Of course, sample size of 1 and it's quite possible that the employees at my local BB are just lazy to my advantage

but they're being paid hourly, so it's not like it result is more work for them.

A common example of this scam was phone cases. Each retailer is provided the same item with a model number differing by a single letter (A for Amazon, T for Target, B for Best Buy). Because of this deviation I was not allowed to offer price matches on any of these items.

The first is when I bought a vacuum cleaner. The web site said it was on sale for $50, so I went to the store to buy it. It was $100 in the store, so I made them price match themselves.

The second was with a MacBook power adapter. Future Shop, a Canadian store similar to Best Buy, had it for $95, Best Buy had it for $105. By getting Best Buy to price match, I got it cheaper because they will beat the price by 5%. Here’s the interesting bit though: Best Buy owned Future Shop at the time (they’ve since retired that brand), so once again they price matched themselves.

In both cases they did it without complaint, but they did verify the competing price, etc, as they should.

It took quite a while for Best Buy to finally rationalize its store locations and get rid of the redundancy. Some Future Shops took on Best Buy branding, and in cases like the one above one of them was picked to close.

I was recently at Lowes, I had found a Saw Horse online at their website for $80 off, and tried to price match it to themselves but when the cashier looked it up it came back the store's price (even though I still had the page open on my phone, and at my home computer at home).

Then got treated like I was the one trying to pull a scam, rather than them discontinuing a sale mid-way through a work day, and me being caught by it.

"It says $80 online" "Here, let's pull it up on the website, $100, you must have been mistaken" Head home, nope, $80.

They got caught - or provably so - when mobile data became better. "Weird, if I turn store wifi off and hit refresh by 3G the price magically goes down".

That ended up in a lawsuit, and no doubt some gift certificates via class action.

"Target updated its smartphone app Wednesday night after a Minneapolis TV station reported that some prices displayed on the app increased whenever users approached a store. In one case, a product's price increased by almost $150." ...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/target-app-price-switch-target-...

What generally happens is: (1) associate is dispatched to pick an online order, listed by SKU and bring it up front, (2) they arrive at the bay and start looking around for a match, (3) while they are supposed to verify down to the SKU level, sometimes they say "DeWalt 20V circular saw" = "DeWalt 20V circular saw", grab it, and move on, (4) repeat for the next order.

That's assuming there's stock in the store. In the event it's Ship-to-Store, you add the additional touch of warehouse getting it right. Although in my experience that rarely goes wrong (because automatic verification, etc as things go out).

I always do a SKU / item check if there's anything that might be a problem. In my personal experience, it happens ~1:50 orders (usually with easily confusable substitutions).

That's common with some stores, like large department stores and mattresses being a common example. But the manufacturer has to be part of it.

And it's simply not common or widespread in electronics. Apple isn't doing it. Logitech isn't doing it. Etc.

There might be a few brands or product categories which do... but it's also not generally to avoid price-matching, but rather to sell a lower-quality product that Best Buy pays less for. They're not just slapping a different model number on it -- it also has less memory, or cheaper packaging, or a lower-quality screen, or whatever.

Kohl's has adopted an interesting strategy recently of becoming an Amazon drop-off location. By doing so, they get people to walk through their store, browsing their merchandise, if only via a brief visual scan. Once you've dropped off your return, they give you a card good for a discount on anything in the store for one day.

For stuff like SanDisk sticks/sdcards you see multiple SKUs for the same product all of the time -- they may have a clamshell sku for merchandising on a shelf or clip, have a "bonus" storage case, etc.

Apple is different because they exert alot of brand control. But PC OEMs have many models of similar products, especially at retail where factors like how long a CPU will be available for restock may matter more. The shitty HP Model whatever laptop on the shelf at Walmart will usually not share a model number with the shitty laptop at Costco or Target. Sometimes retailers insert their own upsell in the packaging as well.

Also TBF Sandisk makes this worse considering how often even inside best buy I'm scratching my head over why they have multiple items that have the same U/Class rating but different packing on the shelf.

I've had decent luck with BB Price matching since around 2010 or so, when they started worrying about Newegg/Amazon and were to some extent proactive about shifting their business model. On the other hand the types of items I've price matched tend to be specific enough that Part number shenanigans aren't a concern.

It's hard to tell what's going on:

1. Re-labelling the product to catch the confused parent market?

2. An actually better product for the switch? (maybe better read IOPS that helps loading time?)

3. A worse product but in ways they think you won't notice on a switch? (lower sustained write speed perhaps, basically any SD card can outpace eshop downloads)

All seem equally plausible, but my guess is on 1 or 3.

They also warn that counterfeits are rampant.

BestBuy needs to watch out. Pissing off customers with sleezy tactics is not the way to go.

If you really want to see this strategy in action, try shopping for mattresses.

Similarly, my friend was a contractor and told me the paint manufacturers would have paint stores with good paint. The same paint was available cheaper at Home Depot, but the sku would be slightly different and the paint properties like thickness would also be cheaper (in the quality sense)

Of course, often they'd do other little things too, like maybe a smaller HDD but a better CPU. Just enough to make it not really the same Laptop, but close enough you picked up on the trend.

The only time I took advantage of price matching, it ended up saving me money. The phone I was looking for was $250 on Best Buy website, but $220 from Amazon 3rd party sellers. I went to a Best Buy store hoping to get it for $220 and not having to wait for shipping. They actually price-matched it at $200 on the spot.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-inspiron-15-6-laptop-intel...

https://www.staples.com/dell-inspiron-5593-15-6-notebook-int...

The one at best buy has the model number: BBY-51FJVFX

The one at staples has the model number: STP-51FJVFX

Notice anything? :)

"Sorry, this is a 512GB-SANDISK-AMZN SD card, we only carry the 512GB-SANDISK-BBY, it's a different model".

The price match was deceitful, they obtained money from it. Sounds like a swindle to me.

In what way is tricking people into thinking they'll be able to easily price match not deceit?