We have been thinking of getting a new television for one of the rooms in the house and from time to-time I check the local brick and mortar sites, especially those with 110% price-match policies; one such retailer is Sears.
Well right on their main page they had an advertisement for a one day sale (today only) for a 40" Sony Bravia set, upon further inspection it turns out this sale is on the KDL40V3000; this is a great set, its even 1080P (not that on small TV this is a huge requirement). It was $849.98 ($1099.98 minus $250) if you signed up for a Sears card; now don't I believe in store credit, in-fact I despise credit but no-harm in signing up for a card and canceling to get such a great deal so I headed over to the local Sears to take advantage of this deal.
For context this set sells for $1300-$1600 at a number of online stores so to get this set for $850 would be a great deal, that being said its such a difference I figured it could be a price mistake and as such did not have my hopes up, either way we went down there with a print out of the ad in hand.
When we got in we asked if the set was in-stock it took about 10 minutes for them to figure this out, once they did I said I would take one; as I expected the price came up higher, I asked them if they could honor the price and they offered to check; here is where things get interesting.
Four floor clerks came to check the ad and computer, back and forth for no less than 15 minutes this goes on ultimately a young woman (one of the afore mentioned clerks) comes up to me and tells me "I am sorry sir, we don't match great deals"; I kid you not thats what she said, I told here I didn't understand what that meant as this was a Sears ad (though I acknowledged it was a great deal), she told me "its complicated" and offered to get me the manager.
Of course the manager did a better job of explaining things, it was a simple pricing mistake (as I had expected) and their policy was not to honor such mistakes (which is fine); the thing that weird's me out is that this whole exchange took six Sears employees nearly 45 minutes.
With staff as "quick" as the ones that were helping me I guess it shouldn't be such a shock but in any event it certainly reminds me of why I don't like going there.