Kage

A few days ago my girlfriend and me went to Best Buy by my home to look at a few HDTVS and maybe purchase on that day. A salesperson came up to us and said "According to the manager of the store, they will not price match any competitors price, unless the Best Buy service plan is purchased on the same day with any big ticket item. Also they are not allowed to price match Frys Electronics prices, because their items are reconditioned and returned items." We both are now planning to buy a HDTV at amazon.com by March and we both refuse to buy items at Best Buy.

In a way my girlfriend and I agreed on the Frys part, because we have a friend who is married, recently bought a brand new HP laptop from Frys two weeks ago and found out it was a returned item and had to return the next day, because someone downloaded bisexual porn movies and pictures on it. At first Frys customer service did not believe him, but the computer technican and supervisor at the store believed my friend, because the movies and pictures had a time stamp when they were downloaded to the computer and the time stamp was dated a few weeks before my friend bought the laptop. Likely my friend got a full refund. Now he refuses to buy items at Frys.

Me007gold

I like turtles

Alan Smithee

That's hilarious! Last year I bought a DVD recorder with a built-in hard drive, but returned it since it didn't work too great. I left the Olivia Newton-John "Physical" laserdisc recorded on the hard drive and some other weird stuff (but no porn), so I hope whoever got the machine after that enjoyed it!

fujishig

Is that a new Best Buy pricematch policy, maybe initiated once CC went down? I've never heard of a "must buy the service plan" pricematch policy before, that sounds like a load of garbage.

UAIOE

That "must buy a service plan" is off the scale of the BS meter. Plus, it sounds like something a blue shirt would say to get people to purchase a service plan.

fumanstan

It's funny, when I bought my TV a year ago I first went to Fry's but they were out, so I went to Best Buy just to look. My girlfriend asked about a price match even though the common policy is that it's only if the item is in stock, but the manager said he would do it just to take a sale away from Fry's

fujishig

Plus, I thought it was common knowledge that Fry's is not a customer service oriented store. If you know what you're looking for, can identify open boxes and don't need to track down an employee for help, you'll be fine. If you need to return something, if you need help to decide what to buy, or if you go during rush hour when the lines look like something out of Disneyland, good luck to you.

islandclaws

^ Exactly. My local Fry's looks like someone gave the store a product enema - you've basically got to wade through all their shit to find whatever you want. I still prefer shopping there to BB simply because Fry's has a much better selection.

BigSue

I have to have my DVD recorder (with hard drive) repaired due to leaky capacitors. They'll notice on the hard drive: a touring car race, an A1GP race, 2 ABBA specials and an Olivia Newton John special from the laserdisc (the one with ABBA and Andy Gibb). So it's not so weird Which DVD recorder did you buy with a hard drive?

On the flip side, I just recently purchased a new DVD recorder (Panasonic) from Target. I made a grievous error in not checking it immediately. Significant time had passed before I had the time to start using it. When I opened it just a week or so ago, yup, it had been used before, but I don't think I have any recourse at this point.

Alan Smithee

It was the Polaroid from Wal-Mart- I returned it because discs recorded on it wouldn't play on my older DVD player, and because it had a tendency to do this to the picture through its inputs:

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/PNtdwbNwxlM&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/PNtdwbNwxlM&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

(Notice the white lines especially around :16, and you can double-click to see it without the stupid YouTube bug but the sound's only in mono since it was uploaded year before last- it's from a laserdisc made to demonstrate Mitsubishi TVs.)

I ended up with a Philips model also with a hard drive and that's worked out a lot better- I don't really have much use for the hard drive since I don't watch TV and I use my computer for tweaking the final copies of discs I've made, but it's neat just to keep stuff on it to show people without having to dig it out. I have that Olivia special on laserdisc too!

penguin42

you can get that salesperson and manager fired for 'inboarding'. just call up best buy corporate, if in case this really happened.

SmackDaddy

I've never had a problem with Best Buy price matching Fry's. I've never had a problem buying a new item and ending up with a returned/refurbished item.

Fry's put's some pretty obvious stickers on off the shelf items that say RETURNED or REFURBISHED on them. Now, you do have to make sure and ask when you are buying a big ticket item or PC part that is not kept on the floor. They don't always inform you (especially in the PC dept) when they are printing our the ticket you take to the register, but the cashier has always made sure to notify me of what I am buying.

So,I guess it's a YMMV situation.

Groucho

My guess is that your "friend" got caught with the porn by his wife, and then your "friend" returned the laptop to Frye's as a cover story.

jjcool

I call shenanigans on the original post.

Remote

Double_Oh_7

Fry's is Best Buy on crack.

Krayzie

Couldn't you just change the time / date on your computer, download said files and change date back to normal?

Also my friend used to work at Fry's and they're very shady when it comes to reselling returned items. There were times the boxes didn't even contain the correct items. My friend bought a video card and someone had put a cheaper card in the box.