On Nov. 13, Wal-Mart announced that it would price match select online retailers, including Amazon.com, in order to draw in a greater number of customers during the busy holiday season. However, it turned out that a small number of consumers unscrupulously took advantage of the system and purchased $400 PlayStation 4 consoles for just $90 as well as $350 Xbox One consoles for $100.
How did they do such a thing? People were setting up Amazon vendor accounts and listed PS4s for a small cost. Indeed, Amazon did shut down these accounts, but users were only required to take screenshots of the listings and show it to a Wal-Mart cashier to receive the price-match.
As time went by, more consumers started to use these fake Amazon listings as Reddit and Twitter users took photos of receipts with supposed very low PS4 and Xbox One prices. After a while, Wal-Mart began to take notices and revised its Ad Match Guarantee to omit marketplace vendors, third-party sellers, membership sites or auction sites.
“We launched online price matching because it’s the right thing for our customers,” Wal-Mart said in a statement. “It’s making a meaningful difference for people who want to feel confident they’re getting great prices, and we’re committed to matching online prices going forward. At the same time, we can’t tolerate fraud or attempts to trick our cashiers. This kind of activity is unfair to the millions of customers who count on us every day for honest value.”
Soon after, individuals posted photos of retailers placing signs notifying customers that they will not be honoring the PS4 Amazon ad match because of perpetuated fraud.
So this just happened: PS4 for $89.99 at Walmart thx to Amazon Price Match. Thx @GamingHistorian for the info. pic.twitter.com/BHJVlXDphO
— Wow Dot Ben (@WowDotBen) November 18, 2014
This isn’t the first time that such an incident has occurred. Last week, a few consumers were able to buy $60 Wii U and 3DS bundles due to a glitch on the Sears website.
Wal-Mart will not be dissuaded, however, as it announced Wednesday that starting Nov. 21 it will match or beat select Black Friday offers from its competitors, including for the PS4, though it did not outline which retailer it would price-match.
In recent years, brick-and-mortar retailers have begun to price match online offers, though it’s usually a small list of outlets, such as Amazon.com, Walmart.com and so on. Target recently announced it would match any price listed on the aforementioned websites.
