The Wall Street Journal says that several retailers, including Best Buy and Toys-R-Us, have complained to the state attorney general in various states about Walmart’s advertising practices.
Generally, the complaints stem from comparison ads by Walmart in which competitors assert that Walmart is using inaccurate pricing or non-equivalent items to claim that it offers the lowest pricing.
But Best Buy also alleges that Walmart was deceptive with its iPhone 5 holiday sale in which it dropped pricing to $127, although the article quotes $150 pricing.
Best Buy claims it lost about $65,000 in profits on the day Walmart’s promotion first ran on Facebook. Best Buy says it was compelled to match Walmart’s advertised price, even though it concluded that Walmart didn’t have a sufficient number of devices available.
Walmart claims that it did indeed have enough iPhone 5’s, quoting 98% availability at stores that carry the device.
Best Buy already had the iPhone 5 on sale for $149.99 when the Walmart promotion was announced. It is not known if electronics retailer used the $73 difference from the regular price of the device, or the $23 difference from the sale price when calculating their profit loss.
