Dive Brief:

• Apparently inspired by an online Sears price glitch that had Nintendo products extremely underpriced at $60, which was then price-matched by other retailers, some unscrupulous shoppers created fake Amazon marketplace pages that showed $400 PlayStation 4 consoles selling for $50 to $100.

• Several unsuspecting Wal-Mart workers accepted the advertised number at face value, a fraction of its best retail price, and matched it per the retailer's new policy. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. last week announced it is now matching prices with online retailers, including Amazon, in all stores.

• The scam was first widely revealed by gaming news site Kotaku, although some gamers bragged about it on Twitter. 

Dive Insight:

Retailers are certainly primed to beat competitors' prices to rack up sales, but not this way. The cat’s out of the bag now — woe to the retailer who blindly price-matches any old online price that a customer pulls up on his or her phone.

This was a crafty one, though, taking advantage of how easy it is to set up an Amazon marketplace seller account, thereby borrowing all the legitimacy of Amazon’s website for the purposes of a ripoff. There are no longer any $400 PlayStation 4 consoles available on the Amazon marketplace for less than $340.00, and, presumably, no Wal-Mart workers unaware of the need to double-check the legitimacy of a product listing’s price.