, I need to point out that, when I was a bachelor, I sometimes went to various web sites to satisfy my more elicit and transient urges. Probably nuff said, unless any of our sexy single female readers want to email me requesting a more vivid description. More »
For only $12.99, you can have possess the power to freeze poop with just a blast from this 12 oz can. It contains no CFC's and doesn't harm vegetation. Removes the "mush factor" from animal waste disposal without the pesky waiting for the forces of time and weather. More »
—>Practice what you preach. So we bought a pair of Adidas M3 running shoes at our own Morning Deals suggestion, only $44.90 at Amazon (sold out). We found comparible versions $55 and up at Shopzilla. More »
—>Man goes to Circuit City, twice. More »
—>Man goes to Best Buy. Has pleasant time. Universe implodes. Again. More »
—>Man buys TV from Amazon. UPS keeps dropping it. Perhaps Amazon should use better packing. More »
Man goes to Best Buy. Buys iPod. Has good experience. Universe implodes. More »
Unadulterated gold: Amazon.com hates all lesbians. Or, at least one. An open letter, ostensibly to us. More »
—>Gothamgal purchased an iPod from Best Buy, along with the product replacement plan. Times passes, product needs replacing. Best Buy says, "no problem, bring it on down." More »
Gus went shopping today at Best Buy and decided to write us. It's not a rant, not necessarily a complaint and probably won't make you a better person. More »
—>On Monday we found the innuendo splattered Amazon reviews for the SuperSoaker Oozinator (a squirt gun which shoots slime and water in a very phallic fashion) wiped clean by some unknown, possibly socked, hand. More »
You've watched the video, you've read the reviews on Amazon, and now, we're all going to hell just a little bit faster, thanks to a cartoon over at Words & Pictures. More »
—>The Oozinator really is the toy marketing blunder that just keeps on giving. First, the priceless television spot, in which a panoply of children suppress their gag reflex as they squeegee ropes of creamy, sticky gelatin off of their faces. For some of our readers, this was likely their first introduction to the exciting world of subliminal pedophile bukkake. But while actually purchasing an Oozinator will open you up to prosecution under a number of federal child-sex statutes, people are still managing to have fun with one, as the hilarious Amazon.com product review page will attest. More »
80 members of the Improv Everywhere troupe dressed in blue polos and khakis and pranked the Best Buy store in Manhattan. More »
—>Don't you hate it when you try to go to BestBuy.com and accidentally replace the first vowel with a w? Or put a hyphen between best and buy? And you end up at one of those squatter advertisement sites, designed specifically to garner profits from the typos or ignorance of others? More »
—>[H]Consumer bought 4 computers from 4 different retailers and compared and contrasted the experiences. Then he made a diorama using this week's vocab words. More »
What do you get when you staff your electronics superstore with pimply and gangly minimum wage monkeys? The sort of apathetic customer service that causes even those with monk-like patience to snap the rigid palm of their hand into the base of a Best Buy's employee's nose over and over and over again until blood starts ejaculating from their ears. More »
—>David said he had tried to get his Ebate for months upon months and hadn't heard any response to his multiple inquries by email, web sumbissions and phone. Thanks to a tip by Anne-Marie, we got the name and email of Ebate's customer care manager. We pointed out David's plight and our post on the matter. The manager responded and we forwarded his response to David, who just sent us this email: More »
—>We love this quote from AT&T CEO Edward Whitacre, referring to Google, eBay and Amazon.com: "Why should they be able to use my pipes for free?" Pointing out that people are actually paying for the bandwidth going through his pipes hasn't swayed good old Ed. If the man ran FedEx, both the sender and receiver would pay for a package. More »
—>Does anyone know a good, direct way to contact Ebates.com? More »
—>The IRS' recent order for full record disclosure to Paypal is part of a larger movement to tax purchases and monetary transactions over the Internet. More »
—>Jeff Bezos knows something about tonight's NCAA basketball championship game the rest of us don't. More »
—>According to a report by a former Amazon.com customer service worker, the giant e-retailer moved their customer service call centers back from the peacock feather of the Orient. More »
—>Reader Julie received a perplexing pre-order notice: More »
—>Here is a cool t-shirt you can get for only fifteen bucks. It reads, "I Blew Vincent Gallo and all I got was lockjaw." More »
—>Michelle Slatalla suffers from a shopping disease. It's called pricenoia. The characteristic symptom is a pang of doubt every time she's about to press Click-to-Buy on Amazon.com: More »
—>According to the New York Times,
- "Until a few days ago, a search of Amazon's catalog of books using the word "abortion" turned up pages with the question, "Did you mean adoption?" at the top, followed by a list of books related to abortion."
• Today's Woot! is the iRiver PMC-120, one of those 20GB Personal Media Center jobbies that Microsoft was shilling a little over a year ago. We say skip it, even at $205. Not only is it sort of huge compared to an iPod video or Creative Vision M, but the platform does all sorts of stupid things like forcing you to convert all your videos before copying them to the device. More »
—>Reader Matt V. called our attention to Ben Laurie's blog. Ben recently purchased a Beth Orton CD from Amazon, only to discover that it had DRM on it that prevented him from playing it on his computer. Ben has since returned the CD to Amazon and filed a complaint against them with the Trading Standards Authority (a UK consumer rights organization) that Amazon is dishonestly calling it an "Audio CD". Ben argues it isn't an Audio CD, because he can't play it on his computer. More »
—>It all depends on what your definition of, "is a receipt," is. More »
• SlickDeals is reporting that the Amazon coupon code TOOLDAYS, which is supposed to be just for tools, is working on nearly every item on Amazon to give a 10% discount. Try the 50OFFMAR code on Tools, too, to get $50 off $250. Good luck! More »
$100 off any purchase of $200 or more at Sharper Image. Could expire any second. Now's the time to stock up on those Jacob's Ladders, desktop-sized pinball machines and lazy ass robo floor vacs you've been saving up for. [via Tech Bargains] More »
• Amazon has Firefly - The Complete Series DVDs on sale for $20. If you like good TV, you'll like Firefly. Seriously, we've watched the series straight through like three times. [via SlickDeals] More »
• Amazon's Friday Sale is here, because today is Friday. Highlights include 12-Piece Anodized Aluminum Cookware from Anolon for $170, DEWALT Heavy Duty Drilling & Screwdriving Accessory Combo Kit for $30, Hydrofarm GTV4 4-Foot-Wide Green Thumb Grow Light System for $70, and a Tippmann Model 98 Paintball Marker for $80. More »
Check out this morning's hot-to-trot deals on home wares. More »
• We'll leave behind our 'no rebates' policy for this deal at Radio Shack for the Ultra X-Connect 500W Power Supply for free, after $100 worth of rebates. Slickdeals has the details. With Radio Shack's problems, we look forward to future big deals. More »
• Amazon's electronics outlet has many items on sale for 70% off or more. Get the Remanufactured Brother RPT-65 P-Touch Personal Label Printer for just $13, Lifehackers. [via DealNews] More »
—>Amazon.com announced plans to take on iTunes and iPod as early as this summer. It will launch its own Internet music service as well as sell its own branded portable music players. More »
• No man—and few women—has failed to marvel at the power of the floor jack. Own your own Craftsman 2 1/4 ton floor jack with jack stands for just $27.50. Pick up from Sears only. [via SlickDeals] More »
—>Until Feb. 28 you can get a $30 Amazon.com gift certificate after making a $99-and-up Amazon.com order of Huggies brand products. More »
In a classic bait-and-switch, customers allege that Best Buy tells people they get a free magazine subscription and then charges them for it. More »
• We know that all hard drive manufacturers are probably about the same, but we just can't bring outselves to buy the Maxtor 300GB 7,200RPM, 16MB Buffer PATA Hard Drive. We've just had too many Maxtor drives bite the dust or wipe out our data. But we also suspect we may be under a very specific curse, so don't let our hellish experience stop you. Besides, you should be buying two at a time anyway. More »
—>Although we can't recall ever seeing such a thing, apparently some Best Buy stores have giant numbers up near the register detailing information about that day's sales. A long blogger was intrigued enough to decode the numbers, and has explained their meaning on his site. More »
—>Very nearly at the beginning of our existence as a weblog, we posted a link to Amazon Credits You, a site that helps you watch out for potential savings if Amazon drops their price on an item within the 30-day price guarantee window. We went back today to dig up the name of the site so we could punch in some numbers (see, even we use our tips; we aren't totally phoning it in) and discovered the site has been changed to Refund Please. More »
We rarely link to the Amazon phone rebates, but we have from time to time, and lots of other sites flog the hell out them. For good reason, apparently. Reader John R. — who in an amazing coincidence has the same first name and middle initial as myself — wrote in to admit his foolishness in buying a rebated phone through Amazon.com. A rebate, it should be mentioned, that doesn't turn around for 9 months. More »
• Amazon's Friday Sale—Because Thursdays are for suckers. More »
Best Buy is continuing to revamp their rebates process, according to this press release, providing 'instant savings' on notebook computers at the register, as well as rolling out a new online rebates tool that they claim shortens the rebate turn-around down to just over a week. More »
—>• CondomMan.com's Famous Valentine Day Sale is back, featuring 100 assorted condoms from brands including Durex, Trojan, Lifestyles, Okamoto, Viva, and Beyond Seven for just $20. More »
Although the comments are full of the self-congratulatory jerking that we bloggers do so well, there are some interesting points raised in response to a post by Mike Sansone about a bad experience at CompUSA. Specifically, "Does complaining about an employee online do anything besides push down cloying training materials from the PR and sales departments of large retail operations?" (Actually, that's our question.) More »
Matt W. writes us with this handy admonishment for those tempted to the evil of rebates:
I purchased a new HP Pavilion m7250n Media Center PC at Circuit City on Nov. 26. One of the reasons I did so was that they had an incredible deal if you factored in the rebates: The PC was $1069.99, then there was a $50 HP MIR, plus a whopping $120 Circuit City MIR. Which made the PC $899.99 after rebates. Like I said, a fabulous deal. The rebate window was ending in 24 hours after I saw the price, and you hade to make the purchase on-line. With Circuit City, that's no big deal, since I could specify in-store pickup as the delivery method, and the closest one is 1.5 miles from my house. There would be no delayed gratification for me. More »
• H&R Block is giving away free copies of their DeductionPro software, which we've been told is normally a $20 upgrade ot thier TaxCut software. (Although it works in a standalone mode, as well.) [via Slickdeals] More »
We won! Maybe! At least, we'll take the credit! Good ol' Amazon listened to our complaints about mixing x-rated hentai when doing searches for hentai and has quickly fixed the problem. Performing a search for anime now returns only the most wholesome of results, while searching for 'hentai' returns all the tentacles and demon incest that we hold so dear. More »
• Friday sales! J&R! Staples! Amazon! And because we love you: 50% off Godiva Chocolates. Remember us when the endorphins flow. More »
—>Imagine the outrage from parents if the first returned product on Amazon in a search for 'movies' returned a hardcore pornography DVD. Adam, a fan of the Japanese cartoon stories known as 'anime,' has noticed something perhaps even worse: Searches for 'anime' on Amazon return results for 'hentai,' or adult, X-rated anime films. The top result [as pictured] is for a hentai film called 'Princess 69,' which as a reviewer describes as such:
If you're into non-con, excellent animation, girls going down on girls... you might like this. I don't much care for the enema or watersports parts of this film, but the facial expressions are priceless and lovely. These girls have the most wonderful "I am shocked, my mind has cracked by what is being done to me" expresions, they cry tears, they are bound, taped, mildly electrocuted, made to "initiate" new members, and brutally given sex.Now we have absolutely no problem with Amazon selling Japanese animation for adults; We know that some cartoons are made with adult themes for adults' enjoyment. But what we don't understand is why Amazon needlessly conflates anime and hentai. Many anime fans, often already scorned as creeps by those not familiar with the range of themes offered by mainstream anime, are worried that Amazon's lack of distinction between anime and hentai will both further the perception that all anime fans are also fans of hentai, as well as put children looking for traditional anime titles in an awkward position. More »
• Newegg has the Sennheiser PC 150 Headset, perfect for gaming or Skyping, for $30 after $10 off coupon code NYNG011006. Ships free, as well. More »
• We continue to be baffled by Amazon's ridiculously low prices on cookware recently, like this Cuisinart Chef's Classic Stainless 6-Quart Sauce Pot with Lid for just $14. They must have over-purchased for the holidays. [via Slickdeals] Update: Reader Kim L. confirmed that the price is showing as $40 for her. It still shows $14 for us (although they are out of stock). A mystery! More »
• Suzuki is running a test drive promotion for their Grand Vitara SUV that can net you a $25 gas card. Start with this form, go test drive a Grand Vitara at your local dealership (or more commonly, just go ask the manager to sign it for you to save you both wasted time), and mail the form and business card to Suzuki. Hopefully, you have a Suzuki dealer close enough that it won't take $25 in gas to get there. [via Slickdeals] More »
• Buy.com has a clearance sale running through the 14th. We didn't find any particularly fantastic deals, however, so shop carefully. More »
What better way to show our visitors that we don't go easy on Amazon.com than the shameless huckstering of their wares? Although we swear, the Amazon heaviness of this Morning (sorry, Afternoon!) Deal Round-Up is merely the random chance of a godless universe. More »
Reader Ray R. writes:
The company's infamous "customer relations" policy must be among the worst going. My christmas orders for nephew and niece went completely astray and I wasn't informed at all. When I phone head office in Seattle on Jan. 3 I get put through to Kham in India. She was polite enough, but the best she was going to offer was a $15 voucher, even though the $24 recharchable battery, the only part of the order being filled, was going to be delivered anyway, even though it was useless without the toy boat it was supposed to run, which was not being delivered. So, they're refunding me about $100 for two presents not delivered and giving me a $15 voucher, but not refunding the useless battery — not to mention the cost of the phone call, the hassle of tracking them down, the fact that I look like a deadbeat uncle for not delivering presents thanks to Amazon. More »
Rick B writes:
It may be a bit late for tales of Christmas shopping woe, but what the heck—its slow at work today. [No joke. -Ed.] More »
As we approach the New Year, let we consumers take a moment of quiet reflection to acknowledge that often we are as dumb as dirt. Before you make that phone call to customer service or write up your blistering review of your latest book, read up on the sort of teeth-crunchingly idiotic things clients and customers have said in the last year. More »
—>Remember a couple days back when we recommended using Amazon's 30-day price drop policy to your advantage? We thought that was a pretty good idea, obviously, but keeping track of the price drops for every item—not just in a month, but every day in between—sounds like a real hassle. More »
• If yesterday's $20 boxed set of Firefly snuck by you (as it did us), take advantage of today's $22 deal from Buy.com. Slow shipping is free. [via Slickdeals] More »
Want to sneak in a few extra dollars from your Amazon orders? This nice man name of Jim has a tip for you regarding Amazon's price drop policy. It's pretty simple, really. More »
• Today only, pay just 10 cents to list an item on the store the sows distrust in your fellow man: eBay. Obviously they are encouraging you to dump all the crap you got this Christmas and we think you should take advantage of it, because you are never going to fit into that after what you ate this weekend. More »
• The clothing clearouts are getting nicer. The code holiday2005, for instance, will get you 40%—and sometimes free shipping—at Timberland.com. More »
We've got another case of a reader getting burned by slow notification of shipment delays from Amazon. We expect that delays are reasonable this time of year—the Amazon warehouses must look like the Snickers machine at a Harry Potter convention—but this whole 'We can't fill your order but we won't tell you until it's too late to order again' thing is awful. More »
—>Best Buy's 'Retailer Insider' newsletter, Issue Today, says to expect more Xbox 360s in stores this week. We've cut out the salient bits in the above graphic, but if you'd like to look at the full scan, have a look here. More »
• We're unsure how the NYC transit strike can make us late to work when we work from home, but by god we've managed to do it. In celebration, have a full-blown computer for $250, after multiple rebates. Slickdeals has the details. More »
—>First of all, dorky brother site Kotaku is reporting that all the Xbox 360s that were released this weekend at Best Buy have already been sold out. No big surprise there. We have it on good word that there will be one more Xbox 360 shipment into Best Buy before Xmas, so keep checking (here). More »
—>• ThinkGeek really has more fun stuff than they should, although for every 'Tool Logic Office Companion' there's a 'STFU University Tee.' Should you need to stuff a stocking, nothing says 'You are pathetic but I will still copulate with you," like O'Reilly Pillowcases. More »
We're getting a bit tired of the Xbox 360 shopping and we haven't even purchased one. While we will probably camp out in the frigid air Saturday night to get a crack at Best Buy's Sunday morning restock, we will also probably turn right around and sell our excess on eBay, just to spite those who say doing so is mercenary. (Duh!) More »
The Catalog: Amazon.com's Holiday Tool Guide 2005. Yes, the online retail giant has a paper catalog. More »
This question is our own and we've yet to find a suitable answer, despite doing a fair amount of research into it. Is there a way to sort search results on Amazon to reflect 'Amazon-only' orders? Which is to say, orders that are sold and shipped directly from Amazon? More »
Reader "C" writes:
Suggestion: You mentioned that Best Buy was selling non-ipod MP3 players and offering a $50 gift card to boot. [We mentioned that here. -Ed.] I bought one and then found out the person I bought it for had just that day got one. So I returned it. Which left me with the $50 gift card. It puts me in a bit of an ethical bind as I'm not sure whether or not that's stealing. But the less ethically challenged might want to think about doing that. Or that may be a bit beyond suggestions you are willing to make.Yes. That's going a bit far, even for us. More »
Two bundles, $1k apiece. Ships in 24 hours, they say. Go, go, go. More »
• Newegg has the Logitech Harmony 688 Universal Remote for $110 plus $5 shipping. Like most universal remotes, these control all your gear, but the Harmony series is configured using a USB interface on your computer, obviating the hassle of scouring manuals for special codes printed in the smallest text. Also, Newegg has a Holiday Sale. [via TechBargains] More »
—>The ol' Xbox 360 inventory tracker is back, this time detailing how many 360's your local Best Buy should be receiving for the December 18th restock (very probably the last chance you'll have to pick up an Xbox before Christmas). According to The Consumerist's top-secret internal Best Buy sources (this dude we know in the stock room), the numbers are legit. More »
• If you are actually going to buy an MP3 player that isn't an iPod, Best Buy has a promotion that gives you a free $50 gift card with the purchase—excluding iPods. The Sandisk Sansa 512MB player is just $100, for instance. More »
—>Poor Best Buy. Just after their president was forced to eat crow about forced bundling of Xbox 360 accessories, they must now face down allegations of discrimination by current and former employees. They allege that women and minorities were excluded from the good jobs in a corporate culture that catered to pasty, white men.
"I was told by several managers that I didn't need to be on the sales floor. I was told females can't sell," Chappel, 48, told reporters at a news conference.When we were young and worked for Best Buy one cold holiday season, our store manager (in fact, much of the upper management) was a mix of mostly minorities and women. More »
• Oh. Snap. $10 off $10 coupon up in the Fashion Bug. Get your brushed cotton medallion camisole on. Code: 776131401 Expired. More »
—>A classic example of post-Flash minimalism, BestBuySux.org offers customer complaints alongside horror stories from employees. Presented in Plainest Text™, BestBuySux.org even has the good grace to offer a "Pro-BB" section, where customers and employees can offer a balance to the six years of collected vitriol which is indexed month-by-month. More »
• Sometimes the simple deals are the sweetest: Use the code "EM21HL30" for 30% off for purchases at FootLocker.com, including gift cards. [via Slickdeals] More »
—>When new game consoles launch, retailers often choose to sell 'bundles' instead of just the console itself. That's because the markup on the consoles themselves are next to nothing (usually just a couple of dollars when everything is all new and shiny), and also because it allows them to force some of the less popular accessory items on customers who just want the basics. More »
—>Amazon has become one of the de facto locations for customers to write up their experiences with products—even if they didn't buy them from Amazon. Now Amazon is toying with even more customer interaction in the form of 'ProductWiki,' a collaboratively-edited description page for each product. More »
• Grab Turbo Tax Basic, Quicken Deluxe '06, and a paper shredder at Staple's online store for $0 after 'easy rebates.' (Easy rebates can be processed online.) Get the codes at SlickDeals. More »
• Enjoy yourself some Dell Game, wherein you may be creeped out by an overzealous elf and click to win prizes. Of course, you're probably going to win bupkiss, but when you play the 'Pick a Stocking' game you'll receive a coupon code in consolation. And you can play until the end of the Holidays. More »
—>Amazon is asking its customers to reenter their credit card information today in an attempt to encourage participation in its new Pay Directly From Your Bank Account option. Skipping the credit card companies will save Amazon the transaction fees, but how will it help you? More »
