maybe I'm just unlucky, but the few times I've gone to best buy I looked up the price on Amazon first and then went to best buy expecting them to price match. every time they had a slightly different sku from the item on Amazon and charged significantly more money.
the sample is too small to say for sure, but I suspect they commission custom runs of things like flash drives that would be too cheap to profit off of if they were actually exposed to matching Amazon prices.
Best Bu, Target & Walmart all do lower prices online, and higher in-store prices. The former two have repeatedly refused to match their own website's prices for me.
Also, Best Buy used to have an internal website at their stores with higher prices so they could claim their in-store prices were the same as their website prices
They've always done price matching, that's how they got their name when they came out in the 90s. But they still don't have a great selection and in my experience it's rarely worth it to shop there compared to Amazon for all the reasons stated above.
They originally wouldn't match online retailers only brick and mortar competitors as I understand it. As part of the turnaround, implemented in 2012 they started matching Amazon and a few select online retailers. [0]
Worked there in college. You are correct--they definitely did not match Amazon prices when I worked there. They wouldn't even match their own online prices at first.
