Home
About
Blog Tour
Advertise
Contact
Black Friday Buy.com HDTV Bait & Switch SCAM - PLUS Find The Best HDTV Deals & Sales HERE!
Posted by
Phillip Brunelle at Friday, November 26, 2010
|
Share this post:
|
|
32 Comments
The word spread like wildfire when Sean Portnoy, a writer for ZDNet.com blasted the internet on the evening of Wednesday, November 24th, 2010 with the 'best HDTV Black Friday deal anywhere'. The Black Friday deal buster was reportedly being offered by Buy.com for a 42-inch Plasma 1080p HDTV by Panasonic for only $298 which was more than $250 less than any other advertised sale price for the same television anywhere else, including online & in-store Black Friday sales.
Portnoy reported that the Black Friday deal being offered on Buy.com for the 42-inch Panasonic Plasma HDTV "will provide superior picture quality compared to the 40-inch 1080p Westinghouse LCD TV" which was the next best HDTV deal on Black Friday being offered by Target for the same price of only $298. Portnoy then continued on with his comparisons, conveniently cross-promoting yet another deal being offered on Buy.com for the next best television deal being offered on the website.
Since the Buy.com corporate office is located in the pacific time zone, the Black Friday deal would not be offered on the website until after midnight pacific time, or after 3am here on the east coast, according to Sean Portnoy (ZDNet.com) Which in his words was " Finally, a Black Friday HDTV sale that’s worth getting up in the middle of the night for."
The ZDNet.com article was picked up by mainstream media outlets and became the buzz on the internet leading right up to the Black Friday midnight event on Buy.com but to everyone's surprise midnight on the west coast came and went, and the deal was never available on Buy.com as reported. In fact, several minutes had gone by, and yet no such deal was offered on the main page of Buy.com, the "today's deals" page, and not even on the actual item description page for the Panasonic Viera TC-P42U2 HDTV 1080p 42" Plasma TV.
It wasn't until almost 30 minutes later that any changes at all happened on the website, but again to everyone's surprise the only update indicated that the TV was now "sold out".
While many people would think that possibly Buy.com had a limited supply and quite possibly sold out in seconds, many other people know that the deal was in fact never published to the website at all. In total I personally had 16 people whom all had the main page to Buy.com opened in one tab, and the item description page for the "Black Friday HDTV deal of the year" opened in another tab. Some of us were continuously refreshing the page manually, while a couple of us, including myself, had an internet refresher program that was automatically refreshing the page every second, and yet not one of us seen any change on the HDTV price until the only change published to Buy.com indicated that the TV was "sold out".
Quite certainly there are thousands of disappointed people today who were waiting up all night for this Black Friday HDTV deal to become available on Buy.com when in fact there never was any such deal to be offered in the first place as Sean Portnoy of ZDNet.com reported in his article.
Conveniently ZDNet.com went on to mention in their article (more than once) that Buy.com would have several other HDTV deals being offered on Black Friday, but to the millions of people whose attention was captivated by the best HDTV Black Friday deal buster the only deal that truly mattered was this 42-inch Panasonic 1080p HDTV for only $298 since it was the leading Black Friday HDTV deal, which strangely never appeared on Buy.com after midnight as it reportedly should have.
As a consumer, myself, hoping to take advantage of this Black Friday deal, it's apparent that Buy.com gathered information on the best HDTV deal being offered on Black Friday, which happened to be a comparable (but lesser quality) HDTV being offered by Target for the same price of $298, and then plotted a mastermind publicity stunt in collaboration with ZDNet.com, as a news source, to reach a widespread internet audience, and eventually the mainstream media, and in with the intentions on bringing the internet traffic to their website seeking the best HDTV deal ever on Black Friday.
The question now is just how many people heard of this Black Friday deal on the Panasonic HDTV for $298 on Buy.com and flocked to the website in time for the deal, and just how many of those people actually went on to purchase a different HDTV from the list of legit deals being offered on the website after seeing that the HDTV they were originally attracted to, as the best Black Friday HDTV deal, was no longer available, and in fact, never actually had a published price of $298. The TV remained at its original price of $659 on Buy.com until the website was updated with a "sold out" notice to its visitors.
Will Buy.com or ZDNet.com care to comment to the public on this issue? After all, it did appear to be the best Black Friday deal, and not just for the price of the Panasonic HDTV, but also for the convenience of not having to stand outdoors for hours in a line of hungry consumers ready to pounce onto the same item like a flock of starving seagulls going after the same piece of bread. Instead it appears that an event took place that was nothing more than an unethical publicity stunt, and an easy way out as to not be considered as false advertisement since Buy.com never actually published word of this deal themselves, but instead used their resources with ZDNet.com to mislead people to their website for a deal that was never going to exist, hoping that with all of the internet traffic that one of those conveniently cross-promoted HDTV's mentioned in the ZDNet.com article will be purchased in place of the Hoax HDTV deal.
Read The Follow Up On This Article HERE
IF YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS, OR HAVE ANY QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS FEEL FREE TO COMMENT BELOW TO SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS, OR EMAIL THE WRITER OF THIS ARTICLE AT: PHILLIPBRUNELLE (AT) YAHOO (DOT) COM
QUICK NOTE: Are You Holiday Shopping & Want To Find Early Cyber Monday Sales & Deals? CLICK HERE FOR INFO
DO YOU KNOW OF ANY OTHER BLACK FRIDAY SCAMS OR FALSE ADVERTISEMENTS? OR DO YOU HAVE AN ISSUE THAT YOU WOULD LIKE PHILLIP BRUNELLE TO LOOK INTO AND UNCOVER & EXPOSE THE TRUTH ABOUT? EMAIL US AT PHILLIPBRUNELLE (AT) YAHOO (DOT) COM
Thank you for reading my blog, I would appreciate you linking my blogs on your facebook, twitter, or your website. Please follow me if you would like with the link on the right of this page and always feel free to comment below. If you would like to help me with my new blog design, please email me as this blogger site is completely new to me and any advice or help would be greatly appreciated and I could provide you with links to your blog or website on my blogs and a few websites that I own as well, which inlude www.phillipbrunelle.com www.bostonmawedding.com www.maweddingphotos.com just to name a few, but most are still under construction. Thank you!