Unscrupulous individuals have abused Wal-Mart's price-match promotion to buy $400 PlayStation 4 consoles for less than a quarter of the retail price using third-party sellers on Amazon, according to a report at The Consumerist.
The company announced on Nov. 13 that it would price-match select online retailers, including Amazon.com.
However, any Amazon member with a registered selling account can create authentic-looking pages and list items "for sale" online. Consumers need only take a screen capture of the page and show it to a cashier at checkout in order to request the price match.
Wal-Mart's online price match policy states, "We're committed to providing low prices every day, on everything. So if you find a current lower online price from an online retailer on an identical, in-stock product, tell us and we'll match it."
It doesn't appear that Wal-Mart trains its employees properly as few, if any, appear to have established the validity of these online deals as many customers were able to purchase, pricey PS4's for a mere $90.
The scam seems to have been initiated after Sears mistakenly listed several Nintendo consoles on its site for $60.
Members of Twitter and Reddit communities have posted pictures of receipts documenting that Wal-Mart had accepted these fake Amazon listings. See a tweet (and receipt picture) of one such scammer below:
LMAO Amazon and Walmart jig just got ps4 for $97 pic.twitter.com/pEIKsCvdHN
— Taahaa Mobeen (@taahaa8) November 18, 2014
