Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) Faces Price-Matching Scams

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By Hanson So on November 20, 2014 Company

On November 13^th, Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) made an announcement in which the company claimed that it will be accepting price match from selected manufacturers which included Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN). Following this announcement, several customers went ahead and bought PlayStation 4 console which is worth $400 for a price as low as $100. The transactions were made possible by using Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) listings that were phony. Users posted pictures of receipts which showed the price of PS4 to be as low as $90.

The consumers just did not take advantage of the Wal-Mart’s (NYSE:WMT) price-match policy on purchase of PlayStation 4 alone but the miss-use went beyond that as well. However, the customers might find exploiting the company again a bit harder in the future.

Edgar Dworsky, creator of ConsumerWorld.org said that Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) should trust the customers but verify the prices as well.

On Wednesday, CNBC came across more data of the price-match scam via Twitter (NYSE:TWTR). The data contained more pictures of receipts for PS4s priced at $90 as well as for Xbox 1 console and games priced as cheap as $100. While on one hand, there were pictures of receipts on Twitter (NYSE:TWTR), on the other hand, many users had posted pictures suggesting that Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) was now aware of the scam and is paying attention to details. One of the pictures had an in-store sign that said that Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) PS4 price matches will not be accommodated anymore because of the scam.

Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) on Wednesday announced that the company will price-match some of the Black Friday deals from its competitors starting November 21^st; this will include deals on PS4 as well. The company however, did not reveal the names of other stores that it would be price-matching with.

As per a report by CNBC.com, creating a product sale listing is very easy for any person who has an account with Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN). A screen shot of the listing can be shown at the time of check out to get price matched and that is sufficient enough to carry out a scam. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) has not yet said anything about this ability of its members of getting a screen shot for price-matching products until now.

Dworsky said that mostly frauds related to price-matching are not easy to pull off. It is a hassle because most of the time the store clerk or cashier is not authorized to price-match products for the customers. A manager has to be present at the time of check out to supervise the process of price-matching.

Brent Shelton a representative of FatWallet.com said that one of the reasons why shoppers don’t do frauds is because it is a lot of work. He said that it is much easier to take advantage of any loopholes that might be present in the company’s policies or pricing.

Earlier on, the companies did not even accept online prices for price-matching. This trend was started about a year ago and even now only selected online retailers are included in price-matching policies.