[Chrono Gear]

I popped into one of my local Best Buys looking for a good clearance pick up but had no luck (still trying to find MGS for Vita and SMG 2 for Wii but none left in town it seems) so I decided to poke around since you never know what you will find. Low and behold I found the CoD: Ghosts game download and Season Pass cards were marked as free. I'm fairly certain this happened recently with something similar-Killzone Season Pass? So a lot of you probably know the drill.

 

 

Story time!

 

 

It took an hour of my time but I ended up walking out with the game and pass codes for a penny (they couldn't get it all the way to zero and I wasn't going to argue). I couldn't believe how rude the customer service employee AND her manager were about it. I understand your job sucks, but when I'm being perfectly polite and courteous there is no reason to raise your voice and get upset. The manager argued with me and gave me a myriad of bad excuses: 

 

 

"Why would we sell something for free?" - It's a pricing error obviously was my response

 

"The card says it's $59.99 not free" - the price tag on the shelf says it's "FREE!"

 

"Someone put these in the wrong spot-they are not free" - again sign clearly stated they are

 

"The SKUs don't match - it's not free" I had a coupe pictures of the signs but they weren't close up enough or high enough resolution to make out the SKUs so I told her I would go back and get another picture since she wasn't willing to go look herself. I already knew they were correct and at this point it became a matter of principal since she made up a bogus SKU number without even looking at her computer screen and said they didn’t match. Outright lying to me to make me go away is not okay.

 

 

I came back with the attached pictures to prove it to her. She had already walked away so I had the CS clerk call her back over. She resumed her grousing.

 

 

"These are not the free items" - to which I responded, "Okay, I'll take whatever the free item is then" The manager finally went back and talked to someone in the gaming section and found out she was completely wrong.

 

 

She sent up the competent employee who immediately apologized and said that I was right of course and made sure I didn't walk out without getting the goods. We went to the register to ring them through and the game came up free anyway (After all that! The manager didn't even check them both!!!). Be warned the game rings up free but doesn't give a code. The competent employee went and found another competent employee and they figured out how to make a code generate for the game.

 

 

It’s too bad that I have almost no interest at all in CoD as I only play a very select few FPSs for story and have no interest at all in multiplayer. Whatever, even if I play the game for 5 minutes I’ll get my $FREE’s worth out of it I suppose. Might just sell the codes or give them away, but after the aggravation I should probably enjoy them what I can. I feel like I should have made them give me their entire stack of cards for the grief, but I'm no ahole looking to hurt them badly for their mistake. 

 

 

 

Sorry, I'm sure this is TLDR, but I'm just so annoyed by the piss poor customer service and need to vent.

[gunstar808]

Nice find man! Pretty sure it'll be highly ymmv, but I'll definitely be on the lookout for "free" tags at any best buy I go into.

[Chrono Gear]

My guess is they had a these labeled all over the place as free as all the other spots in the store had no tags at all. Definitely YMMV, but I can't imagine they could shut you out completely if the tags are still up.

[thao0209]

Bestbuy will honor pricing mistake without much questions aslong as you can prove it. I bought a set of pc speaker for $130 awhile back becuase someone priced it wrong. Orginally price was $220

[Chrono Gear]

Bestbuy will honor pricing mistake without much questions aslong as you can prove it. I bought a set of pc speaker for $130 awhile back becuase someone priced it wrong. Orginally price was $220

I'm fairly certain any retailer has to. If I'm not mistaken the statute in Arizona requires them to honor the mistake and even give a refund of a percentage of the error or something along those lines, but not wanting to cause grief or really even caring enough about it I wasn't going to bother with that.

 

I was able to prove it no problem, but the manager wasn't willing to listen to me or go check herself or even bother to look at her freaking computer screen to see the information matched.

[kudu91]

Man your store must not have been busy. I would have just gave you corporates number and tell you I'm not honoring the price. But I don't work there so meh.

[jay_remedy]

So you spent an hour to get a game that you don't even plan on playing for more than 5 minutes?

 

Hahahahahahaha.

[zyk]

Best Buy Free Season pass strikes again

[ChunLiBarbie]

Price mistake, obviously. Not worth it. Especially if it's a Best Buy you go to. Don't want to ruin PMs, return/rebuys, or other deals for yourself.

[Chrono Gear]

So you spent an hour to get a game that you don't even plan on playing for more than 5 minutes?

Hahahahahahaha.

It really became about principle when the manager called me a liar without even bothering to look to see if I was. Doesn't matter what I was trying to get at that point, the minute you call me a liar I get very upset. I NEVER lie. Very few things I take from the Bible seriously but the big 10 are top of the short list. I've actually almost lost my job on more than one occasion because I refuse to breach my ethics under anything but a literal life and death circumstance. I take very deep offense at being called a liar no matter how small the lie is. The manager was clearly having a rotten day and just didn't want to deal with it (would have been simpler for both of us just to take care of it rather than argue about it).

[Camre]

 

but I'm just so annoyed by the piss poor customer service

 

 

You know very damn well they were not supposed to be giving out games and season passes for free.  Yes, yes, the free sticker gives entitlement and such.  This is a prime example of why people hate working retail.  Merry Christmas, give me free shit indeed.

[Chrono Gear]

Price mistake, obviously. Not worth it. Especially if it's a Best Buy you go to. Don't want to ruin PMs, return/rebuys, or other deals for yourself.

I don't frequent that one too often. It's my third choice of stores in the area and I go to my first nearly all of the time. I stopped at that one tonight as a curiosity. I rarely do PMs, return/rebuys too so even less likely to be an issue for me. Plus the last guy I dealt with was completely cool about it and was overly apologetic about the whole situation. He said the manager apologized too but she was side tracked with other problems that had just arisen in their warehouse. I'd like to believe him but I'm sure she was just hiding in shame for being so stupid. She didn't know the difference between a download code and a disc version of a game. How can you argue about something when you have no idea what you are talking about? Did she think we were on the Internet?

[ChunLiBarbie]

I don't frequent that one too often. It's my third choice of stores in the area and I go to my first nearly all of the time. I stopped at that one tonight as a curiosity. I rarely do PMs, return/rebuys too so even less likely to be an issue for me. Plus the last guy I dealt with was completely cool about it and was overly apologetic about the whole situation. He said the manager apologized too but she was side tracked with other problems that had just arisen in their warehouse. I'd like to believe him but I'm sure she was just hiding in shame for being so stupid. She didn't know the difference between a download code and a disc version of a game. How can you argue about something when you have no idea what you are talking about? Did she think we were on the Internet?

Was she a French model? Lol. If you went through all of that with her, I doubt she apologized.

[Chrono Gear]

You know very damn well they were not supposed to be giving out games and season passes for free. Yes, yes, the free sticker gives entitlement and such. This is a prime example of why people hate working retail. Merry Christmas, give me free shit indeed.

I was being completely civil about it. If she had said they would not honor it I would have left right then. The fact is she didn't understand what was going on. Yes getting a game for free is obviously a price mistake. As I said in the OP I freely admitted that it was an obvious error to the manager but she refused to acknowledge it was an error and instead chose to believe the bad pricing sticker didn't exist. There's a difference here. I'm not trying to be some entitled price I just don't like being told I'm wrong when I'm not.

[kudu91]

You know very damn well they were not supposed to be giving out games and season passes for free.  Yes, yes, the free sticker gives entitlement and such.  This is a prime example of why people hate working retail.  Merry Christmas, give me free shit indeed.

 

See it's those kind of people that I love because I don't take their bull and tell them to call Corporate if they care enough. Common sense dictates that a company would not give things out for free without a catch. Like on Black Friday we had a sale on cases for buy one get one 50% and the system glitched and gave him the sale price with the BOG50%. He came back to do it again and the glitch was fixed. I told him that I would not honor it and he cried and got buttmad and called us Worst Buy and left.

[TTN]

This isn't even like a pricing error online.   Someone at that store physically put up those stickers without consulting a manager so the store needs to own that mistake and take care of their customers.  You can't just mark things are cheap or free then tell people "nope" at the checkout.

[eulogywerd21]

I get what the OP is saying. It's totally irrelevant what the pricing mistake/error was, but becomes a matter of principle when someone in a position of authority won't do their job properly and tries to turn the situation around, like it's the customer's fault for inquiring about something their employees' marked as free..

[Saint'sRow911]

Well, I'll be returning to a BB where I'm certain I saw something like this. Definitely remember seeing a "Free" tag, but didn't pay much attention...since who would give something away for free?

[Chrono Gear]

FWIW, it wouldn't have been anywhere near an hour, but rather than cutting in line and making the clerk help me after I went and got better pics of the stickers I let her (yes I realize this thinking in of itself is entitlement in a way) help out the other customers waiting rather than walk right back up to her and demand she help me and call the manager back since she just walked away.

 

See it's those kind of people that I love because I don't take their bull and tell them to call Corporate if they care enough. Common sense dictates that a company would not give things out for free without a catch. Like on Black Friday we had a sale on cases for buy one get one 50% and the system glitched and gave him the sale price with the BOG50%. He came back to do it again and the glitch was fixed. I told him that I would not honor it and he cried and got buttmad and called us Worst Buy and left.

I've had these situations happen to me where I go back for more glitch goodness and it gets corrected. I never complain about it. How can you? They fixed the error. That would be like me going back to that store and demanding they give me the rest of those cards for free even though I know the competent employee yanked them off the shelf to investigate what happened and to correct the pricing.

[Chrono Gear]

Was she a French model? Lol. If you went through all of that with her, I doubt she apologized.

I'm sure the competent employee was just trying to be nice to me and to cover for her at the same time. Just made me appreciate his courtesy more.

[ORGAN1ZAT10N_13]

I'll throw you a few bucks if you can pick my brother up a season pass.

[Corgstradamus]

 

I popped into one of my local Best Buys looking for a good clearance pick up but had no luck (still trying to find MGS for Vita and SMG 2 for Wii but none left in town it seems) so I decided to poke around since you never know what you will find. Low and behold I found the CoD: Ghosts game download and Season Pass cards were marked as free. I'm fairly certain this happened recently with something similar-Killzone Season Pass? So a lot of you probably know the drill.

 

 

Story time!

 

 

It took an hour of my time but I ended up walking out with the game and pass codes for a penny (they couldn't get it all the way to zero and I wasn't going to argue). I couldn't believe how rude the customer service employee AND her manager were about it. I understand your job sucks, but when I'm being perfectly polite and courteous there is no reason to raise your voice and get upset. The manager argued with me and gave me a myriad of bad excuses: 

 

 

"Why would we sell something for free?" - It's a pricing error obviously was my response

 

"The card says it's $59.99 not free" - the price tag on the shelf says it's "FREE!"

 

"Someone put these in the wrong spot-they are not free" - again sign clearly stated they are

 

"The SKUs don't match - it's not free" I had a coupe pictures of the signs but they weren't close up enough or high enough resolution to make out the SKUs so I told her I would go back and get another picture since she wasn't willing to go look herself. I already knew they were correct and at this point it became a matter of principal since she made up a bogus SKU number without even looking at her computer screen and said they didn’t match. Outright lying to me to make me go away is not okay.

 

 

I came back with the attached pictures to prove it to her. She had already walked away so I had the CS clerk call her back over. She resumed her grousing.

 

 

"These are not the free items" - to which I responded, "Okay, I'll take whatever the free item is then" The manager finally went back and talked to someone in the gaming section and found out she was completely wrong.

 

 

She sent up the competent employee who immediately apologized and said that I was right of course and made sure I didn't walk out without getting the goods. We went to the register to ring them through and the game came up free anyway (After all that! The manager didn't even check them both!!!). Be warned the game rings up free but doesn't give a code. The competent employee went and found another competent employee and they figured out how to make a code generate for the game.

 

 

It’s too bad that I have almost no interest at all in CoD as I only play a very select few FPSs for story and have no interest at all in multiplayer. Whatever, even if I play the game for 5 minutes I’ll get my $FREE’s worth out of it I suppose. Might just sell the codes or give them away, but after the aggravation I should probably enjoy them what I can. I feel like I should have made them give me their entire stack of cards for the grief, but I'm no ahole looking to hurt them badly for their mistake. 

 

 

 

Sorry, I'm sure this is TLDR, but I'm just so annoyed by the piss poor customer service and need to vent.

 

Do you have an extra? I'll gladly give you something for the Season Pass.

[Darby27]

*Mario voice* Here we go! (again)

[JaylisJayP]

I get what the OP is saying. It's totally irrelevant what the pricing mistake/error was, but becomes a matter of principle when someone in a position of authority won't do their job properly and tries to turn the situation around, like it's the customer's fault for inquiring about something their employees' marked as free..

This.  And if I'm being polite and am treated rudely in return, then that's when I press it as a matter of principle.  I would've first filed a complaint with customer service # (they are very responsive) and made sure to receive a call from the general manager.  Usually all I'm looking for is an explanation from the employee why they were rude (knowing there is none), but if you have a legitimate gripe they'll throw a $50 gift card your way too.

[Msn1983]

Has anyone else had success? I'm tempted to leave now but I'm thinking bout all the people don't know if it'll be worth it

[Msn1983]

Already left. My best buy had them priced right. They were on a side cap next to retail disc copies of ghosts. No luck for me. With holiday shopping and gas prices I'm not checking the other stores

[chrislisting]

I got a good relationship with a worker at BB now who did the KZ season pass based on the photos of the price sticker and receipt. Can you scan/take a pic of your receipt (and blur out anything you dont want to share publicly) so I can show them both the sticker pics you posted and the receipt. This is probably a long shot because this is $50 vs $20 KZ pass, and I'd only try it for the season pass, but I'd appreciate it. What do you guys think? I just did it with KZ a few days ago, would this be pushing it even though the guy who's gonna do it is cool with me personally?

[kellyjaye]

The hardest thing to believe from all of this is the employee that priced this obviously never heard of Call of Duty, and this is at a Best Buy store!  Its like saying you have never heard of Star Wars.  With just about anyone else at BB, Im sure a flag would have gone off in their head when they printed out the price tag and saw where it had to go and would have told management before going through with it. 

 

I have to admit though, those people do exist at BB.  I was calling my store to find out for sure if they would be opening at midnight for CoD and/or Battlefield when it went on sale.  Not only did she not know if they were doing midnight openings for the 2 biggest games of the season that were coming out in just a week or so, but I could tell from her voice that she never heard of either of those games!  Its amazing how you can even pass the first interview for a job there and not know about something like that

[soxxx]

The hardest thing to believe from all of this is the employee that priced this obviously never heard of Call of Duty, and this is at a Best Buy store!  Its like saying you have never heard of Star Wars.  With just about anyone else at BB, Im sure a flag would have gone off in their head when they printed out the price tag and saw where it had to go and would have told management before going through with it. 

 

I have to admit though, those people do exist at BB.  I was calling my store to find out for sure if they would be opening at midnight for CoD and/or Battlefield when it went on sale.  Not only did she not know if they were doing midnight openings for the 2 biggest games of the season that were coming out in just a week or so, but I could tell from her voice that she never heard of either of those games!  Its amazing how you can even pass the first interview for a job there and not know about something like that

Its like not knowing you sell food at a grocery store lol.

[ultramanJ]

OP keeps saying its a "matter of principal" yet knowingly fought for products he knew wasn't supposed to be free.

The "competent" employees were the ones who knew these weren't free.