Well, Mr. Consumer made out a lot better than I did. Here's another way the stores get around an internet price match promise. With Fry's Electronics, the competing online retailer must be an "authorized" seller for that particular item (to be fair, it so states that in Fry's mouse print). The competitive product happened to be offered on Amazon, but since it was actually being sold by a third-party seller (and the Fry's sales guy just assumed the third-party seller wasn't an authorized seller), they wouldn't honor it. To the Fry's sales guy's credit, he searched several sites and offered a match at a lower price that he'd found. But it was still way better to just order it from Amazon, which I did. BTW, this was for some backup software which was $89 plus 9% tax at Fry's, and $34 (including shipping, but no tax) via Amazon.

And Mr. Consumer is sure correct when he stated that, "Through the years, MrConsumer has observed that stores promote their price guarantees in a big way, but some seem to encourage their employees to search for loopholes to deny the match to the customer." There must have been a big sign every ten feet in Fry's, hawking their price match guarantee; not to mention on their website. By the time you get through the mouse print, don't get your hopes up as I did.

Dan Kap,
Whittier, CA