This weekend Sears.com was selling an iPad 2 16GB WiFi model for $69, discounted from $744.99. If something doesn’t sound right about any of those prices it’s because the $69 price is a mistake and the $744.99 “standard price” is ridiculously high. Both prices are the reason you should never buy an iPad from Sears.

At this point, you should be damn careful before you buy anything from Sears.com, lest you accidentally purchase from a third-party seller with inflated prices and pretend discounts.

Sears.com $69 iPad Price Mistake

Shoppers who ordered the 16GB iPad 2 for $69, or the 32GB iPad 2 model for $179, have had their orders cancelled by Sears. Sears posted that, “unfortunately, yesterday one of the Marketplace third-party sellers told us that they mistakenly  posted incorrect pricing information on two Apple iPad models on the Marketplace portion of the website.” Sears has the right to cancel pricing mistakes, just like any retailer, thanks to the fine print on their websites. That incident may have upset shoppers, but the current market practices at Sears should frustrate them even more.

Sears Marketplace Makes it Easy To Trick Shoppers

The bigger issue is that Sears blends the third-party market right into the Sears results and even allows the third-party sellers to input the retail price and discount price of products. Additionally, the average shopper would be hard pressed to figure out that they are purchasing from “DamLowPrices” instead of Sears due to the way the Sears Marketplace is designed.

Right now a search for iPad 2 on Sears.com results in three overpriced search results, in the top four results. The following iPad 2 deals at Sears are listed below, along with the actual retail price.

• iPad 2, 16GB WiFi Only – $744.99 –  Apple Retail $499
• iPad 2, 16GB WiFi Only – $924.99, claimed retail $1,100 –  Apple Retail $499
• iPad 2, 64GB WiFi+3G – $1,239.99, claimed retail $1,299 –  Apple Retail $829

These prices aren’t reflecting a great iPad 2 shortage: they’re just horrible prices aimed at taking more of your money. The current iPad 2 ship-time is 1 to 3 business days, which reflects the demand, and will get you an iPad pretty fast.

These practices are unfriendly to consumers and allow third-party sellers to use Sears.com to take advantage of customers. Best practices would suggest that Sears not allow vendors to create fictitious regular prices to make their sale prices look better. How else can you make a $925 iPad 16GB WiFi model sound like a good deal? The only way I know of is to make up a regular price of $1,100 so you can advertise $175 in savings.

Sears Marketplace Makes it Easy to Take Advantage of Shoppers

Unlike Amazon, where shoppers have come to expect third-party sellers, Sears is a traditional brick and mortar store, which shoppers assume translates into the online space. I know that my in-laws, who love Sears, would have had no clue they were ordering from a third-party and overpaying.

The price error shows a small issue with the third-party marketplace at Sears.com, but highlights a larger problem that exists in the form of unchecked and unclear third-party sellers and prices. Sears would be well served to create official product pricing for items like the iPad 2 so that it is clear to shoppers that they are overpaying and not purchasing directly from Sears.

A day after Apple released a security update for Mac OS X to address the “MAC Defender” malware, a new variant of the bogus antivirus software has been spotted in the wild.

As first reported by Ed Bott at ZDNet, the new variation of MAC Defender, named “Mdinstall.pkg,” has been crafted to bypass the new malware-blocking code made available by Apple. That update for Mac OS X, Security Update 2011-003, was released on Tuesday.

“The file has a date and time stamp from last night at 9:24PM Pacific time,” Bott wrote. That’s less than 8 hours after Apple’s security update was released. On a test system using Safari with default settings, it behaved exactly as before, beginning the installation process with no password required.

“As PC virus experts know, this cat-and-mouse game can go on indefinitely. Your move, Apple.”

Security Update 2011-003 included changes to the File Quarantine feature found in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. It includes anti-malware definitions within the operating system itself, and examines external files downloaded within Mail, iChat, Safari, or other quarantine-aware applications.

The MACDefender malware first gained attention in early May, when it was spotted by an antivirus company. The program automatically downloads in Web browsers through JavaScript and originally required users to enter an administrator password, but a more recent variant does not ask for a password.
Some reports have suggested that the “MAC Defender” malware has spread quickly, with Bott earlier citing an anonymous AppleCare representative that apparently said the “overwhelming majority” of recent calls to Apple were related to the malware. Last week, Apple posted instructions on its site informing users on how to remove the malware.