I went in today after work. I had to go to the electronics section to get a voltage converter (I'm going to Italy next week!), and happened to see some Sony noise-canceling headphones on an end cap. What really caught my eye was the "Buy these and get a $25 Target gift card!" right above them. I had been thinking about getting some of these headphones anyway, but combining it with the free gift card and the trip I'm going on, I wanted them now.
I grab my other things and go up to the register. When the headphones scan, there was nothing about a gift card. I ask the cashier, who calls someone on the radio to check it out. The woman, Liz, took a while to radio back. I offered to go back and show her what I was talking about. I get to the back of the store and Liz is standing in front of the products. The end cap had both ear-bud headphones (the ones I wanted) and over-the-head ones. The ear bud ones were the ones clearly labeled with the gift card tag (There were 5-6 'hooks' with this style on them, and 3 gift card tags). She thinks that it's the over-the-head ones that are supposed to have the gift card tag. She calls a manager, Victor.
Victor comes out and looks at them, Liz tells him where the gift card tags were and he compares some numbers on the back of the products. He tells me that they are mislabeled. He cannot honor the free gift card. I'm trying to be nice through this whole thing (we're getting up to 30 minutes here), but without the gift card I'm not going to get the headphones.
I go back to the register and buy the rest of my purchases. The cashier is very surprised that they wouldn't give me the gift card, as it's not my fault that it's mislabeled.
I did call Target's corporate number to complain, but they told me that it is up to the manager to give the mislabeled price or not.