I don't like Best Buy.

I don't like BestBuy. They're often far from the "best buy" around, and are a total pain in the butt to deal with. They make you jump through hoops to get the price match policy they took their name from, have horrible customer service, don't always honor rebates or returns, and never answer their phones. But none of that has much to do with their recent scandal, which is pretty darn close to fraud.

Best Buy has an internal version of the best buy website. When a user comes into the store and claims that they saw a price advertised on BestBuy.com, sales associates go to the nearest computer and look up the deal on their internal version of BestBuy.com rather than the "real" one you or I have access to, and apparently this "internal" site doesn't feature the same deals. It looks like the same website, minus the sweet prices, so the sales associate claims the deal must have expired and tries to sell you the item at full price. Techdirt released this story about a month ago, and it was featured again today on Engadget.

Best Buy itself denies that this is fraud and offers some vague excuses for how this could've happened, and claims it'll never happen again. I don't trust and don't believe them. Last year I bought my wife a car stereo and they promised free installation. When I went to get it installed, they said they couldn't provide free installation because I hadn't purchased it for over $100 - it had only cost 90, because it was on sale, but was no longer on sale, and now cost $10. To get the free installation, they made me return the stereo and buy it again through their customer service department. What a pain.

Never shop there.

That's all I've got.