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News October 6, 2011
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“No HTC Flyer for You!” Best Buy Pulls a Fast One and Refuses to Honor the $99 Price

Gear Diary No HTC Flyer for You! Best Buy Pulls a Fast One and Refuses to Honor the $99 Price photo

 

Original Image courtesy of RPAD.tv

There is no better way to rain on a geeks parade than to dangle a worthy gadget out there at an unbelievable price, then to quickly slam the door in your face and tell you “it was a mistake.” After seeing news this morning that the HTC Flyer has dropped down to a single Benjamin, I quickly started to get my plan of action together. After my meeting at work, I ran to the local BestBuy Mobile at the closest mall and started a makeshift line so I could ensure that I was walking out of there with a shiny new white Flyer. I showed up at 9:30 and quickly made conversation with the employee through his steel security fence. I asked him if he had some in stock, and he confirmed there were a couple. Excitement was an understatement, and I told him that for $100, you can’t go wrong. He laughed and said I was crazy, so I told him to check out his website. He told me I had to wait to talk to him any further until the store opened at 10. So I started my one man line and could not figure out why I was the only one there.

At 9:55 he told me through the gate that Best Buy made a mistake, and that he could not honor the $99 price. As my heart dropped and my weak retort was quickly responded to with a shaking head  and apologies, I made my way back down the not yet moving escalator and out to the parking lot empty-handed. I guess this is why I never go to the mall to shop, nothing good ever comes out of it; I guess it was all too good to be true. But what about those people who were able to order them from the website before they sold out? Will Best Buy honor those sales? I assumed that in good gadget “fire sale” order, maybe HTC was clearing stock for something new and trying to stir the pot a little.

Feel free to chime in with your thoughts, and if you have a similar story about the Flyer or Touchpad let us know.

Thanks Best Buy!

Current Best Buy price is $299 (unless you look online)

Some more info on the HTC Flyer

Check out our past Review of the Flyer

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About Francis Scardino

View all posts by Francis Scardino
I have been a tech fanatic and gadget guru ever since I can remember. I started building computers at a young age and have been doing so ever since. Im a big fan of all things mobile but spend most of my time with Android when it comes to phones and Tablets. I like to spend my free time at the gun range, in the garage, or playing games.
  • Ken

    I bought one last week when they went down to $299.  I just called to see what I had to do to get my $200 back and they say they are not honoring it.  NICE!!!  Can you say sleazy?

    • Francis Scardino

      I know it. Worse off is that the website still says $99 if you search it out. But when you hit the actual product link it shows $299. The fact that it still says $99 anywhere on the site is ridiculous. Sleazy indeed. 

      On another note I would check the local anyway. Some have told me that a few stores have honored that price. It’s worth a shot.

      • Anonymous

        Currently the HTC Flyer shows up as $299 everywhere for me. I assume you remembered to empty out your browser cache? I find it funny, though: Amazon misprices things all the time — the $40 PS3 in January was probably Amazon’s biggest recent misprice, but if you take a look at their forums you’ll see plenty of complaints about Amazon cancelling orders of CDs, furniture, makeup due to pricing errors — but there’s almost nothing like the uproar this has caused. Really? Bait and switch? I suspect that if it weren’t for the “pricing error” clause, low-level folks who made pricing errors would probably be fired, as this sort of thing would easily cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars. But you’re okay with that I guess.

        Any individual stores that are honoring the price are eating the loss themselves, which is good of them. Too bad they’re not going to gain any customer loyalty from doing so. The folks who make a big fuss about this sort of the thing usually are only loyal to prices.

  • http://www.geardiary.com Michael Anderson

    Best Buy is invoking the ‘we make mistakes and don’t have to honor price errors’ clause which has actually held up in court: 

    “Prices and availability of products and services are subject to change
    without notice. Errors will be corrected where discovered, and Best Buy reserves
    the right to revoke any stated offer and to correct any errors, inaccuracies or
    omissions including after an order has been submitted and whether or not the
    order has been confirmed and your credit card charged.”

    Another interesting thing … I bet Best Buy was totally blown away by the rapid response to this. Even though ‘TouchPad faver’ seems to have died down, no one wants to be on the wrong end of the next Tablet rush. Last time people were skeptics and got left out as a result. This time everyone simply believed … even if it ended up untrue.

  • George Endrulat

    Horrible and disgusting, I waited in line with over 50 other people behind me this morning for this.

    • Anonymous

      I assume you eat the costs of every single mistake you’ve ever made, then? You’ve never dealt with folks who were willing to let you off the hook? Sorry it ended up being a waste of your morning, but it’s not like like Best Buy does this every week.

  • Pingback: Best Buy HTC Flyer goof frustrates $100 slate shoppersarticles.imaypop.com

  • Thomas R. Hall

    That really sucks. It’s a steal at $99, but even $299 isn’t bad. It’s a nice device if you like HTC Sense.



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