Best Buy is facing a class action, certified last week in New York, for allegedly preventing customers from taking advantage of their price matching policy.
The suit contends that Best Buy trains its employees to evade its price-protection plan. According to one former staffer, each of the 3 stores he worked at as a supervisor denied about 100 customer claims per week, under orders from management.
U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon, who certifed the class action, wrote in her ruling, "Best Buy's own records reveal that the price-match guarantee was applied inconsistently and 60 percent of customer requests to match warehouse club prices are wrongly denied."
The suit also allegedly contains information from ex-Best-Buy employees regarding the use of a secret website that enabled staff to negate consumer claims for discounts on its public website.
For the time being the class action is open to residents of New York state only, who purchased goods from Best Buy and were subsequently unable to collect under the company's price matching policy.
