Yeah, I got the freebie in my mail on Monday... Pretty cool if you ask me... I dunno about the rest of you, but I spend several thousand dollars in Best Buy every year. So, this is absolutely worth it to me. The reward may not be much, but it's better than nothing and will most likely end up being several free DVDs...

If you think about it, it's not all that bad. To make up for the cost of the membership, you need to earn 25,000 points. Considering that you get 5,000 to start with, that's 20,000 over the course of the year. 20,000=$200 spent or $16.67/month. And I'm sure that a lot of us that shop there would buy more then 1 DVD a month there. So if you think about it, it's not as good as we would've liked it to be, but hey, it's virtually free stuff.

I had purchased a $500 dishwasher on saturday. They wanted to sell the rewards so bad they let me "return" it, and repurchase it for last weeks price (-10%) so I could get all the points.

I received a Best Buy Reward Zone card in the mail on Monday, July 14, without ever signing up for anything. I'll try it out for the first year, before they start charging an annual fee.

can this be explained further, it sounds like no purchase is required?

Crap! I just got the FREE membership card in the mail (less than 24 hours after I bought one in the store!). I called the Customer Service people to ask about what I could do about it - the guy on the other end wasn't sure. He said that the program was so new that he had to put me on hold to refer to some recent paperwork to get the details. The guy was actually very helpful - he just wasn't expecting questions on the membership program right from the get go.

Anyway, it turns out that the free cards should have been mailed out a week earlier and/or the memberships should have been available in the stores a week later. He thinks that anyone who is on their mailing list (Preferred Customer Weekends coupons, purchases at BB.com, BB credit card, extended warranties, etc.) would probably receive one. He agreed with me that I probably won't be the last person with this problem.

To make matters worse, when I signed up for the membership, I asked the girl at the register if BB would ever have a weekend promotion or sale where the membership cards would be half-price or free with purchase or something like that - she assured me that no such special would happen, and the only way to get the membership was to buy it. D'oh!

Fortunately, there is a clause on the back of the sign-up form that says you can cancel your membership and get a refund within 30 days if not satisfied. I'm going to go up to BB after work today and see if they'll refund the money for the $10 membership.

Same thing happened to me and I called also. I was told to cancel the membership I paid for, get the free one, and then call to get my pts transferred over

I got my freebie in the mail yesterday; I'm in Kansas City.

I'll use it, but I'm going to have to think really hard about whether I'll renew it. If they gave you something else for your $10 membership, then, well....

I don't think I'll spend enough at best Buy to make money on the deal.

Got my card today in Cleveland.

~Sam C.

The funny thing is, I got a free card in the mail. Now mind you I usually always use my PCW coupons and I do purchase quite a large amount of my DVDs and CDs there.

Now another member of my family got a letter informing them of the new program and told them to go to their local BB and purchase one for only $9.99.

It looks like they take into account your usage of their promotional items like PCW coupons and such into account when flagging people for getting a free card or not.

Update - Took my initial ($9.99) membership up to BB last night and they cancelled it. They had some difficulty doing it because the program is so new, but didn't give me a hassle at all.

$10 saved (to be given right back to BB when I buy Final Destination 2 this Tuesday).

The website says that you will be mailed a password in 6-8 weeks. Is there anyway to get one faster?

I did the math, since Best Buy likes to deal in "points" instead of dollars.

For every $125 you spend, you get a gift certificate (not cash) of $5 which translates to 4%--not the 5% others have suggested. So for a $20 DVD, you get 80-cents back as a gift certificate which is probably even less than the sales tax you paid. But you need to buy over 5 of these DVDs just to get your "reward!"

The Replay card from Suncoast & Media Play at least gave you 5% discount with much of the same drawbacks.

Instead, why doesn't Best Buy offer return customers a better return policy on items other than "show me your receipt" or forget it!

It's actually about a 1.5% discount the first $325 dollars you spend, because of the $9.99 membership fee, then 4% after that. This is, of course, until your yearly membership is up.

I used $325 dollars as the reference point because it is the point where you will earn your first $5 dollars in rewards, since they give you 5000 free points for signing up. After that, every $125 will earn you $5.

Another example: If you signed up for RewardZone today, and bought a $450 television, you will earn $10, so you end up spending $440, after the 6-8 week wait period to get your certificate.

To me, mail-in rebates sound like a better deal. I'm glad they use the price before any rebates in calculating points though.

There are some instances where they will waive the $9.99 membership fee.

Also, in the future, there will be special promotional events where certain products will earn double points.

Keep in mind, that when you sign up, you must agree to recieve promotional mailings from best buy & associates.

No free game a year. Why? Because once you earn 12500 points, you get a $5 certificate. You only have 90 days to spend this certificate.

I think I buy more than 10 games a year

The employees at my Best Buy are VERY rude when redeeming the coupons. It is absurd. As another poster said, they do not let me use the coupon if AFTER the coupon is used the purchase price is under 10 dollars. That is ridiculous. I was trying to purchase a 12.99 DVD.

Also, despite calling and talking with a customer service representative on the national 800 number for Best Buy who said the coupons are stackable that was then completely refuted by my local Best Buy.

The only way I could see this is of ANY value to someone is if they get the card free. It is completely ridiculous to give the piece of crap of a store any more money so they can screw you and break all their own rules in terms of these almost meaningless gift cards. I took the coupons to a different Best Buy as well where they also said I could not stack them.

Best Buy CONSISTENTLY has the highest prices on newly released DVD's. Most of the time they can be found for 4-5 dollars cheaper at Wal-Mart and 2-3 dollars cheaper at Circuit City (generally 19.99 DVD's at Best Buy tend to be 17.99 at Circuit City).

I fail to see the point of unstackable 5 dollar gift cards. You might as well shop online or somewhere else. If these cards are in fact stackable in your area and the employees are not complete jerks when dealing with you about them then by all means stack them and get some things for free if you purchase a lot from Best Buy.

But unstackable 5 dollar gift cards are a slap in the face.... It's not as extreme as Mediaplay's Replay card program as their prices are mind-boggingly high and many people seem to go out of their way to pay these high prices in order to get Replay points but Best Buy's prices ARE NOT the best and an unstackable 5 dollar gift card is silly.

Wow. Seems like the Best Buy in your area is not correctly informed. I've been able to stack my $5 gift cards. I had $75 worth when I got my PDA from Best Buy, and they took them all at one time. I've bought $11.99 CDs using a $5 coupon card as well, which brought my price down to $6.99. So something is up with the Best Buy in your area. I would call their customer service 1-800 number and talk to them. I've had to for some other issue, and they asked me if I knew which store, and which manager I spoke with. Fortunately I did have her name, and they called her right away to straighten something out she was doing wrong. She was very nice to me after that.

Shhhhhhh

Not supposed to tell people how their "rewards" program gets paid for.

2 Words.

"Price Match"

Is the password (that allows you to login at bestbuy.com/rewardzone) included in the free reward membership invitation packet? If so, where is it?

From The Rewards Website itself:

Which means i'm going to sign up for this tomorrow since i'm buying a laptop tomorrow....i figure $1,200 or so will get me around $50 in certificates....and since I'll get reimbursed for the laptop from work it's a win win!!

After I used the card once I got a mail a few weeks later with my balance and the password. If you got the free one you could try going to the website and clicking to get the password, but that provided they have your email address already.

I got one of the free cards and got a letter in the mail on Friday or Saturday I believe it was giving me my password. I "activated" my free membership on 7/18 so it's taking about 2 weeks for the letters to come. I also overheard a BB employee say that it takes about 10 days for points to be credited to your account or any account changes to show up on their site.

By "activating" do you mean "using" the card on your first purchase?