Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Ahhh, Good Old Office Depot. Busted Again.

If you Google about them, you'll find many stories recently about different US state agencies and corporations suing or investigating them for incorrect pricing. Even Ahhnold in California is investigating them.

What's happened is that with new web crawling technology (like our Price Spider) and powerful computer analytics, the big box office supply companies are getting caught with their proverbial pricing hand in the cookie jar. In the past, customers and small competitors never had the technology to data mine the confusing contracts and look for compliance, or review if they were getting a better price than the regular public.

Former account manager in Office Depot's Business Solutions Division, David Sherwin, a protected whistle-blower in Florida where the company is headquartered, has been credited with the launching of the investigations.

Have a look at this news story from Television Station CBS Atlanta.

Cheers,
Calvin