You have to love this stupid idea: offer a sale on an item on your public website. Have the customer show up, and ask for the sales price. Go to an in store kiosk, pull up the page, and show the customer that "oops, it's more expensive than that". Sound sleazy? That's what Best Buy is still doing:

We went to one of their public computer terminals and searched it and it came up at the $255.99, no surprise.

iPhone to the rescue. At first it was showing the $255 price on my iPhones browser, then I realized it was connected through WiFi, so they have it blocking the external Best Buy site and feeding the fake one. I disabled WiFi and searched again and bam, there it was, $234.99.

So here's my question: Given the number of net connected mobile devices out there, who in Best Buy management thought this was a good idea? It's not only sleazy, it was virtually guaranteed to get publicized as sleazy. They might as well hand out "Kick Me" signs for the staff to wear...

Technorati Tags: management, stupidity