People who were excited to get their hands on the Pixel 2 or Pixel 2 XL devices probably trooped to the two pop-up stores in LA and New York. And while the Google staff on hand were pretty knowledgeable when it came to information about the two devices, apparently a third party took care of the purchases and were overcharging customers by as much as $30. Google immediately reacted by announcing they will reimburse those who bought the devices at the Made by Google stores if they paid extra.
The New York pop-up store was selling the Pixel 2 for $649 and the 128GB model for $680 while the Pixel 2 XL 64GB was at $880 and the 128GB at $980. All of them are marked up at $30 more than if you buy it at the Google Store or even on their partner carrier, Verizon. Victra is the Verizon reseller handling the pop-up stores but the shopping bag they use when you buy the device is a Google bag, therefore they’re supposed to be representing the company at these stores.
Google has apologized for the error but says they have already fixed it. Anyone who bought a device and was overcharged will be contacted and reimbursed accordingly. No details were given as to how they should go about getting the reimbursement, but as per the statement, it will be Google that will be “reaching out shortly to reimburse those who were impacted.”
While they are already course-correcting this error, the fact that the mistake was made in the first place was a bad decision by whoever approved these things. Let’s see if there will be a negative impact on sales of the device in the next few days, although that may be minimal at this point.
VIA: The Verge