Best Buy has just announced they are replacing their “Reward Zone” loyalty program with “My Best Buy” — promising greater rewards, such as free shipping, and more mobile integration, including bonus points for “checking in” at stores. And certainly my Best Buy expenditures have increased given permanent Amazon price matching (and their recent store redesign doesn’t hurt). From the email blast:
Thank you for being a loyal Reward Zone® member. I’m pleased to announce that after a decade, the program you love is getting even better. We’re reinventing the Reward Zone program as My Best Buy™ — delivering more rewards, more exclusives and an improved mobile experience.
As an existing Reward Zone member the change is easy — you’re already enrolled. In fact, all of your account information remains the same, including your member number, point balance and any available reward certificates. Even the points you get with every purchase stay the same. With My Best Buy your benefits are even better:
- Free Shipping on BestBuy.com orders of $25 or more
- The Hottest Deals in Advance with early access to special sales
- Exclusive Savings with special offers reserved only for our members
- Member-Only Access to special shopping events
- And so much more
I see they also dropped the return time back down to 45 days. I did have a 60 day return period with the old Reward Zone, but now that I’m in the Elite Plus it’s only a 45 day return period.
BestBuy has made alot of changes to their Reward Zone this year. Decreasing the ways to get points and changing the name. So for me I will be making fewer purchases since I don’t get as much back now since you can’t get points with the no interest financing deals. So after my ELite Plus membership expires in 2015, I doubt I will have the amount needed to stay at that level anymore
I also noticed they mentioned free shipping. I had free expedited shipping with all my online purchases before with Silver Reward Zone so this is nothing new. I don’t even think there was a minimum before since I had made purchases of only $10 or $15 and still had free expedited shipping. With the new program, you need a minimum of $25 for the order to get free shipping.
And they also had Member-Only Access to special shopping events before as well. Again nothing new.
They program has gone backwards in so many ways this year. It certainly is not better now than it was earlier this year. It is much worse.
Please folks, I implore you, continue patronizing Best Buy. I’d be lost without my internet showroom!
Well I do see they have a dedicated phone number for Elite Plus members. I don’t know if they had it before when I was a Silver memeber but it did come in handy today. So I guess the dedicated number is one positive with the change.
I had emailed them and still had not received an answer. With the phone number I got a CSR right away and she had my question answered within a couple of minutes. So at least this is something good with the new change.
Last year I did a lot of Christmas shopping at Best Buy since they started price matching Amazon.
However now I no longer shop at Best Buy as they are failing to live up to their Price Matching, I went into Best Buy to buy a Camcorder found the same one for sale on Amazon for $50 less, so showed them and they said that they could not price match it because Amazon was only fulfilling the order. It was not being sold by Amazon. To me, if I am paying Amazon for it, and Amazon is the one shipping it to me, then its Amazon I am buying it from.
Normally when I would go into Best Buy I would leave buying a bunch of other things that I didn’t go in there to buy, but since I am no longer shopping Best Buy, they have lost out on those extra sales.
I hope Best Buy goes out of Business.
@Scott Greczkowski: I could understand if it were some used / marketplace item, but my guess is that it was a normal item and had something like, “Fulfilled by Wiz Corp” next to it which, to me, suggests it’s a legitimate internet purchase (not used or some dodgy grey market deal) and they should have just honored it.
The thing is: Had they honored it you would have walked out a happy customer and the next time you went to buy something Best Buy would be high on your list. Because they played this stupid game now they’re not.
I gave up on RewardsZone years back. What I experienced was getting coupons in the mail, going into Best Buy to use the coupons, and being told, “Oh, sorry, we can’t apply that coupon to this item.” Now, I wasn’t trying to apply a TV coupon to a video game or anything like that. I was doing it how most people would have done it: Go buy a video game using the video game coupon from Best Buy (or whatever, it wasn’t always limited to video games). Get to Best Buy and am checking out and am told, “Sorry.. That video game coupon doesn’t apply to this video game.”
Anyway, it was always some idiot game like that so I just gave up on the RewardsZone altogether. It reminded me of the crap CompUSA used to pull before they went out of business. They’d have combo deals where if you bought one item you’d get another 50% off and then wouldn’t honor or they’d have rebates that they wouldn’t honor. It was always a game there, too.
I agree 100% they have gone backwards. Not applying points to interest free financing.. what? Guess that MacBook they refused to give me $35 in reward points for was my last big purchase… Had I know that when I bought it, the Apple store right down stairs from them in that mall would have gotten that purchase. I think that was a terrible business decision on their part, I never used a reward certificate that I didn’t almost purchase double the value of it…
I bought a Macbook Pro on August 3rd, and used their 18 month no interest financing… which I’ve done many times before and gotten points. I waited 30 days (which they said it takes that long for points to show up). 35 days passed and still no points. I found out that on 7/30/13 they changed their policies. No more points when you use special financing. I missed the change by just a few days.
I quite often use my Best Buy card for the 0% financing and pay my purchases off in a few months instead of an upfront cost. This benefits me by letting me pay it off over time, and it benefits Best Buy by me giving them my money. No more points means I’m no longer inclined to give Best Buy my money. I can get most of what I want, if not all, from Amazon and take advantage of financing offers from them if I choose to.
Oh and let’s not mention that MyRZ.com said I had $0 left to spend to retain Premier status, now says I have $377 to spend to retain Elite Plus. Now I have to spent $3500 to get the same (actually less) level of “benefits” as a Premier member? Something stinks about that.
Good bye Best Buy… you’ve lost a customer.
I don’t know who made the decision to push away big ticket sales… but I wouldn’t want my name on that one!
Bye-Bye Best Buy. Just found out about the financing and no points. Can’t tell you how much money I have spent at Best Buy, but they just got my last dollar. Greedy little bastards.
I spent a fair amount of $$ on new appliances over a month ago and I’ve been watching my RZ account for the points to hit. I just went through an email exchange with bestbuy.com CSR and was informed of the “No points on promotional financing purchases” clause. This is a big disappointment and I will definitely be looking elsewhere for future purchases.
Best Buy didn’t do a good job letting their customers know that there were no more reward points for 0% financing. I was told by the sales rep when I spent $2700 that the points would show up in 45 days. Turns out he should have known there were no points for the 0% financing so I was mislead greatly for Sears had the same stuff slightly cheaper, no points, but the same 0%. But, the Best Buy points were enough to keep me there. What a mistake. So, after 10 years of Best Buy shopping, no more for me.
The thing none of you are mentioning is the free Geeksquad service for silver members – I would use it for free TV calibrations. Calling it new and improved is a joke.
Just as John above mentioned, I purchased about $4,000.00 over Thanksgiving Holiday shopping period. I was told that I would have reward points added later. I found out after waiting for the points that they no longer give out reward points. Best Buy was my favorite store for a lot of reasons and gave them a lot of business $$. I can’t see where this was a good move for the store. The program brings customers back to buy more items. There are other locations we can go to make our purchases. Best Buy your not the only retailer out there and we know your aware of that and don’t understand this new move to push customers away. Apparently someone at the top believes not giving reward points is going to bring us back for more purchases. From someone here who (USED) to go to Best Buy first for all my purchases, no more. Big mistake on your part Best Buy and if you don’t make the change to the old reward point method I see your store having major closings across the United States because those of us out here work hard for what we have these days and have plenty of places we can go to make our purchases. Just do a google search and there are plenty of places available for us to get free shipping and 0 percent financing. You are now offering no incentive for me to come back. So even though I am one person and I know that doesn’t bother you at all. But take another look Best Buy, my guess you will see a major decline in sales with your new position on customer rewards. Sorry to see you go but I am not coming back.
We were in the market for new appliances around Thanksgiving at the time Best Buy was having an elite exclusive night with 3x points on select name brands. After talking to the sales rep and running the numbers with him we were convinced that we had a better deal than other places. We chose the free 18 month financing and he never told us that we would not get our reward points, worth almost $100. Either he didn’t know or decided to not tell us. Either way I am done purchasing from this place. I’ll use it as a showroom and buy online.
It stands to be noted that if you reach out to customer support like I did, they will award you one courtesy of awarding points to1 of your items purchased after the policy change, but only one. This was a terrible decision and I feel it already has come back to bite BB. I know that even with this “award” I will not shop there again till they change it back.
Have shopped at BB for years. Just looked today for my Rewards Pt. from my purchases last December 2013 wondering why I had not received those points. Called and found out there new policy,. Which inturn was not explain to me with the purchase I made in December. I had made quite a bit of purchase over the years at BB. . I told there main head quarters that I will not be shopping at Best Buy. It is only a matter of time and they will go under. I was going to go out tomorrow and purchase 2 ipod so glad I looked for those reward I didn’t get. End of and Era.