cdollaz

They gave me the $20 when I told them I was going to cancel my membership after spending around $4K there this year. Very easy.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

The old "threaten to cancel a free membership" trick?

I bet the long hold times are from everyone from here and FW/SD calling to demand their free credit.

There's an easier way to do this and you'll get cash and more than $10 worth.



No long wait times over the phone. Just go when it's not during lunch time so you avoid long lines. It can also be repeated at different branches of the same company. They track it but they won't say anything to you when you go ask.

kyle

Thanks, I called the number above and explained that my brother had received $10 and my dad $20 and I didn't get one--she disappeared to check if I qualified, came back a few minutes later and said I would see the $20 credit in 3 days (hopefully it still doesn't expire on 12/25!)

dolphinboy

Well, I'm homeless, so I'll take all the help that I can get.

glassdragon

yet you have a computer? o_O

:P

maxfisher

I really wish Best Buy and Amazon would politely tell people calling them to fuck off. This whole ordeal, both the people calling/emailing to whine/threaten and the companies caving in, is all but guaranteed to result in less customer-friendly actions in the future. People contacting Amazon in particular just astound me. Why not stop by the grocery store and gas station on the way home and see if you can get them to match Best Buy's 'deal'?

CaptainMarvel

Yeah, I too wish Amazon and Best Buy would tell customers here to "fuck off," because if they don't it might result in customer unfriendly behavior.

Wait, what?

starman9000

Have you never been to a library?

glassdragon

I agree. It's one thing to call best buy because they are giving the gc's to people and you think maybe they should check if they missed you, but calling amazon is just scummy. Amazon should never have given credits for that, and people should be ashamed of themselves for taking advantage of a company that for the most part offers customer service way above every other place.

AmityBoatTours

Being out here in Hollywood I see homeless people all around you would be surprised at some of the stuff you will see them carting around with them.
Instead of using their 300 bucks a week they get from the govt to get off the streets,they use it on stuff they have no business buying with it.

ctyankee

I tried. I stopped at my local 'mom and pop' convenience store and told them that Best Buy was giving award certificates to people that haven't shopped there in months. They said that I was pulling their leg. 'No way they are rewarding people for not shopping there' said the guy. When I said it actually happened they just started laughing. So, technically, I didn't even get a chance to ask them to match it. The woman working the counter was laughing so hard she was almost in tears.

glassdragon

I know you're kidding, but any business owner that would laugh at that fails at business. Best way to get people in the door to see your other stuff and give you a shot is to give them something free. Very few can resist free, and if you can lure them with other good deals then you have a new customer. Over 5 or 10 years that customer may pay you back 10000 percent of your 10 dollars.

maxfisher

Sorry, I figured with the 'politely' in there, people would be able to fill in the blank. How about this:

Best Buy: "I'm sorry, but we are doing a targeted promotion and you weren't selected as a participant. We appreciate your business, but it would set a very bad precedent to simply hand out money because people call and ask for it."

Amazon: "That's great that Best Buy offered you some cash, but I'm sorry, we already offer great prices and can't afford to hand out free money to customers just because they ask for it."

And if you don't think this kind of consumer behavior has the potential to cause companies to become less customer-friendly, then I just don't know what to tell you.

glassdragon

Yep, one day amazon is going to be like all the other shoddy companies with CS probably, and just because they kept getting taken advantage of causing them to have a hard line stance on this kind of stuff.

There are people trying to justify ripping amazon off, and they can't even use the excuse that many use for best buy " Well, they've screwed me in the past so it's fine" I doubt some of the people would take the hint from your post.

ctyankee

I think you should call Amazon and give them a piece of your mind. Please tell them how to run their company properly. I'm sure they will be receptive to your call. When they agree they made a mistake matching Best Buy's giveaway to "scummy" customers that called, I'll return the gift certificate they gave me. Just tell me the manager's full name. Fair?

CaptainMarvel

I'm not sure how it's in any way inappropriate for a Best Buy customer to see other customers getting a benefit and to ask for that benefit for themselves. But maybe that's just me.

And while I'm not asking Amazon myself, the worst that can result is Amazon saying no. I can't imagine enough people are making the request that it will affect Amazon's behavior in any way.

You can make the same slippery slope argument about all sorts of legitimate behaviors: price matching, using competitor coupons, stacking coupons, etc. All of them could potentially lead to "less consumer friendly behavior."

Living Dead

All I can say is that I'm glad I don't have morals when it comes to buying movies.

glassdragon

You are basically taking money from them. Whether they agree with me or not is irrelevant, the fact is that it would take a low moral compass to even contact amazon at all with regards to what best buy is doing. I can understand calling best buy, and I see no problem with that, their wording on the emails means that they didn't cover themselves, but calling a completely separate company basically asking them to give you free money? I am not sure how ANYONE can justify that. If you went in to walmart and asked them to "pricematch" free money they would hurt themselves from laughing. Amazon is just being nice doing this and by doing this they are being taken advantage of, and that is what's scummy. The actions, not necessarily the person, but if you feel it's fine it's not my place to stop you.

If you read my post yet again you will notice that I never called a person scummy, I called the physical action of trying to get away with free money from a company.

I'm sure this thread will be locked soon as it's turned into a moral issue with the posters. I won't post anymore about it, and I won't impede you doing it. I am just interjecting my opinion on the subject, I never called anyone out in particular, but one of my biggest pet peeves is entitlement, and I just don't think doing this is right. Again, that is my opinion. No need to get as defensive as you are getting. If you think it's alright then I'm not sure why you are getting defensive and trying to explain yourself to me, if you really don't care then why do you care what other posters and I think?

Serious question though. If you had a friend that was always trying to put things over on you, would you continue trusting them? Would you keep letting him take advantage? You probably wouldn't which is what may happen to amazon some day. This itself may not make a difference, but compounding everything as a whole, it could cause drastic changes to them eventually, but people don't tend to think about the future, just the now.

SoonerDoc

Because contrary to popular belief, I am sure there is some reason why some people got this and others didn't. I seriously doubt they just randomly selected every 16th customer from their database and sent them an email saying free money. I don't know exactly what their process is, but I suspect they have one. Even if they don't, BB isn't a government program, it is a business run by people hired for that purpose and if they wanna give your neighbor a free $20 gift card, that is their choice. Doesn't mean you are entitled to it also.

I don't have a problem with people calling and asking. But the people that are calling and threatening to by a laptop elsewhere or cancel their account or never shop there again if you don't give me a $20 gift card or an extra $10 gift card on top of the $10 you already gave me are just people that have got big problems...bigger problems than will be fixed by 10 extra bucks. As stated by others it is just....scummy.

jwstl

Considering the number of folks participating in the scams mentioned in this thread, I suppose there should be a sub forum for scamming deals. As for me, I'm going back to looking for real deals.

CaptainMarvel

You're taking an awful lot for granted. The first rep I spoke with explicitly told me I should have received the certificate. Numerous others have also been told that they only failed to receive the certificates by mistake. So I don't buy for a second this assumption that Best Buy has a master plan and we're all outrageously messing it up.

But even if that's not the case, once again there's absolutely nothing wrong with Customer A saying "treat me like Customer B or I'm going to vote with my wallet." Is Customer A "entitled" to the gift certificate? Of course not, no more than Best Buy is "entitled" to Customer A's patronage. Best Buy isn't being "forced" to send Customer A anything; it will do it if it decides it's in Best Buy's interest.

Get off your high horse.

Kguy1326

I don't see this as a bad thing calling and asking about it. They aren't losing money. In fact, they are doing the opposite, gaining money. They are giving you those $10, $15, or $20 vouchers to get you in store. I'm gonna ask about it now, thanks to this thread. I was planning to head there anyways this week for "Easy A", now I may pick up "Devil" too. If I can get the $10 or so, they have a few more $$$ from me. At least, Best Buy treats me well with service 95% of the time. I have a horror story about a DVD price match at Miejer's which caused me to never shop there again.

dolphinboy

Of course I have a computer, I told a manager at Best Buy that a local computer store offered me a laptop, so he gave me two laptops for free.

I hope that doesn't change the way Best Buy treats their other customers.

This is a ridiculous debate. I always try and get the best deal. There are people who know the tricks of shopping at grocery stores and buy all the food they need and end up getting money back from the store and not paying a dime. That's more than made up for by the vast majority of people who just pay whatever they're charging.

If I want to try and "get" a deal by asking for something, I'm just looking for the best bargain. And I'm not shoplifting, I'm seeing what I can get simply by asking. Heck, I remember in like 4th grade or something when we were told to write letters to companies telling them how much we liked their products to see which companies would send us free stuff. That was a school assignment.

Amazon made a business decision to not price match like they used to. Now, who knows how much money I've lost on a new release dropping $3-$5 2 days to a week after it was released. My choice is to shop elsewhere if I want a better policy. No one at Amazon seems to be losing any sleep over this and I've continued on as a very good customer.

So, if they're giving out promos or if they accidentally list a $199.99 blu ray set for $19.99 and honor the price, I'm not losing any sleep either. If Amazon is losing money it's not because of the couple times a year I might get lucky with a coupon I might not "deserve" or because I got something that was priced incorrectly.

And while Amazon is very good with returns and taking care of their customers, the idea that they're great with problems is laughable. If you have a complicated problem and you don't get someone in a U.S. call center, you might as well go to bed and call back the next day until you get one. And, to this day, Amazon reps still don't seem to know their own price guarantee rules. They actually have added a new feature to let customers tell them when a price on their website has gone down, but hasn't gone down in your pre-order. This hasn't been there for too long, so I'm sure it was added because people were flooding their call centers taking up time with the reps asking them to change the price manually and STILL, at least half the time I've used the feature they haven't changed the price or responded back that they were making an EXCEPTION to lower my price to the price it SHOULD be anyway.

Furthermore, if you want to ask everyone you shop with to lower their price or give you a discount that isn't being given to everyone else, more power to you, and when you do get a "deal" that way too, I say congratulations.

Now, I need to get some sleep. It's damp and cold under this bridge and the wifi I'm stealing from a nearby hotel comes and goes, so pardon me if I don't debate this all night.

AmityBoatTours

I was actually going to mention that, when I mentioned that a consumer has the right to voice disatisfaction at the handling of a policy or treating all customers fair.

pretty much every kid in grade school, is taught that lesson when learning about being a consumer.

GreenMonkey

I had gotten this email but forgot about it. Good thing I saw this thread! Thanks OP. I've been too poor to spend money at BB much (what purchases we have done are generally Amazon). Got my $20 freebie printed and ready.