I went to Circuit City this weekend, right after leaving CompUSA as their deal for the 17" Compaq monitor was sold out. I noticed the same model at Circuit City, and asked if they would price match. The gentleman stated that he would not, based on the fact that CompUSA had to have the item in stock for them to do so. I found a copy of their guarantee, and no where does it state this. Am I SOL?

More than likely ...yes. Price matching sucks and is a PLOY!!!!! Simple as that.

Fletch is right -- price matching used to mean "customer service." Now it means "screw you your bothering me." Circuit City was the originator of this attitude, but others have now adopted it as well. You are pretty much left to the mercy and whim of the person waiting on you. Any cop out that they can come up with, they pretty much use, including "that's too cheap!"

In most PM policies (I thought CC's included) it does state that the advertising store MUST have the item in stock. Did you volunteer this information or did they call to confirm it? You could try back later and hope for another cashier who won't call (maybe go when they are real busy), or you could just get a raincheck from CompUSA (we don't have them here, so I'm not familiar with their policies).

Price matching at Circuit City.

Two words.

Good luck.

I think they only have that policy because it sounds good on paper.

CC absolutely sucks at Pricematching. I've only successfully done it two or three times. And they tried like hell to get out of it by giving me BS about not being able to do it, not being able to match non-electronics stores (eg. walmart/target) and not being able to match direct competitors (this made the least sense). Each time I did it, I had to have a published ad with the price in big block letters and then had to wait 20 min for the customer service guy to call Bestbuy and get confirmation that the item was in stock and was at the lower price. All of that to save a couple of bucks just isn't worth it. At first I wanted to pricematch at CC just to screw them, but that's not how it works out. I'd rather go across the street to Bestbuy.

Huzefa

I guess I am lucky with PM at CC. I have done it many times - on DVDs or video games. All I do is show the cashier the printed ads. For a couple of times they just took my words for it because I forgot to bring in the ads. (They used to give 10% of the difference but not anymore.) I haven't PMed on eletronics or computer stuffs though.

Price matching at CC is a joke. Takes a whole lot of effort and time to get it (if you can at all) especially when the price difference is huge.

Your mileage varies, depending on the store and on the staff.

Scam, it is a complete scam.

I figured as much. Thanks a lot, guys.

I have to say that I did INDEED DO A PRICEMATCH at Circuit City item this weekend, but it was probably on a high margin product where CC was still making money.
I had a GC that I needed to burn so I bought a 256 CompactFlash Card from CC. I pricematched from the Best Buy Web site (the guy just pulled it up on the computer) and he said OK, and gave me the 10% of the difference as well (so a $1.00 extra savings) - Not great. But it did work out OK.

Now these cards are about $40 cheaper online, so that is telling me that the margin is extremely high on this product, so it is not that a big of deal to them to do it... and I have actually had a relatively OK salesguy to deal with --- but he still did not know the difference between an MMC and Secure Digital card.