Posted by: Russell AZ

Date Posted: 03/06/2008 - 9:01pm

Circuit City Misrepresented products, false advertising

The reason I am writing is over a false advertising issue we have with a local Circuit City store in the Hamburg area of Lexington, KY. My wife and I were shopping there this past weekend (3/1/08), just out for our 24th anniversary. We came across what appeared to be a good deal on a video camera. Long story short, they were using a higher end camera to display for a cheaper camera’s price, this was very apparent. They were caught red handed and they still refuse to own up to it and sell the camera for the price displayed. My other concern is how many customers were ripped off with this scam?

We have already purchased a much better camcorder for around the same price as they were asking for the cheap camcorder they were selling. If the cheaper camcorder had been displayed for the $229. price I would have not been interested in the camera, I don't believe anyone would, however they had a higher end model same manufacture on display with the cheaper cameras price tag. Now they knew and I can prove it! That wasn't enough, when I asked the supervisor how that happened, he said that maybe a customer switched price tags on the cameras, the thing is that they cheaper camera was not on display at all, so where would this customer get the tag? He said that it should have been on display but it wasn't. Still does not answer the question!! Then he tells me that hypothetically there could have been both tags at the same display even though there wasn't.

This scam is called bait and switch, i.e. A customer comes in and looks at a camera, its a nice camera with all the features.. The price advertised is for a cheaper camera but the customer does not know this. The customer says I would like to buy this camera and the sales associates sales him the cheaper camera, remember the customer thinks he is buying the better nicer camera he looked at on display and played with and decided he wanted. Now the customer will get the camera home and be shocked to find that the camera they just bought is not the camera they looked at. Now you have a unhappy customer.

This senerio almost happened to me, except I caught it and the sales associate grabbed the actual camera that was on display, this camera cost $599., big difference from $229.. But the supervisor still tried to sell me the cheaper camera for that $229. price, he assured me that they were exactly the same except for the $599. camera was HD and the other was not.

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