--- title: Price-Matching Scam Had $400 Sony PS4 Selling for $90 at Walmart description: Scammers have been trying to take advantage of Walmart's price-matching policy by using fraudulent web pages to get Wii U bundles and Sony PS4 consoles for a fraction of their actual prices. authors: - name: Brad Tuttle role: Senior Editor url: https://money.com/author/brad-tuttle/ bio: Brad Tuttle is a former senior editor at Money with over 10 years’ experience covering a vast number of personal finance topics, including careers, cars, travel, budgeting, investing, insurance, credit cards, consumer psychology, real estate, banking, and shopping and deals. education: Columbia University School of Journalism, MS at_money_since: 2014 articles: 366 covers: - Personal Finance - Banking - Business - Career Advice - Credit - Credit Cards - Economy and Politics - Education - Health and Wellness - Housing - Identity Theft - Insurance - Investing - Lifestyle - Loans - Mortgages - Pets - Professional Services - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes - Technology social: - https://twitter.com/bradrtuttle - https://linkedin.com/in/brad-tuttle-834b225 former_staff: true published: '2014-11-20T17:14:34.000Z' modified: '2014-11-20T17:14:34.000Z' section: Personal Finance tags: - Amazon - online shopping - price matching - Scams - Shopping - toys r us - video game consoles - Walmart word_count: 531 canonical: https://money.com/price-matching-scam-walmart/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** Money may earn a commission when you click on the products and services below. Opinions are our own, but compensation and in-depth research determine where and how they appear. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/) about how we make money. ![Sony PS4](https://img.money.com/2014/11/141120_em_sonyps4scam.jpg) Leading into the 2014 winter holiday shopping season, [Walmart broadened](http://online.wsj.com/articles/wal-mart-weighs-matching-online-prices-during-holidays-1414672782) its [price match guarantee](http://corporate.walmart.com/ad-match-guarantee) policy to include prices offered by major [online retailers](http://corporate.walmart.com/policies/our-online-price-match-policy) like Amazon, as well as websites for stores such as Best Buy, Sports Authority, Staples, and Target. Until the change was made, Walmart would only match the sale prices posted in advertisements and competitors' weekly circulars. Well, it didn't take long for opportunists to try—and, in some cases, succeed—to take advantage of price matching from Walmart and other stores. Earlier this week, [Kotaku](http://kotaku.com/temporary-sears-glitch-let-some-people-buy-60-3ds-and-1659777648) reported that a pricing glitch over the weekend on the Sears website showed Wii U bundles listed at $60 when they normally sell for upwards of $300. Sears fixed the mistake, and it appears as if no one was actually able to buy the console bundle for that price at the retailer's site. But that didn't stop many shoppers from trying to get the same deal from Sears' competitors such as Walmart, Toys R Us, and Best Buy by way of their price matching policies. It's unclear how many consumers were able to get the price honored, but several showed off their receipts at Reddit—one Toys R Us receipt notes the customer "Saved $240" on the purchase—and surely many more succeeded and kept things quiet. Then scammers took things a step further by creating fake Amazon.com pages that appeared to list Sony PS4 game consoles, which normally run $400, for under $100. As [Consumerist.com](http://consumerist.com/2014/11/18/terrible-people-create-fake-amazon-pages-convince-walmart-to-price-match-them/) explained, anyone with a registered account for selling things on Amazon can list an item at whatever price they choose. Amazon tries to root out obviously fraudulent or misleading price listings—such as a new Sony PS4 for $90—but it can take some time to catch up with the fraudsters. Before that happens, someone can take a screen shot and bring what appears to be a perfectly legitimate image into a store and ask that the price be matched. That's what happened at Walmart this week. By Wednesday, Walmart caught up with the scam, and some stores posted signs stating that the "PS4 Amazon.com Ad will not be Ad matched Due to Fraud." The world's largest retailer alerted [CNBC](http://www.cnbc.com/id/102199267#) and others that its price-matching policy has been updated to clarify that stores will not honor "Prices from marketplace and third-party sellers" such as those Amazon pages that were manipulated by users. "We can't tolerate fraud or attempts to trick our cashiers," a statement from Walmart explained. "This kind of activity is unfair to the millions of customers who count on us every day for honest value." So the scam appears to be dead, but not before an unknown number of consumers were able to take advantage of it and snag ultra-cheap PS4 consoles and, in some cases, cut-rate Xbox Ones and video games. If you think that the only ones hurt by this kind of behavior are Walmart and other major retailers, consider how much more difficult and time-consuming it's going to be for perfectly honest customers to get genuine prices matched. Now that retailers are on the lookout for scams, be prepared to get the third degree when seeking a price match, even if you're completely on the up and up. ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/price-matching-scam-walmart/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Personal Finance", "item": "https://money.com/personal-finance/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Money Management", "item": "https://money.com/money-management/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "Price-Matching Scam Had $400 Sony PS4 Selling for $90 at Walmart" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/price-matching-scam-walmart/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/price-matching-scam-walmart/", "name": "Price-Matching Scam Had $400 Sony PS4 Selling for $90 at Walmart", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2014-11-20T17:14:34.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/price-matching-scam-walmart/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/price-matching-scam-walmart/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2014-11-20T17:14:34.000Z" }, { "@type": "Article", "headline": "Price-Matching Scam Had $400 Sony PS4 Selling for $90 at Walmart", "articleSection": "Personal Finance", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2014/11/141120_em_sonyps4scam.jpg", "width": 3500, "height": 2269, "caption": "141120_EM_SonyPS4Scam" } ], "author": [ { "@type": "Person", "name": "Brad Tuttle", "url": "https://money.com/author/brad-tuttle/", "@id": "https://money.com/author/brad-tuttle/#author", "description": "Brad Tuttle is a former senior editor at Money with over 10 years’ experience covering a vast number of personal finance topics, including careers, cars, travel, budgeting, investing, insurance, credit cards, consumer psychology, real estate, banking, and shopping and deals.\r\n\r\n", "image": "https://img.money.com/2014/01/Brad-Tuttle.png?w=226&h=247&crop=1", "alumniOf": "Columbia University School of Journalism, MS", "sameAs": [ "https://twitter.com/bradrtuttle", "https://linkedin.com/in/brad-tuttle-834b225" ] } ], "publisher": "https://money.com/#organization", "datePublished": "2014-11-20T17:14:34.000Z", "description": "Scammers have been trying to take advantage of Walmart's price-matching policy by using fraudulent web pages to get Wii U bundles and Sony PS4 consoles for a fraction of their actual prices.", "abstract": "Scammers have been trying to take advantage of Walmart's price-matching policy by using fraudulent web pages to get Wii U bundles and Sony PS4 consoles for a fraction of their actual prices.", "@id": "https://money.com/price-matching-scam-walmart/", "inLanguage": "en-US", "dateModified": "2014-11-20T17:14:34.000Z", "wordCount": 531, "keywords": [ "Amazon", "online shopping", "price matching", "Scams", "Shopping", "toys r us", "video game consoles", "Walmart" ], "about": [ { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Personal finance", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_finance" ] }, { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Investment management", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_management" ] } ] } ] } ```