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[gunslikewhoa]

i don't see how its scamming, unless the person made the listing and then proceeded to wal mart to price match, then yeah its scamming

wal mart should change the policy then to only if it says "shipped and sold by amazon" if this keeps happening.

Why else would they make the listing?

 

[CronoShot]

Whining about ethics over people scamming Walmart? Wow. That company is pure garbage. Call it karma.

Thing is, Walmart won't suffer at all because of this. Employee bonuses will.

So yes, it's absolutely a scum bag move.

 

[Mufausa The 3rd]

Say goodbye to price matching now thanks to these pathetic scammers.

Totally agree. These people just fucked over price matching now..

 

[Gestault]

Stores shouldn't have policies like this (without allowing for discretion) unless they plan to accept situations like this. It's certainly unethical, but it's condoned by plain-language policies used to promote the store.

 

[NegativeCero]

Goddammit. Missed the WiiU Sears glitch and now this. Would've been a nice flip.

 

[Starviper]

Lol @ people saying it's theft. It's morally questionable, but I would try it had I thought of it before it made the news. If someone were to abuse it and attempt it multiple times for reselling, that's taking it too far.

 

[Delt31]

Here's a legitimate, ethical $35 PS+ deal all can take advantage of. VisaCheckout is free to sign up for, no fees or anything like that and you can use non-Visa cards with it.

Awesome - been looking for this thanks

 

[amnesiac]

I mean let's be real here. If you had the opportunity to get a PS4 for $80 you wouldn't do it?

 

[Einbroch]

Stores shouldn't have policies like this (without allowing for discretion) unless they plan to accept situations like this. It's certainly unethical, but it's condoned by plain-language policies used to promote the store.

So if something is on eBay, Walmart should accept that price? What about Craigslist?

The policy is fine. It's the managers/employees that need to be trained better.

 

[Danthrax]

theft, seriously?

lol

IT'S PRACTICALLY MURDER

Spoiler

because the Walmart employees' bonuses will be cut, which means they can't feed their children, which means the children will die, all because of a few "crafty" gamers

 

[Eleuin]

If I could get a PS4 for that price I'd do it too, unethical...lol

 

[Interfectum]

Thing is, Walmart won't suffer at all because of this. Employee bonuses will.

So yes, it's absolutely a scum bag move.

Walmart doesn't need to use a minor glitch as an excuse to fuck over their employees. They've been doing it for far longer than PS4 has existed.

 

[ThoughtsOfSpeaking]

They don't have to be? You dont have to be the one who put up the pirated version of the game, youre still taking advantage of something by downloading it. Works the same in this case, you don't have to be the one who put up the listing but you still took advantage of it.

Downloading a pirated game is not remotely similar.

Price matching is this:-

Buyer:- Hay dude, the guy across the street is selling apples cheaper than you

Walmart:- oh, is it? Ok whats his price ill match it.



Piracy is this

Buyer/Pirate:- This apple looks good. Let me find somewhere that has a copy of it and take it for free.

How you can even attempt to equate the two is beyond me.

 

[BlastProcessing]

Hahaha. Theft? Hilarious.

Theft? Are you kidding me?

Would you prefer the term "Fraud"?

The only real difference between theft and fraud is that perpetrators of fraud attempt to hide their stealing.

Holding up a bank = Theft
Embezzling from a bank = Fraud.

I mean let's be real here. If you had the opportunity to get a PS4 for $80 you wouldn't do it?

I have an opportunity to get a PS4 for $0 right now. It's just sitting at my buddies house. He's at work and he even gave me a key!

I think I'll pass.

 

[Cavalier]

ITT: Angry gamers who missed their chance to get the deal of the century.

 

[friskykillface]

Why else would they make the listing?

this isn't new , i frequent the amazon warehouse thread on CAG and there are always listings like this, some say "must pay by paypal gift" , that method is a scam.

not saying this is whats happening but its a possibility

 

[CambriaRising]

Couldn't have happened to a nicer mega corp.

 

[spiderman123]

Wouldn't this be classified as fraud?!

 

[ElectricBlanketFire]

I'm okay with exploiting a glitch, but not fraud.

Don't know if that makes me a hypocrite.

 

[JABEE]

People use to try to pull this, price matching amazon sellers, stuff with me when I worked at Best Buy, I use to bring it up on the computer and point out that it's not AMAZON selling it but another seller. Pissed off a lot of customers lol mostly gamers

I think this brings up another problem that there are people who actually are legitimately confused about whether they are buying from Amazon or not. Policies like this are meant to bring people into the store. Customers could "feel" scammed the other way even if they are not right, that retailers are squirming out of their advertised policy after they accomplished their goal of getting feet in the door.

 

[akira28]

Say goodbye to price matching now thanks to these pathetic scammers.

doubt it.

Piracy is this

Buyer/Pirate:- This apple looks good. Let me find somewhere that has a copy of it and take it for free.

How you can even attempt to equate the two is beyond me.

This isn't piracy by the way. Except I learned that legal definitions can literally be changed to mean anything. So maybe it is piracy.

 

[Dr. Black Jack]

This isn't unethical at all. Customers are making Wal-Mart make good on their price match promise. Its Wal-Mart's problem to make sure the price shown is legit, not the customer's.

You could say the same thing about counterfeit bills or bad checks. After all, Wal-Mart has the authenticity markers/check authentication services, right?

The listings were fraudulent and the price-matchers knowingly used them to get a fraudulent discount. How is that not unethical?

 

[Verano]

Congratulations on the theft!

And he's so proud of himself, too. Ugh.

Hardly theft. Wal-Mart price matched Amazon's accidental price error and some dude saw the price for a PS4 and managed to get it inexpensively. Overall it's more like a temporary discount than a theft

 

[Xeroblade]

Totally agree. These people just fucked over price matching now..

Not really. Look at their policy, its horrible. I knew shit like this would happen as soon as walmart decided to start price matching online retailers. They are so in the unknown. The policy will get fixed and it wont include 3rd party sellers. The policy also states no misprint/error prices, turns out it all comes down to the manager. You can't tell me that if you were in the store you wouldnt have at least tried to take a shot at it? right?

 

[Chezzymann]

I really think these things are on walmart and the employees who work there for not checking to make sure its valid. These people who took advantage of this aren't scamming, the Wal-Mart employees just messed up for not verifying the seller before price matching.

 

[FaintDeftone]

I used to be a manager a Target. I HATE these people who try to price match these ridiculous pricing errors from websites and cause a scene if we didn't match it. I can understand if you ask and see if we can do it, but if you throw a fit over it and curse and threaten our jobs because you can't get a game console for almost free, you can go fuck right off. It happens quite often too; especially during the holidays.

 

[KoopaTheCasual]

Walmart Employee before. iirc yearly bonuses are effected also by theft and accidents as well. This isn't the only contributor.

B-b-but, I thought scamming multi-billion dollar companies didn't hurt anyone!

It's amazing how far people will jam their fingers in their ears to convince themselves that taking part in a scam like this is not unethical. If you're going to take advantage of a situation that directly hurts lower level employees, at least own up to it.

 

[ThoughtsOfSpeaking]

ITT: Angry gamers who missed their chance to get the deal of the century.

Basically.

Lot of salt in here because someone had big enough balls to ask and managed to come up.

 

[Baleoce]

Didn't this happen with a Sears Wii U bundle too? lol

 

[Jack Scofield]

So the dude posts his receipt with the store location, last four digits of his card number, and shares it on his personal Twitter account.

No such thing as a clean getaway, I suppose.

 

[ThoughtsOfSpeaking]

doubt it.



This isn't piracy by the way.

Yeah I was responding to a poster who tried to equate the two.

 

[MauMau]

Say goodbye to price matching now thanks to these pathetic scammers.

Precisely.

 

[CosmicQueso]

ITT: Angry gamers who missed their chance to get the deal of the century.

Gross. More like a lot of people who have some semblance of decency and those that do not wish to commit fraud.

Basically.

Lot of salt in here because someone had big enough balls to ask and managed to come up.

Even more gross.

So can someone explain this point of view? Maybe I'm ignorant to the ways of business, but I wouldn't feel bad about taking advantage of this because it's a multi-billion dollar retailer. And besides that, as consumers, I would think people would want to get the best possible deal for a product. I'm legitimately curious.

It's not a deal if it's fraud. A purchase exchange must be done in good faith to be a "deal" (even a price glitch can be considered a good faith offer as the retailer did list a product for sale at a certain price). This is not good faith, and is fraud. As for not feeling bad about taking advantage because it's Walmart... well hopefully one day you will find and examine your moral compass. Big companies are made up of thousands of employees whose livelihoods depend on that employment. Committing fraud is an immoral, and often criminal, act.

 

[Pizza]

Dang, a $60 WiiU would have been a great gift for my parents. I'd never go out of the way and do it for myself, but if I can do something like this as a gift I'd at least politely try (and likely get politely told 'no')

 

[NegativeCero]

Congratulations on the theft!

And he's so proud of himself, too. Ugh.

So can someone explain this point of view? Maybe I'm ignorant to the ways of business, but I wouldn't feel bad about taking advantage of this because it's a multi-billion dollar retailer. And besides that, as consumers, I would think people would want to get the best possible deal for a product. I'm legitimately curious.

 

[ghibli99]

Piracy, buying used, not supporting devs, etc. are all terrible! ...but this is OK. Really?

 

[TheBanditKing]

Here's a legitimate, ethical $35 PS+ deal all can take advantage of. VisaCheckout is free to sign up for, no fees or anything like that and you can use non-Visa cards with it.

Thanks for that!

 

[LaunchpadMcQ]

What makes you think they don't already do this?

If they have, that guy certainly sucks at his job; they should've hired me, I've had more than ample time to react to all of these price mistakes.

 

[HiiiLife]

Man what a good idea.

I'd be all over picking up some cheap ps4s to flip to desperate parents over Christmas.

Dwight k schrute style

Tbh

 

[duessano]

To be fair, there are many multi billion dollar companies that treat their workers/customers/vendors fairly so I wouldn't encourage taking advantage of them (Costco for example). On the other hand, fuck every single thing about Walmart and they deserve anything bad that happens to them.

This times a million and don't come back about two wrongs, etc.

 

[Dunan]

Wasn't the original spirit of price-matching that they matched their big, major competitors?

I think Amazon, in making third-party offers look exactly like "real" Amazon listings (but with no Amazon overhead or inventory management costs, but a nice hefty cut of whatever the third party sells), walked into this to some extent. They should be clearly separating first-party and third-party sales. Any little shop can have a legitimate going-out-of-business super-discount sale. And Wal-Mart, for their part, should not be price-matching these kinds of special offers.

 

[spiderman123]

I don't know why we or at least some are tossing aside their morals just b/c it is a multi billion dollar company? I'm not condemning anyone but it seems silly.

 

[Shouta]

There are definitely things that can be done to prevent this, like not listing 3rd party seller prices as the main one on your website.

That said, making a fake listing to do this is scummy as fuck. That's very different than getting one because of errors and the like.

 

[ThoughtsOfSpeaking]

Gross. More like a lot of people who have some semblance of decency and those that do not wish to commit fraud.



Even more gross.

Please explain the difference between this and taking advantage of a pricing error in terms of deceny.

The fact of the matter nobody has proof that the person who put up the listing, was the persons or people who actually benefitted.


Considering how ridiculous the price was the likelihood of anyone honoring the deal was extremely low.

 

[Charles Alan Ratliff]

Damn, I always miss things like this; I would have loved to surprise a friend with a new PS4 for Christmas.

 

[jts]

Poor Waltons.

Is there a Paypal where I can make a donation to?

Also a Paypal to donate to all the salty gaffers as well.

Here's a fucking idea, what about setting up some boundaries that would prevent this kind of extreme exploiting of such a policy? Otherwise just own what you preach.

People have way more sympathy for these scummy mega corporations than to fellow people who would be called out on anything if some rule they established themselves for their own good would backfire. Fuck right off with that.

 

[manny10032]

lol that Walmart is like 30 Minutes away from me

 

[Sean*O]

Ethics?

Take your fucking ethics and shove it. It's taking advantage of a vague and a abusable system. There's no honor in hustle.

Stay hungry.

Bullshit, anyone who knows how it works knows it's got to be sold direct by Amazon not some third party in order to apply, yet they are trying to, and sometimes succeeding in passing it by some store employees as real. Might as well pay with fake bills.

It's not the rich execs who get hurt either, Robin Hood.. It's the hourly wage and low level salary employees who were probably too slammed to catch that one small detail on the fake price sheet and will very likely pay for it themselves.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

The issue IMO is that it might lead to them restricting or cancelling this policy due to this type of costly abuse, which is anti-consumer in the long run.

 

[Einbroch]

This times a million and don't come back about two wrongs, etc.

Why not?

Do you honestly think the employees that work at Walmart want to work there? By doing stuff like this you're cutting what little benefits they have. You're just siphoning money instead of spending it at places that deserve it. In the example, go buy a console at Costco. Instead you're just hurting the employees at Walmart.

Sorry, it's not right. If you want to make a difference, spend money at worthy establishments so they can afford to expand and hire more people. The toxic attitude of "they get what they deserve" is so shortsighted.