Best Buy confirmed that some of its customers looking to confirm special prices for notebook computers shown on the company"s public Web site were told those prices were no longer available, and shown a product listing on an intranet site that didn"t always show the same pricing as the public site. Therefore customers who had investigated pricing online for various PCs could have wound up paying more than they should have for PCs that were on sale through BestBuy.com.
A Best Buy representative claimed that store employees are trained to use the public Web site, not the intranet, to check pricing when a customer inquires about an online price. Richard Blumenthal, the attorney general for the state of Connecticut, has opened an investigation into Best Buy"s sales tactics. The BB representative, who stated the company was cooperating with the investigation, said the cases in Connecticut were due to "employee error" and that sales associates are being reminded to use the external site. Blumenthal was troubled by the fact that consumers bear the responsibility for pointing out the difference in prices between the public Web site and the store"s intranet.