Walmart’s price-match backfires as people use fake Amazon listings to get super-cheap PS4s

By Williams Pelegrin Published November 20, 2014

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Walmart’s Ad Match Guarantee, the company’s price-matching policy, has been updated to include Amazon and some customers took advantage of that to score themselves a $400 PlayStation 4 for $90, as reported by Kotaku. The brick-and-mortar retail chain acted quickly to address the problem after it became clear that some were using Amazon’s third-party seller service to create fraudulent product listings on the site.

No one’s selling a $90 PS4 on Amazon, but a screenshot of the product listing — and others like it — was enough to nab some customers a very cheap Sony console.

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One of the first fake Amazon listings, since removed, seems to have been popularized by Norman Caruso, creator and editor of The Gaming Historian. Before the listing was taken down, however, some people were able to grab a screenshot of it, which led to Walmart honoring the Ad Match Guarantee.

In a statement issued to Kotaku, Walmart company spokesperson John Forrest Ales wrote, “[We’ve] updated our policy to clarify that we will match prices from Walmart.com and 30 major online retailers, but we won’t honor prices from marketplace vendors, third-party sellers, auction sites or sites requiring memberships.”

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Williams Pelegrin

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Williams is an avid New York Yankees fan, speaks Spanish, resides in Colorado, and has an affinity for Frosted Flakes. Send…

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