What the hell Best Buy
I have lived in Alaska on and off since 1982 and I’ve seen different company’s advertise there products on T.V. touting these wonderfully low prices. Seeing these unbelievable advertised prices sticking in my head and helping to sway where I might go for lunch or to buy that latest thing I have to have only to arrive at the advertised location and see the product for a much higher price.
After watching the advertisement a second viewing I learned of the small print at the bottom of the screen in the font sized perfect for a dollhouse storybook. What does the type at the bottom of the screen say? “Driving performed by a professional driver on a close course. Do not attempt,” is what it says often enough but I’m talking about the other fine print television subscript, “Prices many vary in Alaska and Hawaii.”
After discovering that bit of information I thought, “huh, that sucks.” So at that point I figured well it is part of living so far from the rest of the country, and so even at a young age I started buying into this belief that by living Alaska it was okay to charge more for a item.
Once I got older I started noticing some things had a set price. Books in particular had the price printed right on the back and more importantly to myself was comic books price was there on the front of every issue. I realized then that I wasn’t paying anymore for a book or a comic then anyone else, and that somehow made me feel a little more connected to my contiguous state brethren.
My next discovery of the shameful practice of price gouging the folks of the far north or the island folks was for these order now, $19.95 and we’ll through in a second one free guys. Everyone has seen these last night ads for these items that in the brightness of day your brain says that is ridicules, but something happens in the dark of night, when your brain sees the horrific flashing price getting slashed from hundreds of dollars down to that safe price just below the twenty dollar mark. It also seems your brain has checked out long enough not to question that if it is the last one you’ll ever need, then why do they throwing in a second one for free? You only need to pay for the shipping and handling.
That’s when I noticed the small print on that stuff. These guys have a shipping and handling mark up for Alaska and Hawaii. I know that a first class stamp from the post office doesn’t have an Alaskan rate. I’ve bought stamps in Alaska to write family in the “lower 48″ and while on summer vacation staying with family in Tennessee I bought stamps to write letters to my mom. What did I find? They cost the same. Talking to the local post office I found that the postal rates had set rates for the United States. It didn’t care where you where mailing your letter or package. United States Postal Service (USPS) had flat rate and didn’t care that I lived in Alaska. Of course the small print here is USPS has a lot of different rates for there services and some are cheaper to some places than the other. I haven’t talked to anyone in the postal services in years about their rates and it isn’t like I did research to write this paper.
I digress, with the knowledge that USPS has flat shipping rates I wondered why if the shipping should have been the same price way was handling to Alaska more. In the end I just figured it was a way for the company to make a few more dollars off people who where far away and didn’t have the choices others might. I mean it wasn’t like we could just drive over to the next stat and see if their stores had a better deal, we where pretty much stuck with whatever we where told the price was.
Things changed in the 1990′s. The internet opened my up to stores all across the U.S. I never had access too. Although often they had higher shipping rates to Alaska and Hawaii the cost of their goods where normally much less then off the shelf in our local stores. Plus more and more large chain stores came to town. We got our first K-mart and Wal-mart in the early 90′s and the big boy book stores like Boarders and Barnes and Noble came to town. Sure I saw many of the small local folks close up shop when the big guys came to town but as a customer I loved finally having prices that didn’t seem so over inflated.
So now we have the modern age where many of my purchases come from internet sites the costs of items are lower than ever. Many of the online guys use shipping methods other than USPS and so I understand they have a tiered service for the miles something is shipped and although in a world where my Amazon purchases are often shipped to me for free, there are still companies that feel a need to jack up the shipping costs to Alaska.
The lasted price hikes that I’ve found on several trips to one of my favorite money waster stores Best Buy. First I must say I love Best Buy and shop there much too often. Even becoming a Silver member on their price club prize club thing that everyone seems to have these days. Even with my love of the gleam of their sparkling goodies and the fact I feel right at home talking it up with one of the great Geek Squad members, I have to ask, “What the hell Best Buy?”
On at least three separate occasions now I have looked online for a product, checking customer reviews, comparing options, looking at prices and making my choice before walking into the store to buy the item. Only to find on these three occasion the store had at least a ten percent mark up over the online price. At first I just though oh the Alaskan mark up I was so used to, but after thinking a bit long I realized things don’t add up. As a silver member of Best Buy I get free shipping from online purchases and if you order online to pick up at the store you can get free shipping as well so they aren’t marking things up for the shipping.
I asked someone at the store and they seemed trained on this issue because they had an answer right away, not need to bring a manager into this issue. I was told, just show the check out person the print out from the web site and they’ll change the price for you. Three times I’ve done this now all on items over a hundred dollars, but I wonder how much extra Alaskans and Hawaiians are charge like this on a daily basis? It has now become standard practice for me to go to Best Buy’s web site and bookmark the item page on my iPhone before I got to the store to buy anything over fifty dollars.
Look I’m not journalist and I’m not doing an in-depth probe into the underground world of the back room Best Buy cheating customers with unfair mark up practices. All I’m doing and letting you know to check this out yourselves. Save some money and do a quick search before your next trip to your big box store of choice and let me know if you find a store seeming to have strange pricing so I can save a few buck.
And to Best Buy, I don’t know why you have this practice, but maybe you should look at your policies before you become the next Boarders and are replaced with an online source for my and many others buying dollars.
