Best Buy Stands Behind POS Price Glitch
Written by Evan SchumanA new smartphone from Palm called the Palm Pre is supposed to sell for $199 but a lot of consumers last week bought them for $99. The problem? A data entry error that put the wrong price into stores nationwide. Best Buy Marketing Manager John Bernier used Twitter to confirm the glitch: “System errors happen because we’re a company made up of humans. We apologize for the confusion. The error is being corrected.” He also said “Without releasing confidential numbers, all I can confirm is that the price was honored until removed from the system. Not sure how we reconcile further?”
It’s an interesting dilemma. Could Best Buy have gone back to those people, asking for more money? They get brownie points for doing the right thing, but not sure they had much practical choice. Would love to know how many of the units they sold at that lower price and how it happened.
Cards issued by European banks when used online cross border don't usually support AVS checks. So, when a European card is used with a billing address that's in the US, an ecom merchant wouldn't necessarily know that the shipping zip code doesn't match the billing code.
-Marc
