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Plugged In: Stores' digital TV info faulted
By Mark Melnicoe - mmelnicoe@sacbee.com

Last Updated 6:04 am PST Thursday, February 14, 2008
Story appeared in BUSINESS section, Page D1

Electronics retailers are misinforming consumers when it comes to next year's transition to digital television, a consumer group charged Wednesday.

The California Public Interest Research Group says it helped conduct a series of "secret shopper" surveys around the country and concluded that salespeople are providing inaccurate or misleading information.

The information provided in Sacramento generally was worse than the national average. In a Sacramento Wal-Mart store, a secret shopper reported being told that cheaper, analog TVs were not available, when in fact they were on the store's shelves.
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With the national shift just over a year away, CalPIRG and its sister organizations around the country checked on 132 electronics store locations in 10 states. In addition to Wal-Mart, the chains surveyed were Best Buy, Circuit City, Sears and Target.

Their key findings:

• 81 percent of sales staff gave false information about converter boxes, which will allow older, analog sets to receive the new digital signals. Many tried to sell customers premium, multifunction boxes that aren't needed to receive digital signals.

• 78 percent of sales staff provided incorrect information about the federal government's coupon program, which allows consumers to get two coupons worth $40 each toward the purchase of converter boxes.

• 42 percent provided wrong information about when the transition takes place.

"Even stores that we didn't survey should take time to train their employees, so they can accurately describe what consumers need so their TVs don't go blank in 2009," said Pedro Morillas, a CalPIRG legislative advocate in Sacramento.

Suzy Pulido, services manager at the Best Buy store on Arden Way, didn't comment directly on the survey's findings but said her store began selling the converter boxes only in the past couple of weeks.

"We're not giving out any information on the boxes," she said. "We'll have training sessions (for salespeople) once it gets closer to the official date."

She noted the material that comes with the set-top boxes contains information about the $40 coupons.

CalPIRG surveyed stores in California, Arizona, Colorado, Texas, Wisconsin, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Virginia.

The charges leveled by Cal-PIRG come two weeks after a report from Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, concluding that many U.S. consumers remain in the dark over the transition and key details about how it will affect them.

That survey showed 36 percent of Americans knew nothing about the shift, which is set to occur on Feb. 17, 2009. And even among the 64 percent who knew about it, most had serious misconceptions over what they would need to do to receive the new high-definition programming.