There’s nothing like some good ol’ fashioned corporation scamming on the holidays. And as we inch closer to Black Friday, some particularly ambitious shoppers have convinced the mega-chain Walmart to sell them PlayStation 4s for as cheap as $US50 thanks to a simple new price-matching scam.
Don’t cry for Walmart though. Cry for price-matching. “We’re committed to providing low prices every day,” reads the Walmart website. “On everything. So if you find a lower advertised price on an identical product, tell us and we’ll match it. Right at the register.”
They’re probably going to tweak that policy soon. Last weekend, some lucky shoppers got their hands on $US60 Wii U and 3DS bundles by asking Walmart to price-match what turned out to be a glitch on Sears’ website. And now, more devious shoppers have come up with a different scam to get PS4s: fake Amazon listings.
It’s a simple process. First, someone sets up a bogus third-party retail listing on Amazon that will claim to sell PS4s for super-cheap, like, say, $US90:
“AmzonElectronics” is a nice touch. Though Amazon is quick to remove fake listings like that — and you’ll never get that $US90 PS4 from them — it’s still simple to snag a screenshot and bring it to one of the big box stores.
And that’s… pretty much it. Anyone can benefit from this scam simply by taking the Amazon listing to Walmart (or any other retailer that offers price-matching) and crossing their fingers.
While there’s a chance that more savvy retail employees won’t honour the deal, at least a few shoppers have successfully pulled this one off:
http://twitter.com/Papi_chulo5/status/534588808478855168/photo/1
http://twitter.com/taahaa8/status/534744983472181248/photo/1
https://twitter.com/GamingHistorian
Isn’t human ingenuity such a wonderful thing? Too bad this blatant fraud will likely force companies like Walmart to change their price-matching plans to be worse for everyone. Sorry, guys!
(h/t Tom Scocca, Joe MacLeod)
Comments
12 responses to “People Are Scamming Walmart With Bogus Cheap PS4 Listings”
No chance of pulling this off in Australia? Wouldn’t mind rorting EB Games for a Wii U.
Nope, most stores will only match local advertised pricing, and if they’re doing what they should then they check with the company providing the price if they have stock (but this rarely happens).
Anyway this kind of behaviour is dishonest and wrong, so would never condone it.
Totally with you on this. It’s one thing to correctly take advantage of price matching, it’s another to flat out steal.
and that’s why EB don’t like price matching as much any more because of the dishonest people like yourself out to rip them off 🙂
For me, EB have only price matched places in the same shopping complex. They used to be great, got a lot of good deals from them around when the GCN came out.
EB have always really busted my balls when it comes ot price matching. I remember them not wanting to price match deBlob with Big W when it was on sale at the latter store, even after calling them to check stock. Funny thing is I got the disk home and there is no way the gave me a new copy of the game. Jokes on me I guess 🙁
This wouldn’t happen here in NZ even if you have a Legit price its sometimes hard to get the stores to honour it and usually involves them ringing the store to confirm.
Mighty ape say they will price match but not nzgameshop prices that’s fair enough but they will sometimes not price match the warehouse price either which seems odd as that is a retail store in NZ but yea if EB games price matched they’d be out of business in a month they are always the highest price around when it comes to games.
Are full stops in short supply in NZ?
so what Kotaku supports criminal fraud now?
Insert gamergate joke here? 😛
This won’t work.
When I worked in retail sales, whenever people came in with their “online price” I would have to them that we do not match online prices. Can’t remember exaclt what the reason was but was closely related to that brick and mortar stores need to pay for staff, utilities, storage etc…
Awhile ago, people worked out how the Walmart barcodes and discount system worked and were making coupons for really cheap consoles are crazy cheap prices. I think it originated on 4chan.
Why we can’t have nice things….
You’d be a fool to Tweet this, given that it’s fraud.