Customers Creating Fake Amazon Pages To Get Cheap Electronics At Walmart 287
turkeydance writes People are reportedly creating fake Amazon pages to show fake prices on electronics and other items. In the most heavily publicized cases, Walmart was reportedly duped into selling $400 PlayStation 4 consoles for under $100. From the article: "The company announced on Nov. 13 that it would price-match select online retailers, including Amazon.com. However, any Amazon member with a registered selling account can create authentic looking pages and list items 'for sale' online. Consumers need only take a screen capture of the page and show it to a cashier at checkout in order to request the price match."
wont last (Score:3)
Clever crooks. Always finding the loopholes. This is why we can't have nice things.
Presumably walmart will immediately be limiting this to items only sold and shipped directly by amazon... or they'll drop amazon matching entirely if that's too complicated for their staff.
Re:wont last (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:wont last (Score:4, Interesting)
They took a $10 off coupon and added a zero?
(My understanding is that coupons have barcodes to actually check the validity of the offer in a database or something.)
Nope, manufactured their own coupon. It's not hard to do, it used to be a frequent thing on the various underbellies of the internet. And I'm not talking about chans, a bit deeper. The barcode scan is looking to see if it's valid, again--easy to make it work as well. One of the big ones back in '08/09 was for baby formula, people use it to cut other drugs--and would use mules to buy the stuff from walmart, costco, walgreens, etc usually at $200-800 at a time.
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Is this really a loophole? What happens if I go to amazon.com and find one of these $100 playstations, and quickly buy it, then insist they honor the contract?
Should they fail.... bring it to court, suing them for the difference between the price agreed and the best available offer. Subpoena walmart for records of the price match as proof that the $100 listing for sale was known and intended.
Re:wont last (Score:5, Insightful)
good luck. i'm doing jury duty on a civil case in NYC now and the system will break you before you see any money
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If you think you'll come out ahead by suing for $100, you're sadly mistaken.
Well actually, they'd be suing to get the game console for $100, so the assumed net gain would be the difference between the bogus advertised price and the real price: closer to $300 or so; but yeah, that's still not even close to worth it.
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> Is this really a loophole? What happens if I go to amazon.com and find one of these $100 playstations, and quickly buy it, then insist they honor the contract?
Insist all you want, there is no contract until there is an exchange of value aka your card is charged. And your card isn't charged until the item ships.
This is all well established law. Not a week goes by where someone on fatwallet or slickdeals hasn't had an order cancelled because of a misprice on the merchant's part. If they actually charg
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They may or may not be crooks, but that question likely comes down to pedantic details about what buttons they pushed and if their amazon listing was a legit "limited time offer" or "sale." The bar to prove fraud might be pretty high here, unless they bragged about it loosely on twitter. Which I guess most of them probably did...
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Clever crooks. Always finding the loopholes. This is why we can't have nice things.
Presumably walmart will immediately be limiting this to items only sold and shipped directly by amazon... or they'll drop amazon matching entirely if that's too complicated for their staff.
Walmart promises to price match any competitor, then uses their clout to get the manufacture to package the item differently, specifically for walmart, under a different SKU so the item, is in effect, unique to walmart, and they'll have no one to compete with them.
Fair game I'd say.
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That used to be a trick that stores used for mattresses, maybe they still do. The major companies like Serta, Sealy, and Simmons, would make a different model name for various major stores. Each store offered to beat any other store selling the same , IDENTICAL, item. Since they each sold their own "unique" mattress model they never had to actually match anyone. The fact that Sears' Foo and Wards' Bar were the same mattress, just with a different label and SKU, was of no help to the consumer.
I have seen
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maybe they still do.
Yes. They still do.
just with a different label and SKU, was of no help to the consumer.
Except that you could just buy foo at sears or bar at Wards. I mean its a price matching policy...so if the Foo at Sears is cheaper than the bar at wards, and you think its the same thing and Wards is like 'uh uh different sku' then just drive to Sears. Big deal.
Worst case its a meaningless price matching offer. They are still competing with eachother. Its just slightly harder for the consumer to com
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What's worse, often times Walmart will have them package an inferior product with the same SKU. I remember some Sony monitors that were the exact same Trinitron model but the Walmart ones had a lower max resolution the the ones sold at Circuit City.
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Walmart price matching is even worse than this. Despite our general dislike of Walmart, there was a toy my son wanted that we were going to buy him. Walmart had the best price on their website so we went into the store and found the toy. Unfortunately, it was more than the price on their website for some reason. We went to the customer service desk and were told they don't price match Walmart.com because the physical store and online store are two separate entities. We could order it from the website,
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As you can imagine this is potentially illegal in many jurisdictions so these crooks were probably breaking the law to begin with.
I also remember when someone figured out how coupon UPC's worked and got XBox controllers for unrealistic prices. Ultimately I imagine one of the reasons people get away with this type of thing with such ease is because retailer workers paid minimum wage with little or no benefits probably don't care at all.
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unless they would check the actual link, the price matching based on a lousy printout is unworkable. It's rather easy to photoshop the displayed price to an arbitrarily low value.
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Actually, it's called fraud...
I See this as Walmart's fault... (Score:4, Insightful)
Walmart was not obliged to sell other than by it's own actions... They could have challenged it or otherwise...
It's actions were made on the intent of beating it's competitors and this backfired... Only consumers really need to be protected from their own stupidity and ignorance - Corporations are big enough to make their own miscalculations and live with the consequences.
caveat venditor would be more appropriate -
GrpA
Re: wont last (Score:4)
Why does everyone think they understand and are qualified to speak about and criticize economic systems when they have only the barest idea of what the words even mean, much less the history and principles behind them?
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Its because they have to take econ 101 as part of their degree but see it as one of those courses they just need to get out of the way so they do not do much more than what is neccesary to pass it
You see the same things when people take psych 101 also. It gives just enough info to understand what is being presented but is dangerous to assume you know it all
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Because people are simple, and everything is both simple and complex. I can explain to you how to solve poverty; the solution is simple, but incredibly nuanced. It's a very short list of policy features, but it avoids an incredible number of policy features that would create sub-optimal or even destructive results. It relies on a handful of economic concepts which, when explained, amount to massively complex interconnected systems, which in turn come down to simple human behavioral psychology, which in t
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I don't think you understand what you are taljing about. Fraud is not inherent to capitalism. Capitalism requires informed parties to be involved which negates fraud. Fraud can only happen when one or more parties either are not informed, purposely misinformed, or there is an out an outright refusal/ability to deliver the product. The later is taking advantage of it and regullation of it isnot regulation of capitalism unless it manipulates the transaction in some way to prevent fraud. This is BTW no differe
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It really doesn't, and you don't understand Laissez faire.
No, I understand how it works in reality just fine. You can give me all the bullshit definitions you want, but when put in practice it very much does mean that.
Next you'll tell us that rape and murder are legal under that system.
Since it's an economic policy not a social one, no I wouldn't.
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And it's even easier to just download the page, edit the HTML and save it again with your new low, low prices.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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Make them care enough to do the lengthy, tiresome coupon verification process instead of getting to the next anxious customer in line? Best of luck.
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Ah yes, smart trained cashiers = too costly for Walmart
minimum wage dummies have additional costs. In addition the cashier might be in on it. Just get a friend with a few thousand bucks to buy a 20, one after another as discrete sales.
Sell on Ebay for $300 - repeat as needed.
I expect the plug was soon pulled on this scam because it has such a high degree of viral amplification inherent in it.
Re:wont last (Score:4, Informative)
I don't get why you think they are crooks?
Probably because its textbook case of fraud.
A fake price is still a price.
But its being misrepresented as real price, in a real offer to sell real playstations to the real public.
Walmarts price matching policies apply to genuine offers made on the same product by another party to the public. It doesn't apply to fake listings that were never evem intended to be seen, nevermind honored, by the public.
Walmart, should probably demand to see the listing showing a PS4. If the customer can't find it, it its not an offer to the public. If the crook leaves it up so walmart CAN find, it (and just plans to blow off anyone who tries to order one in the meantime) then Walmart should order up 50,000 units. That's "get the full attention of the FBI" money when you don't honor the shipment.
And there's no hiding behind "limited quantity available", or limited time and its already expired offers... because price matching policies tend to exclude that sort of thing too.
Because the objective of price matching policies is to convert a competitors sale to your sale. If the competitor can't fulfill the order then you haven't lost a customer to them and don't need to price match.
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Because the objective of price matching policies is to convert a competitors sale to your sale
No, it's not. The purpose of Wal-Mart's price matching policy is to drive competition out of business. It's like running a loss-leader sale, where you sell below cost until the competition goes out of business and then hike prices to make up for it later. Mega-Corps like Wal-Mart have deep enough pockets to do this, but it can get them in trouble with regulations covering Monopolistic and Anti-Competitive practices. The "price matching" program is a loophole which allows them to do almost the same thing.
Per
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No, it's not. The purpose of Wal-Mart's price matching policy is to drive competition out of business.
While they may wish to be the only store around, it'll take far more than price-matching to drive the competition out of business.
Saying that it's the policy's one true purpose is silly.
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They are now closing the loophole to block matching to 3rd party sellers (which is probably fair), but what if the $80 PS4 were legitimate? An $80 PS4 with $350 shipping. The original $80 price was either taken down quickly, or someone tried to buy it (and then had it declared out of stock by the 3rd party seller), but if you sold it for $80 plus a shipping cost to make up the legitimate cost of the unit like many ebay sellers used to do, wo
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Amazon and eBay both limit shipping costs on things like games consoles, so you can't have them that high. It's a particular problem on eBay because they seem to have set the price at the absolute minimum it is possible to post things for with no tracking on the slow boat.
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It doesn't apply to fake listings that were never even intended to be seen, nevermind honored, by the public.
Amazon allows you to sell a book for one penny and then make your profit on the shipping charge. For all you know, the buyers were doing the same with PS4s and reselling them at cost + shipping. It's probably a great way to get raving 5 stars reviews from your customers. Also since the customers are locked into the shipping charge with the PS4 itself, you could probably upsell them on extra PS4 cables and extra PS4 accessories at a real monster's premium.
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Because the objective of price matching policies is to convert a competitors sale to your sale. If the competitor can't fulfill the order then you haven't lost a customer to them and don't need to price match.
Only partly. Traditionally, price matching was an anti-competitive measure to support prices. It says to your competitors 'don't both trying to compete on price because we'll just match you and we'll both lose'.
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Then you think wrongly. One can always not purchase at Walmart. You, however, are attempting to rationalize illegal activity.
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Wal-mart isn't overpricing anything. They may have made a fortune, but their margins are pretty darned thin - they make it up on volume. Many sales deals are actually loss-leaders. IE, they get you in the store and hope that you buy enough other stuff to make up their loss.
By price matching, Wal-mart is hoping to get you in THEIR store rather than the competitors. And if you happen to just need to pickup bread, milk, some sheets, and fill your prescriptions while you're there, then they're ok with losin
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This should be made illegal (like creating fake amazon sales pages), because if Wal-mart is selling item X for cost or at a loss, other retailers will be unable to make a profit by selling item X. Wal-mart, and other retailers, should be made to sell item X for at least y% (say 5-10%) profit margin.
That is, the govt should regulate a minimum profit margin for a product and
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Quite a number of states (Cali and Wisconsin come to mind) have laws prohibiting loss leaders, usually only if they're viewed as predatory pricing (i.e. trying to drive competitors out of business).
Wisconsin has a law that sets a minimum margin for gasoline. Idea is to prevent large operators with other revenue streams (i.e. a supermarket with a couple of gas pumps) from selling below cost to bring in shoppers, thereby driving out small operators
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If loss leaders are made illegal, then most supermarkets in America would need to be charged also. All of them price certain items cheaper than their cost to lure you into the store. Some sales are this way too. They get you into the store promising X at a really good price. And while you're there, they hope you'll impulse-buy Y, Z, and a few other things. This is a standard business practice that everyone engages in, not some shady trick designed to eliminate competition.
(Which isn't to say that Walma
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Walmart's cost of goods sold (i.e. the % of revenue that gets spent on the products they sell, doesn't include cost of labor, rent, light, etc.) is 75%, slightly above Amazon's 73%. So, WalMart is, on average, charging a SMALLER markup than Amazon.
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I get so sick of this "Walmart is big corporate evil" mantra. The very fact that Walmart has been taken in by this scam several times only illustrates that they make a good faith effort to honor their deals.
I'm not thrilled with the whole stockholders model anymore either, (customers and employees should be more important) but Walmart is no worse than anyone else.. why isn't
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Genius. (Score:2)
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There's "gaming the system" and there's fraud. This isn't clipping Home Depot coupons and taking advantage of Lowe's willingness to accept competitor coupons. This is forging your own Home Depot coupons on your computer, printing them out, and using them at Lowe's, since you know that Home Depot won't accept the forgeries.
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Interesting, but in the summary they don't say anything about forgeries, they talk about people with amazon seller accounts creating sales in order to have them matched. That is nothing at all like your example. In fact, your example looks to me like an intentional fraud; it claimed to have a relevant point, and even had the form of a point, but didn't match the accusation at all.
Re:Genius. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is fraud if you create a web page purely to deceive Walmart into giving you a discount on a product you had no intention of selling for the price.
It is deeply dishonest, and there is no other excuse for that behaviour.
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Create Web page with deeply discounted console.
Buy 3, or more PS/4 From Walmart.
Sell one for the advertised price--making it not fraud.
Sell another for 3x the price you advertised the first one at.
Keep one for yourself.
Profit!
In the stock market its called short selling.
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If you can deceive while following the rules as written then it doesn't stop being deceiving. That just means the rules are poorly written.
See tax evasion.
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It is complete and utter fraud, no ifs or buts. The intention of the fake listing is purely to defraud Walmart. This is not a shades of grey situation, it is straight out criminal behavior that should see them if caught be prosecuteded
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Here's a test: The person is creating an Amazon seller page and marking the item as "on sale" for a deeply discounted price, right? What if a few people were to find the page and order the product? Would the "seller" be willing to fulfill the order at that price? If so, then perhaps he isn't committing fraud. If the orders would be cancelled for no reason, the account closed, and a new one opened, then this is just fraud.
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Is it really immoral to fraud a company which systematically refuses to pay its workers anything near a living wage?
Yes, because two wrongs don't make a right. Or did your parents not teach you that?
If you punch me, does that mean I can punch your sister? Does that make it "ok"?
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"they talk about people with amazon seller accounts creating sales in order to have them matched"
No, they're not creating "sales." They're creating sales pages they have no intention of actually delivering. Unless you think that the people pulling this scam would have happily shipped out hundreds of PS4s at $80 each, when the orders came in.
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Amazon doens't charge the same price to everybody! (Score:3)
Retail stores have a hard time changing prices as prices signs and labels are regulated by state law... Amazon can very easily change the price in cookie-based pages. I'm not sure why Wal-Mart thinks they can price match when that happens.
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Wrong. Amazon DOES charge the same price for everybody. They did experiment with different prices for different customers a few years back, but they got some bad media attention over it and discontinued it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]
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They do, however, change their prices rather rapidly. I usually leave things in my wishlist and see the price change regularly. So this can cause confusion if a retailer wants to verify the price.
Slightly related, I had a keyboard on my wishlist, set at $50, it recently went up to $70-75, and is now on their black friday sales listed as $60 (What a deal!). All within 3-4 weeks.
Scam's Already Been Stopped (Score:5, Informative)
WalMart's already wised up, and changed the rules. Now it only applies to items on Amazon SOLD BY Amazon. No more marketplace sellers.
http://consumerist.com/2014/11... [consumerist.com]
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You could do that...
However if they do check out the forgery they will probably treat you like a shoplifter.
I have no love for Walmart. But part of the reason why companies treat the customer like they are criminals is because too many are.
It is one thing to steal food to feed your family if you can't afford it. But a play station?
And no Fat Tony defense.
Uhm... edited HTML? (Score:2)
Wal-Mart shouldn't be relying on paper printouts... can't those be easily be faked?
Uhm... edited HTML? (Score:2)
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Re:Oh, boy! (Score:4, Insightful)
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These are the same Walmart employees who think they're worth fifteen bucks an hour?
This is getting off topic, but minimum wage in the US has taken a big hit due to inflation. At the very least if compared to the 1960's the current minimum wage needs to be about $11/hr in order to have the same buying power.
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The underlying data (through 2012) is here. Minimum wage (in 2012 $) peaked in 1968 at $10.34, has averaged (from 1938-2012) $7.09/hour in 2012 $.
In inflation-adjusted terms, the minimum wage was lower than current levels until 1956, above current levels from 1956 to 1984, and then mostly below current levels again since 1984 (with the exception of 1997-1998).
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Oops, forgot link: http://www.dol.gov/minwage/cha... [dol.gov]
Hooray for arbitrage! (Score:2, Interesting)
This is great news, glad some savvy consumers "abused the system." Price-matching guarantees, far from being made to help the consumer, are actually economic game theory made to preserve a store's sales. Example:
1. You are shopping for an item in a store, but discover that it is priced better elsewhere. If the store has no price match, you will leave and obtain the item elsewhere. The store loses sales because it is not as economically efficient as its competitors, and goes out of business. The free ma
Dumb-asses! (Fry's is not so dumb...) (Score:5, Informative)
Fry's has a simple system for this.
1. You tell the sales associate (it's not done at the checkout counter) what site you want them to match.
2. They check it against the list of sites that they are willing to match.
3. They go to the site on their computer, and look it up.
4. They print an invoice that you take to the counter with your purchase.
5. BTW, they have incentive to do this, because they get something any time they print an invoice. I don't know the details, but it would be dumb for Fry's to withhold whatever the reward is just because it was a price match. So, anytime somebody at Fry's is actually helpful (rare, I know, but sometimes happens...) don't balk when they want to print an invoice!
You don't get away with just showing them your screen.
You can show them a screen, from the web or some price-search app, and then they will go to their own browser to look it up.
Re:Dumb-asses! (Fry's is not so dumb...) (Score:5, Interesting)
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In addition to said shenanigans, some of Best Buy's employees are just flat-out dense.
One time, I had a case where the in-store price was higher than the internet price on Best Buy's own website. I don't know if it was an error in their database, or if stores in more expensive areas (This was in San Francisco.) have the ability to set their prices higher. Regardless, they refused to price match their own internet price. The excuse they gave was that bestbuy.com was not on the list of sites they price mat
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I've had Walmart do this to us too. The price on Walmart.com was cheaper and there was "ship to store", but they wouldn't match the price on the exact same item in the store. The sales associate said that the online store and physical stores are two separate entities. She also mentioned that she's had to deal with this herself. She would go to her car during her lunch break, order something from Walmart.com to pick up in the store, and then grab the item when she left her shift.
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I don't blame WalMart Employees (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, when your employer pays you terribly, why do you care? Reject the idea, customer complains to your manager. Who is also, may not be the brightest star in the constellation, who may discipline/fire you.
Also? Average wage at WalMart: $8/hr (weekly: 8*8=64 * 5 days=$320). Which means, pulling this once and reselling the console is almost a week's pay. Taking $300 from WalMart, whose family owns more money than the bottom 42% of the US combined [politifact.com] to feed your family doesn't seem like the most heartless crime in the world.
Right on! (Score:2)
You won't see me crying over a thief that got robbed. Wal-Mart has systematically shorted employee pay, forced their employees and their families onto welfare, and demanded tax cuts meaning that other taxpayers foot the bill. They are also supporting a corrupt and oppressive government in China and n doing so helped destroy many middle class lives by having jobs moved there.
So boohoo, they got what they deserved. Hats off to those who 'stick it to the man'.
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Completely agreed. I can think of a couple nice things to say about WalMart, but I can think of thousands of horrible things to say about WalMart, and I can think of even more to say about the Walton family. Fuck the lot of them.
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Because as a rule of thumb, they appreciate their job.
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If you want to make $50,000 a year as a cashier or shelf-stocker, good luck with that!
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FUCK. I totally misread your last comment. Totes agreed with you.
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It's taking it from WalMart, not the Walmart employees.
Walmart is worth almost $500 billion - I'm sure their bottom line can afford to take a hit.
( I imagine some of these scammers are being total dicks to the poor employees, which is awful of them. But scamming the company? I don't really see a huge problem with that. )
I detest that twisted logic that because a company is rich, it is acceptable to steal from them.
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It is not nice to take money from my 401k.
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This is why we can't have nice things... (Score:2)
People have to ruin it. Company tries to do a nice thing and match online prices... and jackasses start creating bullcrap listings.
Neither Amazon nor Ebay really should be listed. Keep it to sites like NewEgg, etc.
Actually, this is just bad training. (Score:2)
Best Buy price matches Amazon.com, just like Walmart.
But the policy is to price match items sold from and BY Amazon.com. So stores hosted by Amazon are NOT supposed to be price-matched.
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Same thing came to mind
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Or, if you're using Chrome the built-in Developer Tools. Even IE has built-in tools to manipulate live HTML. Hey, this iPhone is on sale for $79.99!
(NOTE: I don't actually advocate altering a page, printing it out, and getting a price match on the altered price. That would be fraud. That said, it can be fun to mess with the live HTML of web pages.)
walmart's fault... (Score:2)
The real solution will only come when Walmart and other retailers start looking up the prices themselves to verify them, just like they would with print ads (no sane retailer would accept someone's xeroxed version of a store's weekly ad in order to price match, so why would they accept screenshots and printouts of internet websites?).
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A simple fix (why am I helping Walmart? Because fraud is fraud) is to present the evidence to a customer information point, where they will check whether the price given is actually offered by Amazon and give a voucher with a code of some kind which can be used at checkout.
Result: Fraud stopped in its tracks.
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Target does something like this. If you want to price match against Amazon, you take the item to the customer service desk, not the register. There, they look at the Amazon page, approve the price matching, and you buy the item right there at the matched price.
This way, you only need to train the customer service desk folks, not everyone who works a register.