With the format war over, it seems a form of reparations are starting to be doled out to the now-defunct HD-DVD camp. Best Buy has announced that they will be giving away gift cards worth $50 to people who purchased HD-DVD players at their U.S. stores. The only catch is that the player must have been purchased before February 23, when Toshiba announced it was halting all HD-DVD production. Most customers will be identified through the Reward Zone program, performance service plans, and online purchases; those people will have their gift cards mailed out by May 1. Anyone else who believes they qualify for a gift card can contact the company and provide a receipt or credit card information as proof of purchase. Best Buy is expected to send out about $10 million worth of gift cards.
It’s nice that so many retailers are trying to take care of their customers, but I really don’t get why they’re taking the fall for this. It seems to me that if you bought an HD-DVD player, then you backed a losing horse. There’s no compensation for that. Of course, maybe I wouldn’t be saying that if I got duped into buying and HD-DVD player by some overzealous Best Buy salesperson.
Via CNN
6 Comments to Best Buy Giving Away Gift Cards to HD-DVD Player Owners
by: DeathDream
On March 19, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Yeah I don’t know why they are taking the fall for this either, should be like HEY my pc is outdated, give me money!
~Death Dream~
by: veaudaux
On March 19, 2008 at 1:22 pm
This is hardly “taking the fall” for anything – $50 is _way_ less than customers already paid for their Best Buy HD-DVD player. More than that, it’s way less than they’ll pay either for a Blu-Ray player, or snatching up a bunch of remaining HD-DVDs. That’s the purpose of the gift card. Everyone that owns a HD-DVD player is doing one of those two things. If you send them a gift card, they’re more likely to do it at _your_ store. So it’s all down to straight business – they’ll make a lot more money off these gift cards than they put into it. Especially considering $10 million in gift cards is only about $1.5 million worth of goods at wholesale.
by: ManOfTeal
On March 19, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Maybe they are doing this to show the public how good their customer service is?????
Who knows??
by: Strikerzex911
On March 19, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Lol $50
by: Norbit
On March 19, 2008 at 4:06 pm
@ ManOfTeal
Exactly. Customer loyalty is hugely important and this is sure to make their customers happy and will make customers who bought their HD-DVD players elsewhere think more highly of BestBuy. In real terms they haven’t really taken much of a hit with this. About 30% of a stores sale price is profit so they would have made between $30 and $70 profit on each HD-DVD player they sold so they are simply giving up the profit they made on the players. When the customer returns with the $50 about $15 of that will go back to the store as profit once again so overall the sale of the HD-DVD player and the donation of a $50 voucher will still see the store making a profit and will be great PR.
by: hellaxe
On March 21, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Hm. I read this article somwhere