Fry's Bait and Switch

Fry's has some funny ass sales strategies. My cousin is visitng from the Philippines and he's been eyeing this laptop at Frys. He checked it out previously and today we went to Fry's in Burbank and found it on clearance for $130 less. The laptop was not on the showroom floor either so my cousin asks if they have them in stock. One of the greenhorn salesmen comes out with the laptop, its a previously returned open box item, he tells us since its open its 5% off. We're like "OPEN BOX? Don't you have a new one?" He goes back in the back and checks. Hehe, here we go, the old bait and switch. Except this one got all weird because as it turns out the clearance price was suppose to be for openbox items and he just offered another 5% off it. My cousin then asks, can we take a look at it? Haha, so all three of us are looking at each other, I'm thinking "haha oh crap is he actually going to open it and boot it up?" And he did. So we play around with it and he's making a sales pitch and the next higher up salesman comes and also makes a pitch.

Finally my cousin decides to buy it and we ring it up. Oops the price is not what we thought it was. So after the misunderstanding gets cleared up he offers the brand new in box laptop with an open box discount of 5%. So my cousin is like, great thats like $65 bucks less than what I was going to pay for the other day. And here's where it gets backdoorish. The salesmen goes to his friend in returns, gets her to "return" the laptop so that now its in the system for 5% less. Then he brings us to his friend the cashier and we pay the discounted price for it. So basically you can sell at 3 different prices with the bait and switch for the laptop. 1. New in Box items, 2. "Open box items" and 3. The mystery box, it-could-have-been-a-failed-bait-and-switch-laptop-or-something someone-returned item. Of course it could all backfire on the salesman. His next higher up manager probably wouldn't be too happy that his salesmen are risking 5% on the sale and it could all backfire if the customer raises a big enough stink. The best thing about the bait and switch is you don't have to stand in line.