Kinglobjaw's Blog

Posts Tagged ‘best buy’

Today was the grand opening of Best Buy’s newest Chicagoland location- John Hancock Center. I didn’t go for the same reason I didn’t blog for the last few days and wouldn’t fly even if I had a confirmed First Class ticket for today or yesterday! What? I was worried it could have been the swine flu. Luckily, it wasn’t. Seriously, I haven’t been this sick in a long time- but it’s better now, hence the blog entry.

So while I didn’t go today due to my illness, I don’t think I’d go even if I was fit to fly. The reason? The pre-grand opening event that took place last Thursday. As a Silver Premier shopper at Best Buy I was invited to a private event. First fifty Silver Premier members received a $50 Best Buy gift card- I was # 53. For those who don’t know Silver premier is like an elite level of the Reward Zone program, kind of like US Airways Silver Preferred.

The doors opened at 6:02PM and I swear, I haven’t seen this many Best Buy employees at all stores combined as I saw that night. All of them introduced themselves to the customers and shook our hands. Within seconds, I had three or four “personal shoppers” following me around offering tasteful suggestions and doing zero product hawking. I can’t believe I spent almost two hours at Best Buy just chatting with the employees and shopping around. It was that much fun! I ended up with three large bags of purchases and additional products on the way in the mail. While the prices were not reduced, the offers and incentives were plentiful. Turns, out they had a similar event the previous night for building residents and offered cheese, crackers and wine. I never thought Best Buy would pull it off in such a classy manner.

That same evening I was approved for the Best Buy store charge card offering 0% interest for 18 months on purchases over $499. Expected, but still a nice surprise.

In addition, I had a chance to chat with the store manager about the Reward Zone program. It was probably the only thing that was unpleasant that evening. Not the chat itself, she was wonderful, but it turns out they’ve actually put Premier Black member level on hold. Premier Black was supposed to be a higher level, like Chairman’s at US Airways (by that I mean a prestigious level) where members who spend $7,500 or more in a year at Best Buy get additional benefits.

A funny tidbit. As I was chatting with the manager, another employee started taking shots of me and my overloaded Best Buy bags. Maybe I’ll be featured in an ad booklet come next Sunday?

I was very impressed with the event and Best Buy handled this very well. Maybe I’m being a bit too optimistic, but any troubles I’ve had with Best Buy in the past few months are water under the bridge at this point.

That said, I wish I brought my camera to take some pictures. Oh yeah, and what happened with the Best Buy yellow logo? Nowhere to be found at this location!

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark

If you are not a RewardTV member, now is the time to join. Free of charge, of course! You get tons of valuable points for just watching your favorite TV shows, even if you don’t really watch them at all. You end up earning lots of points since you earn them in bunches of thousands. What can you do with your points? You spend them on shopping sprees. There are two each week and they announce the guaranteed prizes ahead of time. This is no silly sweepstakes.

An upcoming shopping spree on Wednesday, March 4, 2009 at 2:30PM Eastern Time is offering 1,000 AADVANTAGE miles for 300,000 RewardTV points (if you sign up for today, you can still earn in time- yes, you really earn them that fast). RewardTV very rarely offers miles as a reward, as it’s usually a gift card to places like BestBuy, Staples or Amazon.com (my favorites).

Besides American Airlines they partner with other airlines, but those miles are offered even more scarcely than the AA miles. Here are the airlines:

• Delta
• Northwest

They also partner with Marriott, but since I’ve never seen them offer it, I have no clue whether it’s a $10 Marriott gift card or Marriott Rewards points.

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark

Whoever says that airline customer service is dismal, has not been paying attention to how low Best Buy can go.

Just because Circuit City went out of business, it does not give Best Buy the right to mess with their loyal customers.

 What’s the big deal, you ask? Back in October 2008 I purchased a Canon 50D Digital SLR camera. I did so in Best Buy and I scanned one of these triple points coupons. I even saved a copy, because I knew this sort of thing would happen. The points never posted. Simple enough to fix, right? WRONG!

Don't get excited, readers. It expired months ago!

You’re required to wait about 30 days from the purchase date, so I did. The base points posted, so I knew there was a problem with the promotional 3X points. I called the Premier Silver number and they created a case for me. So far so good. Weeks later I get a call from a guy who claims I purchased this online and used a gift card. Ha! I then decided to email back (since their email support team also handles cases) to which I got reply asking me for details from my receipt. I provided the information. I then got a reply saying they can mail me a copy of my receipt. Huh? I reply again saying I’m missing points not a receipt. They ask me for details from my receipt again. It’s back and forth like that a for a few days. Sometime they tell me I don’t get triple points with this purchase and sometimes they say I got all my points. Very convenient since I can only look back ninety days which has passed and they think they can feed me this junk. It’s all fun and games until today.  Just a few minutes ago I got this wonderful reply which came unsigned. I don’t even who wrote this. Maybe the CEO of Best Buy? Brand Anderson, are you mixing up Valetine’s Day with April fools? LOL!

Hello Mark

How are you this evening? Mark, I have done a little research on this request you have made and I must say I am very surprised at the amount of points in your bank! I see the most I have ever seen, 75,000  WOW! I am afraid due to this amount of point accumulation, you have reached the absolute maximum that Best Buy can offer! If you would like to begin redeeming these points for certificates, we can then begin to add more points to your account. As it is, this is as high as we can permit any accumulation. I am terribly sorry about this Mark.

I would like to offer you the steps in redeeming these points for certificates. It will take 250 points to receive a $5.00 certificate.

1. www.myrewardzone.com
2. using your member id and password, log on
3. choose My Account (at the top of the screen)
4. Click on Issue Certificates.
5. Type in the amount of points to convert to certificates or amount of the certificate
6. Print by clicking on My Certificates.

 

Are you kidding me? There is no such thing as a points cap. Some of their rewards cost 300,000 points. It’s not in the rules and not a single Best Buy employeed confirmed this. And for the record, I only have about 20,000 points since I spent some last year. This has to be the mother of all foolish customer service responses! I’m thinking, what on earth has just happened here? I love how the person says “WOW”. I have to admit, that’s very classy! When I emailed Best Buy’s customer service, I didn’t know I was looking for an IM buddy. I’m also hurt by the fact that I wasn’t wished Happy Valentine’s Day. Best Buy doesn’t love me. Well, I guess they never loved me to begin with…

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark