Best Buy shopper surprised after they wouldn’t honor a $100 open-box deal. Then she has to call in a second manager: ‘mind u I was so nice’

A Best Buy shopper said in a TikTok video that store staff would not honor a $100 open-box price she said she saw online for a pair of headphones, and that she later asked for a second manager after the first one walked away. Angie Pineda, who posts as @musclemuffinn, shared the TikTok clip, which has gained 269,800 views and 29,400 likes.

In the caption, Pineda wrote, “Shockers the customer was actually right (also mind u I was so nice to the manager, so when he walked away I was genuinely so confused bc wtf).” She tagged Best Buy and added that it was “literally the only time I’ve ever experienced something like this in my LIFEEEEE.”

Pineda said she went to Best Buy twice that day. She said she first bought Skullcandy headphones for running, found them “horrible,” and returned them right away. After leaving and looking into other options, she said she went back because she saw an open-box listing for Shokz Dot headphones that she wanted.

Shopper said an in-store open-box box was priced higher than the online pickup listing

Pineda said the headphones were about $200 at regular price, but the open-box listing in “good condition” showed about $100 and listed pickup at her local store. An on-screen graphic in the video showed an open-box “Good” price of $100.99 next to a $199.99 figure. Another graphic showed “Pickup Ready within 1 hour” and “Shipping Unavailable.”

An Electronics Daily News article describing Best Buy’s open-box program said those items are products that have been opened, often after a return or use as a display model, then inspected and resold at a discount. It also said Best Buy’s official information states that open-box items often include the same manufacturer warranty that new products receive.

Pineda said a worker brought out a box and told her the headphones were $140. She said she pointed out that the online listing showed $100 in good condition, while the box in front of her was marked $140 in excellent condition. She said the worker scanned the SKU and that the same box then pulled up online as the good-condition item for $100. She said staff told her they could not price match.

She said the first manager arrived with an attitude that “p–sed me off.” She said she told him the $100 listing was for pickup at that store and that other conditions were listed for shipping. She said the manager told her that was not the case and that the item was coming from somewhere else, such as Kentucky or Texas. She said he told her that if she wanted the box in the store, it was $140.

Pineda said she then told him she would buy the headphones online for $100 and pick them up in one hour. She said he started typing on a computer and walked away without saying a word. In her caption, she wrote that she had been “so nice to the manager,” using the line “mind u I was so nice.”

She said she asked the worker to bring another manager and told that manager the first one had been “literally so rude.” She said that after the first manager typed on the computer, the online listing showed the item as unavailable. She said she handed her phone to the second manager, who did “some little thing” that let her complete the $100 purchase.

Staff then told her she would have to pick the headphones up the next day because the store was about to close and the order needed time to process, she said. She said she asked whether she would get “that exact box that he wouldn’t price match for,” and that the manager said she would. She said she got a call about five minutes later and received those headphones. She said she paid $100, not $153.

Viewers offered mixed takes in the comments. Some said store and online open-box prices are often not the same. One commenter wrote, “Why can’t customers understand there is a store price and a online price.” Such pricing inconsistencies can lead to customer frustration, though other retailers face different issues, like a Home Depot shopper who got store credit with a shocking rule.

Another commenter said the store could have matched the price and pointed to other price-match practices. They wrote, “they could’ve price matched, they just didn’t want to. they even price match things that are shipped and sold by Amazon.”

A third commenter said they would have bought the item online while the manager was still talking. They wrote, “As he was talking, i would have immediately checked out, online.” Price discrepancies can leave shoppers feeling stunned, like when a woman ordered her favorite filet o fish at McDonald’s and opened the box to find a double price and half the size.

Other commenters treated the gap as a known practice. One wrote, “This is why I hate ‘online only’ prices.” Another wrote, “Yes thats a known thing lol, online open box and in store open box prices can be diffrent. Stop freaking out and save the trouble by ordering online and js pickitup in the store, not a big deal.”