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
The sad thing is, the guy who was helping me was going to give me the Pioneer for that price and when he went to customer service the guy told him that they can’t give it to me. But the guy helping me told the guy at customer service, “but, they have a print out of the price and everything shouldn’t we give it to them?”. They had one Pioneer left in stock too and were not going to give it to me. Oh well… at least I tried.
All the best online coupons and deals related to electronics are available here at Circuit-City store at Couponalbum.com shopping site..!!
I found it funny that some of you MORONS crying about misprints had misspelled words in your post.
http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c142/weclock/circuitcity24.png
That is a picture from my recently ordered 30gb Zune from Circuit city, it says and I copy/pasta:
“If your order of $25 or more is not ready for pickup 24 minutes after the timestamp on your confirmation email, we’ll give you a $24 Circuit City gift card.”
Hey,
I work with compliance and legal for a living and I am involved with advertising & promotions.
You can sue them as this is 1) A misleading advertisement (Regardless of the “error” print) they are held legally accountable if they advertised this. 2) If you went to the store to buy it based on this again, this is in your favor in any legal battle 3) False Advertisement (another legal term) which favors you.
If I were you file a compliant with the Better Business Bureau, and contact the FTC (Federal trade commission) These people are very consumer friendly and hate big corporations. I have attending many of their meetings and they will investigate this for you. Else if you want to take it further you can 1) Contact an attorney who handles class action lawsuits & sense this consists of a large amount of people involved class action attorneys do not charge you money. They take 15% of the total settlement.
The results of the class action will be anyone who purchased COD4 during the time frame of the advertisement would get COD3 for free, The FTC would fine the Sh!t out of them, in the 6 figures if not millions.
http://www.ftc.gov/
**don’t email me I will never check my email**
I never really saw a cod4 get cod3 free advertisement but i did get a 20$ off cod4 that i saw in the salespaper it was about in early december the first circuit city i went to was sold out but they did show me where a nearby store was that did carry the game 20 off. so really theres was no problem. but when i did go to the first circuit city they guy did try to sell me all kinds of other stuff. hmmm…
so i guess to say my experience thus far was pretty good but that cod4 free cod3 bait and switch things real bullshit
Ha!! Circuit City is the worst store ever! I went to two different stores and at BOTH was treated like I didn’t matter. One store I was in for 3 hours trying to find the computer I wanted and finally the salesman talked me into a higher end model that was on sale, than he found out it wasn’t in stock!! I couldn’t get a raincheck or anything, I just had wasted 3 hours and all he could say was “there’s nothing I can do” and than proceeded to try and sell an even more expensive model! In the other store, I told a salesman the exact computer I wanted and that I just wanted to buy it, the person who was in the computer department told me it wasn’t his department and to ask someone else and than proceeded to walk away!! I will now be taking the computer back because a rebate that was part of the sale didn’t print on the receipt, and at the time I had asked the sales clerk about it and he said it was on the bottom of the receipt and to go online to get it, which, I believed him, but all that is at the bottom is a survey! And online there was no way to find the rebate I needed, so I called the number on the website and she said she couldn’t help me that I had to go back into the store and ask them about it!! AARGHHH!!
I will not be so bold as to say CC is the devil, but prolly is one of his evil step children.
If this or a pricing error EVER happens to you in California, make sure you take pictures of posted signage or the ads (Especially in this case where it can’t be a ‘whoops, I accidentally typed a $20 off instead of $10 — I can’t picture someone’s fingers ’slipping’ and typing “buy CoD4 and get GoD3 + poster free” in two places), and either call on the cell phone from the location you’re at or take down employee/manager names and call from home ASAP to your county Weights & Measures department. They are in charge of “Weights & Measures”, INCLUDING pricing. They are the ones who will audit stores in California for mis-priced items, handle reports of fraudulent ads/etc. In many cases, it is a MINIMUM fine of $500 per mis-priced item or if the item price is over $500, that amount (If the manager of the store is being an ass or if it is blatant/widespread, the fines can skyrocket). If you tell the manager straight to their face that you are calling weights and measures, they will either honor the deal, call your bluff (where a cell phone comes into play), or they haven’t had their first experience with W&M yet and you’re about to school them on it.
I’ve gotten $2000 laptops that are advertized for $500, LCDs for $180 (Back when they were $400+), and a lot of other items. And if they play the ‘Oh, its not in stock’, even if you walk in the door the second the sale is on, they must honor it with a rain check unless specifically noted as a ‘limited quantity’ item. If they are stashing the items to prevent them from being sold and you think they are stashing them, you still can call W&M and may investigate. Of course, you can do a little creative sleuthing yourself; Fry’s uses the cages in some of their stores; Just spy the one on sale in the cage and take a picture.
Usually if you have to pull W&M in and they come in with you (Which sometimes they will), they will force the store to allow you to buy AS MANY as you want at that price, threatening them $500+ an item you want they won’t give you that they have in stock. One Fry’s was being an ass and this time made me pull W&M all the way into it (And they came right away – Must have been bored
) – Instead of buying 1 laptop, I cleared their stock, and sold them all to friends, family and co-workers at cost.
Bottom line: Weights & Measure in Cali = Your friend. No lawyers needed.
In all reality, by ready what Circuit City means is that the product is staged and ready for pickup. When you submit a web order a ticket is printed out in the system at the exact time. They have 24 minutes from the time that ticket is printed to acknowledge the pickup in the system. Any wait times once in store do not count. If they don’t follow that policy, however, nail their rears.
Circuit is not able to work with customers if their is a misprint. It is not our job to make up for the responsibility of the ads and the misprints. sorry!