I remember going into our local Best Buy (few years ago)with an advertisement in hand from the Toronto Sun from Sam The Record Man(downtown TO) for a DVD on special, I think Sam's had it for around $25 where BB was wanting aroud $29. I walk up to the BB salesguy and ask him, "do you guys price match?"....."yes sir, we do, as long as the price is advertised and they have it in stock"
...."OK, Sam's is selling this DVD for less than you guys(I show him the advert) so do I just take this up to the cash and let them discount it?"....he takes a look at the advertisement..."No, we don't recognize Sams"....I look at him rather puzzled
..."What do you mean?"....he says "We don't price match with Sam's, we don't expect people to drive downtown from here".....I reply..."So what you are saying is you have SELECTIVE price matching, correct?"
I argued with this guy for a while, as well as another salesman, then more-a-less told them what their price matching policy was worth. I then went to Future Shop, which incidentally is OWNED by BB, explained the situation I had encountered at BB and the young lady who was head of the dep't couldn't figure out why they wouldn't match the price. I hand her the advertisement and she says "Let me call them to make sure they have stock"....she calls them and says to me "No problem, they have several, so we'll match the price."
Either these companies are going to price match or not, they can't say things like "We'll beat any price" if they're not going to do it.
Just to get a little historical here, the original "Sam The Record Man" was a landmark store right in downtown T.O. famous for it's huge neon record signs facing Yonge St. They had been around since the 1930's and had great prices on records, everyone in Ontario and most of Canada knew of this store and any visitors would have remembered it. The original Sams closed it's doors a couple of years ago
, but there are still a couple of them around in other cities.
