Best Buy allegedly lost $65,000 in profits because of Walmart’s misleading price ads, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
This whole thing started when Walmart cut the price of the iPhone 5 to $127 during the holiday shopping season last month. At that time Best Buy was selling its iPhone 5 for $149.
The problem, Best Buy alleges, is that Walmart was discounting the iPhone 5 when it didn’t have many of them in stock. Best Buy at that time was offering a price-match program to its customers and the company had to drop their price to match that of Walmart’s.
That scenario simply means that Best Buy is filling the stock at a discount that Walmart doesn’t have, which probably led to the feeling of dismay and animosity of Best Buy towards Walmart in this particular instance.
For its part, Walmart has denied the allegations and says that their stores that carried the iPhone 5 were 98 percent in stock.
To make matters go south for Walmart, Best Buy, Toys R Us and other retailers have complained to attorneys general in several states, accusing Walmart of misleading advertising during the holiday shopping season, including a discount on Apple’s iPhone 5, according to that WSJ report.
It would be very interesting what attorneys general in those states would actually do to try to solve the alleged false advertising claim that were lodged against Walmart by Best Buy and the others.