>It's been years now since I checked, but I remember a Best Buy airport vending machine having the same price as their stores.

It's been years now since I checked, but I remember needing (within hours) a specific ethernet card (for a box running Solaris x86 -- back in the late '90s/early noughties driver support for Solaris was quite limited) and went to a BestBuy store as they had it in stock near me.

I checked later on and found that the price in the store was 30% over MSRP.

As such, the fact that the price was the same at an airport vending machine vis-a-vis an actual store doesn't surprise me that much.

Which is why, unless I'm in a situation like I described above, I stay far, far away from BestBuy.

Obviously, this is anecdotal, so I imagine YMMV.

Probably not applicable to the early 2000s, but nowadays Best Buy physical stores will price match their online prices. I went in several years ago to grab an HDMI cable that was listed for ~$10 online but was marked $20 in the store. Silly that it’s even necessary, but it was easy to price match.

>I went in several years ago to grab an HDMI cable that was listed for ~$10 online but was marked $20 in the store. Silly that it’s even necessary, but it was easy to price match.

While I get your point, that I'd even have to compare prices online and in person from the same retailer, even if they will "price match" (which is really just ripping off anyone who wouldn't think to look for a better price from them online) is slimy as hell IMHO.

I should clarify. Since I was at the airport, I compared it to Best Buy's ONLINE price, not the store price. My mistake, it didn't occur to me that those might be different, but it does speak well for the vending machines!