Well I just had an interesting chat with Amazon.
I had been hunting for a decent pair of fair priced headset for quite some time now. I went to Amazon’s Cyber Monday listing, filtered to headsets and then sorted by “discount highest to lowest”. I came across a pair of HyperX CloudX that stated it was 50% off (34.99/69.99). I purchased it and was happy thinking that I scored a great deal. I looked around for other good deals, but there was so many that I stopped looking because a lot of them were bad headsets. There was like 30 pages of them, I went through about 15 or 16 of them and didn’t see any that matched the sale price of the one I had in mind.
After I purchased it, I went to the website to look up a bit of basic technical info (yes you can rag on me for not doing it sooner). I noticed the price was 59.99, not on sale and the price analytics I looked up online suggested it had never been sold for more than 59.99. I use the same price analytics to look up amazon’s listings of the item. I notice that it also was never listed higher than 59.99, but numerous times it was listed at 39% off for 34.99.
I reach out to amazon customer service to 1, bring this to their attention as it is a classic example of bait and switch. 2, so they can correct it and make it so no other consumer made the same mistake.
I speak with an agent who gives me all kinds of scripting, telling me that “I understand you are seeing it listed lower at another website”. First of all, no…. never said that and I was looking at the manufacturer’s website which was priced normally at 59.99.
I get transferred to a “supervisor” who tells me that they don’t see it listed at 69.99, nor do they see it listed as 50% off. They told me they looked through the entire history of the item and that they have never once listed it for 50% off. I reply with “I am looking at it right now at “-50% 34.99”.
The supervisor told me that I am wrong and that it is not listed at that at all. I am flabbergasted and asked if there was any way I could provide the evidence of what I am clearly looking at and purchased it at. I even slipped a bit and said “Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining”. The supervisor then quickly ends the chat.
DO NOT BUY FROM AMAZON!!! I can’t tell you where to buy from, but do NOT buy from AMAZON this holiday season. We all knew companies raised prices before big sales, so that they could make it seem like it’s a bigger sale price than it is. Hold off and buy it at any other time than during holidays!! Go buy from a local store, where you can actually haggle, or at least have real customer service when there is an issue.
I will be following up on this with the FTC and the Consumer Fraud Department. I will be contacting my state’s attorney general and everyone else I can. This is not about the $3 or $4 I could’ve saved. This is about the principle about the lie I was given to get me to even consider the sale. About how I very well might’ve looked at other products and, quite possibly purchased a better product.