As some of you may know, I live right next to the store that was testing this out. I also happen to work for Best Buy (although not that exact store) so I was able to get the low down on what happened to this program, but before I go into what's going on, I'll explain a bit about the policy.
Best Buy gives their stores a certain amount of room to innovate and individualize themselves. While every Best Buy store has similar layouts and products, you might find different deals or discounts that are only available at that store. The stores don't have to ok it through corporate or even district channels (in most cases). This kind of atmostphere can give birth to a lot of innovation, which is one reason why Best Buy is as big as it is today.
This price matching policy is one of those things that one store (West Jordan, Utah) was trying. In an attempt to pull out of declining game sells, this store offered to price match the used game prices of local competitors. Now, this is all fine and dandy and probably would of worked fine for a couple months before they found they were losing too much money and stopped it. However, this deal found it's way onto the internet and was widely circulated by pretty much ever major gaming web site.
This prompted a reaction from Best Buy corporate who sent out their top media (gaming, movies, music) executive to investigate the store. He showed up at the store, checked out what they were doing, then went through their records. He found that the program was only having a negative effect on the bottom line (duh). So he issued an imediate cease and desist order to the store and the surrounding stores (mine included). He sent it to all the other stores because we had to price match what our other store was doing.
So there you have it, no more deal. It got shot down pretty dang quick thanks to coverage from sites like this. Isn't it awesome that we made an impact on something?
