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If you're about to buy a GPS, better think twice before heading to your local Best Buy. Turns out when customers ask a sales clerk to check special pricing they saw on bestbuy.com, the company uses a fake internal "website" that looks just like the real one, but lists higher prices. The scam goes something like this:
1. You check out www.bestbuy.com and see special pricing for something.
2. You head over to Best Buy, only to find the item is not on sale as advertised
3. You tell the sales clerk (if you can find one) that you saw the item for a cheaper price advertised on their public website
4. The sales clerk heads over to the computer, pretends to bring up the website to check, but actually brings up a fake internal version of the site that has higher prices listed.
5. The clerk tells you the special pricing is no longer available
6. You believe him, having seen him look it up on the "web" and get shafted
Several States are investigating legal action. Best Buy is claiming all this is merely the result of a few poorly trained salespeople who didn't realize they were using the internal site instead of the public one. Hmm.... More details on the whole scam are available via CNET's coverage.