Class Action Calls Best Buy’s ‘Price Match Guarantee’ a Bait and Switch Scheme
Best Buy apparently “learned nothing” from the four-year-long class action in Jermyn v. Best Buy, in which consumers challenged its “price match guarantee” policy as “misleading, deceptive and unfair,” alleged Westchester County, New York, consumer Vincent Dima in a new fraud class action Thursday (docket 7:23-cv-02869) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in White Plains. That’s because Best Buy still uses its price match guarantee “as a means of baiting and switching the consumer into purchasing products from its stores,” it said.
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Best Buy is no “magnanimous” retailer “doing right by its customers” as a result of matching designated competitors’ prices, alleged the complaint. It’s instead “just still trying to make the proverbial extra buck through specious trade practices,” it said. Best Buy continues to advertise, promote and utilize its price match guarantee “despite its failure to honor the price match,” it said.
On Feb. 4, one of Best Buy’s online or local competitors designated as eligible for a price match was the e-commerce seller TigerDirect, said the complaint. Plaintiff Dima visited TigerDirect’s online store and confirmed that an Apple iPad Pro, with a 12.9-inch screen and 128 GB of storage, was listed there for $555.99, it said. Dima then visited Best Buy’s website and found the identical product listed there for $1,099, nearly double the TigerDirect price, it said.
On confirmation of the TigerDirect price match from Best Buy later that day, Dima bought three iPads from Best Buy, but didn’t immediately receive the credit for the difference, said the complaint. When he visited Best Buy’s Mount Vernon, New York, store to pick up his products, he was informed that the retailer wouldn’t honor the price match guarantee, it said: “Curiously, or not so, shortly after Plaintiff requested from BEST BUY that it price match his purchased IPads using the TigerDirect price, TigerDirect was removed by BEST BUY as a designated online and/or local competitor.”
Dima’s complaint alleges Best Buy violated Sections 349 and 350 of New York’s General Business Law on deceptive acts and practices. Dima alleges unjust enrichment. He seeks injunctive relief, arguing the grounds for an injunction “are present therein,” including his assertion that “irreparable harm will be done” to him and his proposed class “if the injunction is denied.” Best Buy didn’t comment.