Circuit City Refuses to Honor Call of Duty 4 Deal
By Jonathan on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 9:07 PM PST In Call of Duty, Computer, Game Consoles, Game Platforms, Gamer Life, Games, Games Industry, Microsoft, Sony
It should come as no surprise to seasoned game shoppers to hear that Circuit City has apparently refused to honor yet another of their own promotions. Several people saw an ad for Call of Duty 4 saying they could get a free copy of CoD3 if they went to Circuit City to make their purchase and happily made the trek there earlier today. But, as Adam, a reader of The Consumerist, reports:
Today, like many anxious gamers, I went to Circuit City (Store # 3111) to pick up the highly anticipated “Call of Duty 4″ for the XBox 360. I chose to pick it up at Circuit City as this week’s circular ad listed a free copy of the previous game “Call of Duty 3″ with purchase. When I went to check out, I was told that it was a misprint and that they refused to honor it. Myself, along with about half a dozen co-workers were rightfully angry that we wasted our lunch hour on this Circuit City bait-and-switch, that has become too common with this outlet lately.
To make things weirder, that ad in question is still listed on their website for Naperville, IL, and it clearly mentions a free copy of CoD3 not once but twice; not exactly something that can be explained as a simple misprint. My own experiences with Circuit City have been less than pleasant, so I’ve known to avoid them for awhile now. But still, that sort of bait-and-switch tactic is pretty tacky in itself.
Via The Consumerist
maybe it was for pre orders only, misprints are more common nowadays, if you acted as mad in the store as you do on the internet maybe you would of gotten $10 off, so what you didnt get a free copy of cod3, you were still gonna pay the same price for COD4.
boycott
I had them attempt something similar to me as well. I purchased a camera on their website reading their online guarantee of “if it is not prepared for in store pickup within 24 minutes of the time stamp on the email for order confirmation, you get a 24 dollar gift card”. I thought to myself hey that’s nice, either i get it without waiting or i get 24 dollars of credit, it’s a win win. Anyway, I arrived at the front counter of the store a good 30 minutes after the time stamp and not only was it not ready, but they didn’t start preparing it. So I had to wait an additional 10+ minutes and then they tried to not give me the gift card, claiming that it was “24 minutes after you walk in the store”. Either way, I spent over 300 bucks and they didn’t want to keep their word so I demanded a refund on the unopened product. Needless to say, I got the gift card which purchased a nice little case for the new camera:P. I probably won’t go shopping there in the future.
Wouldn’t this be considered false advertising? (definition,) False advertising is the use of deliberately false statements or deception in advertising, in order to gain a commercial advantage. As advertising has the potential to persuade people into commercial transactions that they might otherwise avoid, many governments around the world use regulations to control false, deceptive or misleading advertising.)
This was not a problem for me. I went and picked up my copy of COD4 at 1:00 yesterday @ the Valley Forge, PA store #711 and they honored the ad. I have my free copy of COD3.
I would have walked out right that instant. Told ‘em all where to shove it.
Dunno in the US, but in the UK if there is a price or offer listing, be it in-store or on an ad, evne if it wasn’t the correct one, they are obligated to follow it (a kind of, you have to ask, but they can’t say no thing). Pretty bad that you’re not getting your free game.
circuit city sucks and so does eb games i refuse to give either company my money circuit city always screws you, and everyone who works at eb games lies to little kids telling them that one game is sweet when it is just a piece of crap used game. i am always satisfied to just pay the extra 2 dollars and go to best buy. i hope cicuit city and eb games go out of business.
This is why I buy all of my stuff on line, stores suck
Couldnt you sue for misrepresentation? And with that threat they would probably give you the game and an xbox 360
A misprint is when they put a 5 instead of a 9 or spell words wrong. That ad is fully designed to say “Free COD3!!!!” That is NOT a misprint. It’s CC showing how low-class they really are. When will people stop buying from those guys? Be smart with your money people.
BOYCOTT! BOYCOTT! I HATE CIRCUIT CITY!!! THEY ARE A MOCKERY BOYCOTT!
Why do people continue to shop at Circuit City. They are a dishonorable store who will do anything to screw the customer. Shop somewhere else. There are only like 1,000,000,000,000 brick and mortar, and on line stores in the U.S.A. to pick from.
When it comes to Circuit City, I learned my lesson years ago and I wouldn’t go in there if they were giving stuff away free. They do not value their customers. Therefore, I do not value them.
I got mine, but apparently it wasn’t correct in the system. First, it came up with a $60 discount for both resulting in me getting COD4 and COD3 for just around $30. The cashier realized the error then tried to ring it up a different way. Ultimately she rang up COD4 at regular price and rang up COD3 for $.01. They did seem to have a lot of trouble with the entire process. I’m pretty sure it should have rang up automatically. Plus it was obvious that they didn’t have enough copies of COD3 to cover the offer.
Chances are you wouldn’t get a successful suit off. You could try a breach of contract, but since there really is no consideration flowing from a customer, Circuit City could easily call this a gratuitous gift and revoke the offer w/o any problem. Not to mention they have some good lawyers who probably already researched the applicable laws and advised them they could make this advertisement and rebuff it without fear of a suit against them. Also the bait and switch theory wouldn’t help out so much, because you are clearly there for CD4, and they are not trying to up sell you a more expensive product.
Basically they just pulled jack ass move, which sucks. C’est la vie.
Circuit Shitty
While I have had problems with Circuit City in the past, I actually had a GREAT experience at a newer store here (Lexington, KY). I went in to look over some HDTV’s. Not only was their staff extremely professional and helpful, but they actually had a far better price for the TV I wanted than anyone else around. I even got a free XBox 360 out of the deal.
The salesman who sold me the TV then helped me load it into the truck, and saved me a few bucks on the HDMI cable I needed with a coupon.
That episode restored my faith in Circuit City. Judging from what HEss said above, this is an incident that occurred at one store, and isn’t necessarily indicative of the experience at other stores.
First, about the 24 min pick up thing, it is 24 min from the time you enter the store. I use to work at CC, I know how things go there for the most part, jeez, you people are just like every other penny scratching thieve that shops in retail stores that stop at nothing to get something for free. lol.
Wrong, tensien. From CC “How it works” on their website.
Q: When does the clock start for the 24/24 Pickup Guarantee?
A: After you place your order on circuitcity.com, you will immediately receive an order confirmation email. The timestamp on the order confirmation email is your official start time for the guarantee.
====
Honestly, if it was 24 minutes from the time you *enter the store*, don’t you think I could pick out what I wanted and check out in less time?
How in the hell are misprints “more common” now? Misprints aren’t more common, incompetence and half-assery are.
Aside from the obvious fact that this isn’t a misprint in any sense of the word (unless you use it as a verb and ad the words “on purpose”), that anyone would stick up for CC shows some tremendous suspension of disbelief. False advertising is just that, false, and this is as good an example as I can think of in recent memory.
The term for this consumer deception is called “Bait and Switch” They bait you into the store acting like you can get something for a certain price, then when you come in the switch the item and are like sorry, you gotta buy this instead.
It’s a well documented scam and is very illegal and actionable. The one poster above was right it was NOT a misprint. That ad was tailored to represent a free game and they could end up with there proverbial ass in a sling.
That’s funny, my friend bought one last night at the Gurnee, IL Circuit City and he got his free CoD3!
tensien, You’re wrong. Its clearly stated on the CC website that “applies from timestamp on order confirmation email until the time the order is ready for customer pickup”
24/24 FAQ at Circuit City Website:
Very first question
Q:When does the clock start for the 24/24 Pickup Guarantee?
A:After you place your order on circuitcity.com, you will immediately receive an order confirmation email. The timestamp on the order confirmation email is your official start time for the guarantee.
Tensien, you should have spent less time getting high out back and spent more time understanding your own policies.
I got the CC bundle yesterday, no problem.. but the guy working the cash register had to manually give me CoD3 free because it wouldn’t pull up in their system.
Same thing happened to me… Long story short, all retail chains are determined to screw customers out of their hard earned money. I never shop at CC nor any other retail chain, unless I am hard up for something and rather not wait for shipping. I have had more aggravation with Best Buy though. A little off topic but I had gone into Best Buy after seeing an ad for an LCD monitor. While there, I noticed that there was a bigger and better model for the same price. I promptly asked the clerk to fetch it for me. After waiting for 15 min, he sent my brother and I to a different store on the other side of the valley. Once there, we asked for said monitor only to find out that did not carry it. Rather frustrated, we headed home. After getting home I decided to check their website for the model in question. Apparently the item had been mis-tagged and knowing how weights and measures works, we headed back to the store. Apparently they had mis tagged the item and the clerk was searching for the wrong monitor. On our way back to the store, I phoned their corp. office and questioned them about their policy on upholding shelf prices, since laws set forth by weights and measures requires the sale of any item at the price listed on the shelf tag. Once back at the store, we promptly headed back to the electronics department and asked for Two of the monitors at the price listed on the shelf. The clerk walked away and returned with his floor supervisor. He then took a look at the tag and explained that they could not sell the item to us. We then explained that we had contacted their corp. office and that they were legally obligated to sell afore mentioned monitor to us for the price on the shelf. Rather bewildered he then left to fetch his boss. While he was gone, we again contacted the corp. office and again explained our situation to them while in the store. Mid conversation, the store manager comes up to us and demands to speak with their corp office and grabs my phone away from me. Rather pissed, I demanded that he return MY phone, ignoring me he turned and started to walk away from us. Rather loudly he started to rant about how HIS store is number 1 in the district and that HIS store does not make these kinds of mistakes. After several minutes of bantering, he then told the rep on the phone that My brother and I were liars and thieves, and that we had most likely place that tag on the shelf, then hung up and told us to get out of HIS store.
Now, seeing that we were obviously in the wrong here and that we had the means to print out price tags for HIS store, I felt like dowsing him in gasoline and watching his entire store burn to the ground.
Anyway…. still feeling rather pissed, we decided to leave him with a few choice words and headed out of the store, being careful to knock everything off of the shelves on our way out.
@$%# Retail stores!
Not a misprint. Sounds like the store chose to do their own thing. Circuit City HQ might be surprised to learn about that. The store here Anderson, SC honored the deal (I think), they claimed to be out of COD3 when I went in around lunch time.
they ought to be shooting out e-mails and putting up flyers and letting people know before they get to the store, if it was a misprint.
Didn’t read everyone’s posts, so sorry if I’m repeating something someone says:
It is a law that retailers are required to honor published prices and offers whether the publication is incorrect or not.
With different reports of people being denied CoD3 and some people getting it, I’m thinking maybe the deal was implemented, but CC HQ did a bad job of telling their employees how to ring it up. I wouldn’t be surprised if the clerks at this particular store just had no idea how to handle it, so they tried to pass it off as a “misprint” to avoid extra work for themselves; especially since the people who did manage to get a free copy are saying the clerks had some trouble ringing it up. still though, if a person is holding an ad in their hand, it should be honored, even if the clerk has to give the discount manually. I worked at a Blockbuster during summer break once, and we were told to honor any coupons we got, even if they were outdated or even from Hollywood Video. we just had to put it in manually, which was a little tricky, but it kept the customers happy. frankly, i’d rather do a little extra work on a computer than deal with a really unhappy customer.
Two things: 24 minute garauntee. it really is 24 minutes from when youplace the order confirmation on the front desk of the CC when you are picking it up. Most of the time i’ll wait till you get there to even start looking for it. And if you have to wait more than 5 mins id ask to speak to a manager because they will give you a 5 or 10 dollar gift card if you ask.
Free cod3. I myself want to get the free cod 3 so i would suggest talking to a manager and they may give you a 10 dollar gift card for the trouble. just tell them you came out of your way to get it and itll be the last time. 50% of the time it works all the time. haha
Having worked in retail, weights and measures governs all pricing. If something is advertised or posted at a specific price, or special offers are mentioned, by law, they are required to sell that item for that price. A store can be potentially fined 250,000.00 for breaking those laws. If a store is not upholding its own advertising, then contact your local branch of weights and measures and file an official complaint. Also, document the “misprint”. Don’t let these ppl steam roller over you. Its the law!
This may be a store related issue as the store i made my purchase from a $30 discount was instantly taken off, the store attendant actually made a mistake and additionally took of the price of CoD 3 , therefore leaving me with my copies of both CoD 3 + CoD 4 for only $32 after tax.
Was there a manager involved at any point in the transaction? Most retail workers could care less about coupons and deals, and most likely weren’t even aware of it. A common misconception from shoppers is that anyone working in the store knows anything and everything about the store.
It is like when someone asks to locate some obscure item in the store, and then angrily walks away because the worker didn’t know the exact location of every item in inventory.
I work for CC and I can tell you that wasn’t a misprint, we honored ours until we were out of copies of Call of Duty 3.
As a Circuit City employee, I can tell you that at least at my store (3728) we honored the ad until we ran out of COD 3 and since we’re not getting anymore COD 3 we could not fufill the ad after we ran out. If people don’t like that, then I’m sorry about but we can’t do anything about that
I went to CC around 2pm on the 6th and they said they were sold out of COD3, so the COD4 + free COD3 offer was no longer an option.
On principle, I went to another store and bought it.
Lame.
Of the last 5 items I’ve bought at CC, *4* of them rang up at the wrong price at the register. One for more than TWICE what it should have cost ($14.99 for a DVD that was in a discount bin for $6.99), and one for almost $50 more than the price on the shelf.
On one item I was told that it was not mismarked, but that it was just on the wrong shelf. But I compared the UPC on the box to the UPC on the price tag and it matched, so they finally gave me the price (after 15 minutes of argument).
If you MUST shop at CC (they are the only retailer of computer stuff within 50 miles of me), check what you are charged!
I used to work in a retail outlet, and manually putting in coupons was never a big issue. I don’t know what kind of retarded system they have put up, but it was never an issue.
Also, isn’t their some kind of rain check thing you could get? I mean, just because they’re out of CoD3, couldn’t you get a rain check for one? The ad isn’t over, does the ad say ‘depending upon stock?’ or does it just say ‘lol, free cod3 with cod4 purchase.’
I’d get a rain check so when they got more copies in, I’d be able to get 1 for free.
I’ve never had this sort of problem with CC before, but I don’t shop there very often as it’s farther away than a number of their competitors. I did boycott CC for a few years because they kept spamming my email with ads, even after I called their cporprate customer support and begged them to stop. I avoided them completely for 3 or 4 years for that and eventually I guess they quit advertizing through spammers. But I haven’t gone shopping for this game to try out their free older game special. Like another poster here I did have a problem with Best Buy once (#263), they mislabeled something on the shelf which rang up wrong at the register, and after showing the guy the shelf price sale sticker for the item I wanted to buy (an SD card or USB flash stick) he peeled the sticker off the shelf and said he could not sell it to me for that price, and I left. Walmart #5228 did try a bait and switch on me for Halo3, the saleperson in electronics said they were out of the normal version and tried to talk me into a special edition copy with an obviously loose CD sliging around inside the case. As soon as I said no and walked away she suddenly found a stack of the regular version behind the counter. I’d say that if other CC stores are honoring this without whining about it then it’s not a misprint, and those customers suffering from jerks saying no should talk to corporate and whoever deals with false advertizing claims.
My boyfriend went to CC to get the “deal” and they told him that they only had three copies of CoD3 to begin with and had already sold out of them. Did not even offer to give him a raincheck. He walked out without even buying CoD4.
I (sadly still do) work at CC and this happens weekly. I’m a computer technician in the Arden, Sac, CA store and every week we’ll have massive notices for misprints. Personally, as someone in the company, they couldn’t find their a$$ with both hands and a map. The company as a whole is retarded from above and unmotivated from below, which unfortunately leaves customers in limbo somewhere in between. I will never shop there, I recommend that nobody else ever shops there, and let’s see if that company can go outta business too! I used to help customers quite a bit, find whatever they were looking for, and basically bend over backwards to help them out. Only to get chewed out, written up, and yelled at for it, all the while making enough money to barely pay my bills. So if you go shopping in CC, that’s who’s ready to help you. Enjoy it. Oh, and each store acts like its own little island, so whatever happens at one may not be applicable someplace else, not without a fight anyway. Shircuit Shitty loves your money and hates you for having it.
I went to get COD4 last night, and they were out of both games. The lady said she would give me a note allowing to get my free COD3 when they got more in. Since they were out of COD4 anyway, I left and bought it at Best Buy, who had well over 20 copies of COD 4 sitting on a big display.
Since I already had COD3, I was going to give it to my buddy so we could kill dudes on Live together.
You are a moron. Read the whole ad. It says “while supplies last”.
CC can easily claim supplies are over. If you don’t like CC, don’t go there.
Stop acting like a whiny-bitch at every opp. Be a man and quit making weblogs over every minute thing that happens to you.
I know a few people who did get the free offer. Should they make a blog now about how great CC is that they got free CoD3 ?
Looks like the same Best Buy tactics of having things on sale on their website and not in the store. I fell for that once and then printed it out from then on and took it in the store. The employee argued with me saying that it was not on sale. When he looked it up on their “web site” it wasn’t… I told him to go to http://www.bestbuy.com and oh wait… It does say it’s on sale!
Glad to see douches like ccemployee and tensien who work there don’t even know their own policies… Just like best buy. If you go onto cc’s website it clearly states in the (restrictions apply see details) and Pick up in store FAQ’s that “24 minute pickup guarantee applies from the timestamp on order confirmation email until the time order is ready for customer pickup.” It then goes on to talk about how you have to order within 30 minutes of store closing, wait time in line does not count… Yada yada yada. All things that indicate it is NOT from when you put the order confirmation on the counter at the store.
F*cking Clown Shoes…
Once you know, you Newegg.
That is actually not a misprint. I misprint would be if they advertised an HDTV for $40.00 when it was really $4000. The key here is as stated by the Better Business Bureau…
But the laws on false advertising generally deal with “willful intents to deceive.” If they do not honor the advertisement and it’s blatantly posted not only in multiple advertisements but also on the web you can best bet that there was intent to mislead. Especially considering CC’s running track record.
It’s on the website still.
http://circuitcity.shoplocal.com/circuitcity/Default.aspx?action=detail&storeid=2397299&rapid=0&listingid=-2092498120&offerid=
@FxP
How is the main post, the post of an idiot? the whole ‘while supplies last’ bit isn’t anything.
If you were referring to my mention of a raincheck, I already said I didn’t bother to look at the ad.
Also, I think it’s important to note on a gaming website, where teh good deals r.
yeah circuit cd misprints alot it’s horrible they did it before when they had buy psp umd’s get the second one free in my neighborhood, they need to stop misprinting
I downloaded it three days ago.
If I like it, I will buy in through Steam.