PARDON OUR HEADLINE–WE FROWN UPON THAT SORT OF IMMATURITY: How big was yesterday’s coupon mess at Best Buy? Even the mainstream media noticed, assuming Business Insider counts as mainstream. From their article:
“It was a free for all!” wrote Casey Chan at Gizmodo. “People were getting gift cards for half the price, people were using the coupons over and over and over again and Best Buy was even letting the coupon work on products that rarely get discounted.”
The folks over at Slickdeals posted a bunch of the awesome stuff they scored.
Take a look at $1,600 worth of gift cards for $800, an Apple TV for $45.15, and $2,500 of Amazon cards.
It’s amazing that something like this ever saw the light of day. There are thousands of people all over the country whose hobby (and in some cases, side business) is figuring out how to maximize deals at major retailers. For better or worse, that’s the reality we live in. Most retailers have caught on and have safeguards and processes in place to deal with it. Best Buy? Apparently they had yet to encounter deal-seeking customers before yesterday.
The most basic questions one can ask about a coupon like this:
- Will this give me a large discount–so large, that I can buy stuff with this coupon and sell on Ebay?
- Is this repeatable, or a one-time only thing?
- Can I buy giftcards?
Best Buy went 0 for 3. Given the immense destructive potential, you’d think they’d have some sort of process in place to check the coupons before sending them out to the public, but they apparently don’t. If companies were smart, they’d hire people to look for opportunities to game the system with new promotions and products before their release…if companies were smart.
IN A RELATED STORY: $200 of free coffee for small business owners!
ALSO: 25% back in Staples rewards, and a whole bunch of free paper! You can actually get Staples to pay you to take paper from them if you work the deal right.
50 GB OF FREE CLOUD STORAGE WITH MEGA: Remember Kim Dotcom? He’s back.
AMEX FOLLOW-UP: We mentioned the Amex Gold 75,000 point deal yesterday, and we’re mentioning it again because it’s a great deal. Mommy Points and View From The Wing both have rundowns of the deal and suggest ways to maximize, list transfer partners. and so forth. Again, the offer expires in six days.
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