Ed B. has had a helluva two weeks. First he got married, and his bride gave him that Rock Band drum cake. Then Best Buy gave him Guitar Hero: World Tour, with instruments, for $60.
First, the Best Buy tale, because once you hear this SKRU-ed up SKU promotion, you may want to see if it's going on at your local big blue box. Ed says (this was emailed late Saturday):
So I walk into a local Best Buy today and spot sale tag in the Xbox 360 aisle advertising Guitar Hero: World Tour for $59.99 ... no big deal. I take a closer look and read "Save $20 Instantly" which confused me because that's the MSRP for the game. Upon further inspection I noticed it read "Band Kit" and "Reg. $189.99."
In other words, boys and girls, they stuck the right promotion on the wrong SKU. So, guess what happens next.
I thought "This is worth a shot" and dragged one of the band kits over to the register. The guy behind the counter laughed and said "Man, what a deal!" he called his supervisor over who scratched his head and input the SKU printed on the tag into the register. Sure enough, it was the same item only it rang up as $169.99 (this was the accurate sale price). He walked over to a manager with the sale tag and explained what happened. After about 5 minutes the manager walked over, said "How much? ... OK" and sold it to me for $59.99! He then said "Sorry for the wait, sir ... have a good night!"
That's right. When confronted with a difference in the printed, incorrect in-store promotion, and the correct price in the system, they gave him the cheaper one. With no chest-beating argument over obligations to honor an obviously incorrect price. I checked Best Buy's latest circular and I don't see any $20-off promotion for the GH:WT bundle. This may have been local to his store only. But who knows.
Update: Commenter willparry79 says:
As a Best Buy employee, I can confirm that we do this. If we messed up pricing a certain item, we'll give it to the customer for whatever price that it's advertised for, as long as we're pretty sure that we did it. If someone just moved the product to a cheaper price tag or something like that, we wouldn't do it, and we won't continue to sell the item at that price, but I'll change at least one or two items' price for that reason almost every day I work.
Good to know, and thanks Will.
Now, where were we? Oh right, gamecakes. Ed also just got hitched to Ursula, his girlfriend of seven years, and for the groom's cake she had the designer create that Rock Band drum kit cake you see above. Mmm, tasty. And the topper - literally - Ursula contacted Tristan Eaton, one of the co-creators of the Kidrobot Munny toy, and he designed these custom Munny cake toppers.
So, congratulations Ed and Ursula. Now in addition to finding space for all your wedding gifts, you have to house a second set of instruments. Be sure to write Best Buy a thank you note eight months from now. (That's OK, I always give wedding gifts 11 months after the fact.)