Buh-bye, BBY

My dear friends, we are gathered here today to mourn the death of one of my personal favorite deals, the Blue and Yellow Consumer Electronics Company Credit Card Extremely Generous Promotion. 

I got one of these credit cards a few years ago in the hope that they would run some good promotions, and I have not been disappointed. They didn’t do much marketing on it for the first year or so, but the last year and a half have been good. I wrote about it several times–for example here, here, here, and here–but I stopped writing about it after I noticed another blogger or two writing about it AND spoonfeeding details (hint: $200 Visa prepaids) more than I thought was healthy for the deal.

The latest and greatest deal–so good that it finally derailed the gravy train–was 10% back on all credit card purchases at the store. My favorite retailer, in its infinite wisdom, offered this deal for the entire summer. In the past, this sort of deal was limited to a weekend (they had a 14% weekend once), and sometimes to just one purchase, factors which tended to deter people from signing up for the card since they wouldn’t be able to get their card in time to benefit from the promotion.

But offering this for just about the whole summer? That gives everybody plenty of time to get the credit card and load up their shopping cart with prepaids, and apparently that’s what happened.

Sometime last month Ol’ Blue and Yellow stopped crediting prepaid purchases with bonus points, so that’s when the deal died. They seem to have changed their terms and conditions to explicitly exclude prepaid cards as well–I’ve checked the T&Cs for past promotions to specifically look for this term and never saw it before, but now prepaids are singled out.

RIP, Blue And Yellow Credit Card Deals. I’ll miss you.