Changing Prices?

[Morpheus]

Today I was all set to buy a Blu-Ray player from best buy and take advantage of their 5 free movies in store deal. The ad says that the offer applies to all blu-ray players that are not PS3s or computer drives. I decided to get a player that was on clearance(it was just the player, remote, and instructions. No box.) and picked out my movies, but when I got to the counter I was told that I could only get the deal if I was willing to pay full price for the player, which was $300 more than the discounted price. The associate told me this is what his manager told him(even after I pointed out that there is nothing in the ad about the player being new), so since I was unclear on the validity of such a ruling and I didn't want to erupt on the associate 10 mins before closing, I left empty handed.

The question is, can a company do that? Just add stipulations in store to stay profitable*?


*This is what I was told. They referred to it as double dipping/keeping the transaction profitable.

[Rachmaninoff]

I've run into that before, where they have some great sale supposedly, but if you get something on sale then suddenly you have to pay full price for something else. The catch being that in order to get that free item you have to pay full price for the other.

It's kind of annoying really since often the ads they put out don't have the full details or if they do it's hidden so far into the ad that you don't see it. Often they'll have some disclaimer somewhere along the lines of *certain limitations and restrictions apply* And thus they cover themselves so they don't get nailed for 'false advertising'

As far as I know, it's legal for them to do that, even if it is annoying as all get out.