Responding to a Tuesday Crave article, which pointed to an article on HDGuru.com describing how Best Buy employees refused to honor the store's own price matching policy, the electronics retailer has supplied a written statement.

The statement says that "The price match in question was over $700 difference from our pricing at the store; while our pricing may vary from our competition, such huge fluctuations in price are rare and rightfully set off red flags to our employees." It encourages dissatisfied shoppers to contact customer service.

We asked the Best Buy representative who sent us the statement whether the policy had a price limit, and he said that it did not. We have sent the representative some follow-up questions regarding the statement and other issues.

Since Tuesday, we have received further information from readers regarding this issue. For example, a February article at StoreFrontTalkBack.com describes a class-action lawsuit filed in 2008 where former Best Buy employees said the company's management actively discouraged honoring the policy. According to the deposition of one former employee:

"Best Buy had a corporate undisclosed policy of discouraging and denying customers the benefits of its price match guarantee. Management mandated that all price match requests that resulted in a product being sold at less than 5 percent above cost would be denied. Best Buy provided a financial incentive for denying proper price match requests."

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If you missed last week's deal on the 32-inch HDTV with built-in DVD player, here's one that's nearly as good: PC Connection has a refurbished Westinghouse 32-inch LCD HDTV for $299.95 shipped.

As my ...

Originally posted at The Cheapskate

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Web site HDguru.com has published a report describing three separate visits to Best Buy locations where salespeople refused to comply with the store's own price matching policy. The report goes on to provide advice to customers interested in obtaining a price match themselves.

Here's the meat of the Guru's exchange:

When asked to match the price, salesmen at all three stores said "no," giving the same excuse: "The advertised Panasonic was on sale for three days and Best Buy's price match policy exempts limited time sales". However, there is no "limited time exemption" in Best Buy's price match policy. Store personnel simply made up a phony excuse, or were instructed to do so by higher-ups.

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As you may have noticed, I've recently changed the way I do reviews of HDTVs at CNET. I call the change "series reviews," and I'm curious to know what you think. But first I'll tell you why I did it.

Individual HDTVs are typically members of a series, where the only difference on the specification sheet between various models in a manufacturer's lineup is screen size. A great example is the Panasonic TC-PS1 series, which includes six screen sizes at various price points, from 42 to 65 inches. In my review of the TC-PS1 series, I only performed a hands-on evaluation of the 42-inch model. But I also posted the review to the 46-inch and the 50-inch model, making sure to explain that I didn't actually perform hands-on evaluations of them.

Previously, we would review one screen size in a series and post a simple note (example), not a review, on the other screen sizes, basically saying that you could expect similar picture quality from all screen sizes in the series.

Why the change?...

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For HDTV shoppers who recognize that burn-in and product lifespan, two bugaboos that have plagued the public perception of plasma TVs since their introduction, are largely not worth worrying about today, ...

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