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Why You Should Never Buy an iPad from Sears

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This weekend Sears.com was selling an iPad 2 16GB WiFi model for $69, discounted from $744.99. If something doesn’t sound right about any of those prices it’s because the $69 price is a mistake and the $744.99 “standard price” is ridiculously high. Both prices are the reason you should never buy an iPad from Sears.

At this point, you should be damn careful before you buy anything from Sears.com, lest you accidentally purchase from a third-party seller with inflated prices and pretend discounts.

Sears.com $69 iPad Price Mistake

Shoppers who ordered the 16GB iPad 2 for $69, or the 32GB iPad 2 model for $179, have had their orders cancelled by Sears. Sears posted that, “unfortunately, yesterday one of the Marketplace third-party sellers told us that they mistakenly  posted incorrect pricing information on two Apple iPad models on the Marketplace portion of the website.” Sears has the right to cancel pricing mistakes, just like any retailer, thanks to the fine print on their websites. That incident may have upset shoppers, but the current market practices at Sears should frustrate them even more.

Sears Marketplace Makes it Easy To Trick Shoppers

iPad 2 Sears Not Such a Deal

iPad 2 From Sears is Not a Great Deal

The bigger issue is that Sears blends the third-party market right into the Sears results and even allows the third-party sellers to input the retail price and discount price of products. Additionally, the average shopper would be hard pressed to figure out that they are purchasing from “DamLowPrices” instead of Sears due to the way the Sears Marketplace is designed.

Right now a search for iPad 2 on Sears.com results in three overpriced search results, in the top four results. The following iPad 2 deals at Sears are listed below, along with the actual retail price.

These prices aren’t reflecting a great iPad 2 shortage: they’re just horrible prices aimed at taking more of your money. The current iPad 2 ship time is 1 to 3 business days, which reflects the demand, and will get you an iPad pretty fast.

These practices are unfriendly to consumers and allow third-party sellers to use Sears.com to take advantage of customers. Best practices would suggest that Sears not allow vendors to create fictitious regular prices to make their sale prices look better. How else can you make a $925 iPad 16GB WiFi model sound like a good deal? The only way I know of is to make up a regular price of $1,100 so you can advertise $175 in savings.

Sears iPad ripoff third party

Sears Marketplace Makes it Easy to Take Advantage of Shoppers

Sears user mecusar sums up the feelings of many shoppers with his buyer feedback, “When I go to sears.com I want to be shopping at Sears. It is a name I trusted.”

Unlike Amazon, where shoppers have come to expect third-party sellers, Sears is a traditional brick and mortar store, which shoppers assume translates into the online space. I know that my in-laws, who love Sears, would have had no clue they were ordering from a third-party and overpaying.

The price error shows a small issue with the third-party marketplace at Sears.com, but highlights a larger problem that exists in the form of unchecked and unclear third-party sellers and prices. Sears would be well served to create official product pricing for items like the iPad 2 so that it is clear to shoppers that they are overpaying and not purchasing directly from Sears.

7 Comments

7 Comments

  1. Mario

    07/18/2011 at 5:48 pm

    Well, I don’t buy at Sears anyway. Hold that thought! I haven’t been buying from Sears since 1990’s.
    Each time I go there, feels like I’m in Venture store. Any one remembers Venture?

  2. AGuest

    07/19/2011 at 2:46 am

    Ever since Sears was bought by Kmart it has become like Kmart. It’s to the point whee I will not shop there any more including their website.

  3. Jessie Haley

    07/19/2011 at 10:24 pm

    cause the $69 price is a mistake and the $744.99 “standard price” is ridiculously high. Both prices are the reaso

  4. Al74769

    12/04/2011 at 6:28 pm

    I would have to agree! I recently was shopping for an android tablet and considered buying from eBay or amazon, but decided it would be better to buy from a store that I have trusted all my life.
    I got on sears.com, found the product that I was looking for, ordered it and payed for it. Later I found out that I had actually bought it from a third party and that most likely the tablet I have bought is a cheap Chiniese clone, a fake spin off of a popular model.
    I have yet to recieve it and now have many concerns about the product, quality, returns and refunds.
    I called Sears and told them that I was mislead to think I was buying from sears, oh well buyer beware.

  5. mark

    05/18/2012 at 6:15 pm

    Yep. Sears has no business sense whatsoever. Not only do they drive customers away from their stores with lack of good merchandise…..NOW, they are allowing third party vendors to drive business away from the sears.com website. I went to purchase an iPad on the website and found a $128 shipping and handling fee on an iPAD….Just to compare, I checked the delivery on a REFRIGERATOR and it was only $69…please explain how it cost more to ship an iPad than it does a refrigerator?!?! Sears will say its a third party vender who determines prices and shipping & handling, but this only underscores that the higher ups at sears have no clue how to run a business. Why? Because the end result will be less traffic to SEARS’ website….why would sears let a third party use the sears name to gain trust and attempt a ripoff? When people see things like this, their next purchase will most likely not happen at sears OR sears.com…….sears has absolutely no clue! where is the board of directors? they should replace the ENTIRE management team…..business 101 guys…….

  6. Adam

    11/05/2012 at 9:58 pm

    I bought a Mattress from sears it was a nightmare they never placed the order but charged my card and then it took weeks to get delivered but then they charged me the wrong price but when I finally got it fixed after two weeks then finally it was a smooth transaction. I was looking at the electronics at Sears for their notebook computers and flatscreen TV’s I did a comparison with best buy and found Best Buy to be cheaper by 20 percent and Amazon was atleast 25 percent cheaper. Sears says they price match but the issue is even if Best buy is selling the same exact computer or tv they will label it different claiming they have the XA edition and since its not the exact edition then it can not be price matched. So most of the items are never priced matched especially mattresses again it can be the same exact Mattress but this one is called the Eli Elite 29 when the other one is called deluxe comfort 25 etc etc.. by serta so really how can they price match when they cant? With sears your paying 25-30 percent more for the same items you can buy at Best Buy with a Mattress it is hard to tell if your getting a good deal I should of bought my mattress with Macy’s great deals but they did not delivery to my area and sears did. That was the difference. I only go to sears to make my monthly payments on my sears credit card.

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