BestBuy gives away $10m to HDDVD buyers
Trying to appease customers who ended up on the losing side of the recent high-definition movie format war, Best Buy on Wednesday said it would hand out $50 gift cards to buyers of HD DVD players. By surrendering to Sony-backed Blu-ray last month, Toshiba-led proponents of HD DVD left player owners holding devices reduced to playing standard DVDs. To make amends, Best Buy plans to distribute more than $10 million in gift cards to people who bought players from the retailer before Feb. 23. The cards should start arriving by mail by May 1. “At Best Buy, we understood and shared our customers’ frustrations as they were being asked to choose one format or the other,” Dunn said in a statement.
“Now that the format war is over, we hope these gift cards will reassure our customers that we will help them make a smooth transition into the right technology for their needs.” Best Buy plans to mail gift cards to customers the company can identify as HD DVD buyers. To do that, Best Buy will depend on information gathered through its membership program, purchases on the retailer’s Web
Source: Information Week
Comments(22)
Guess it is almost time to pick up a bluray player.
thats cool of them
lol @ anybody who has/is buying into the HD/BluRay fiasco, period.
Wow, that looks like the nicest thing I’ve ever seen a company like Best Buy do.
bought a hd dvd player last week. Now it’s cheap, and the hd dvd movies too. Now I have a nice dvd player with good upscaling;). Paid €80 for the player(inclusive 5 hd dvd movies)
How’s $50 going to help those who paid big $$ for their HD DVD player who now need to buy a blueray??
That’s what they get for trying to keep up with all of the latest tech toys…why is everyone in such a hurry to get the next best thing all the time?Marketing!If everyone finally woke up and smelled the coffee then the consumer would finally get the upper hand on commerce.It’s the consumers that make or break a product not the product itself.If there is no demand for a product it doesn’t sell.We, in general always strive for better quality products,but until the market forces everyone into the mainstream there will always be people like me who don’t mind waiting until the mad rush to get the next best thing is over.I never overpay for my merchandise because I’m in no particular hurry to get screwed out of my hard earned cash.IMHO it made absolutely no sense going out to get an HDDVD or a Blueray player knowing damned well that the big players hadn’t yet decided which camp they were going to sleep with.Anyone who actually went out and bought either was, to put it bluntly…an idiot.To pay so much money for something that will eventually cost 100$ and be available to the mainstream market is just plain stupid. Beta or vhs anyone?
10m = 10 meters
10M = 10 000 000
Sweet!
I’ll use it to buy Blu-rays lmao
Fifty bucks basterds knock off 100 off a blue ray player .
@7
spot on. these kids get all excited by a bit of fancy gadgetry and marketing, let them pay the price for the ads and the r&d. you and i will get round to buying when we feel they’ve dropped in price to a sensible level relative to what they actually cost to produce. as for the price of the discs – wtf?!!
Agreed. Anyone who was dumb enough to buy a HD-DVD player only have themselves to blame. It’s cool of Best Buy to do this, but there’s no way the customers should expect compensation for their bad decisions. They took a gamble – if they were not aware that they took a gamble, then that just goes to show that a fool and his money are easily parted.
I honestly don’t see why anyone would buy either one while the format war was still going. There’s really no point.
wow that’s so sweet, I feel tears rolling down my cheeks.
@13 if no one bought a single player or disc, how would the war ever come to an end? thank the ones who made a sacrifice so you didn’t have to.
It is not Best Buys’ fault that people made bad decisions.
I’d be pissed if I were a shareholder.
What’s next. Refunds for Flobee’s?
smart marketing trick
i am sure 70-80% of those people will end up buying a blu ray dvd player from the gift card + their own money which will end up increasing best buy’s sales figures
smart succkers they’ll earn more than 10 mill after a month
i’d like to see their profit report for this month 4 sure
Loads of websites here in the UK have been selling the Toshiba HD-DVD players for crazy low prices with upto seven free HD-DVD’s after BD won.
Just because one format was victorious doesn’t mean HD-DVD’s magically stop working. For £50 you get an upscaling DVD player that as a bonus happens to play some HD movies.
HD-DVDs are also selling for under £5 on some sites.
This isn’t Best Buy being nice to people out of the goodness of their hearts. Giving away $50 gift cards means they’ll end up MAKING more money on average, not losing $50 per person. When somebody has a gift card, they rarely use it to buy something that ends up being worth the value of the card. Usually, it’s far more expensive or far less. If I use a gift card to buy something for $200 (or a Blu-Ray player for more than that), Best Buy haven’t lost a penny. They’ve made a big profit. If I use a gift card to buy something for $30, I will feel the psychological desire to buy something else (for fear of “losing” $20). Chances are, I will use that card towards a larger purchase.
Each of these purchases are at Best Buy, not at the competition. If I want to buy a Blu-Ray player, it’ll probably be with my $50 gift card, not for full price with the competition.
This is classic marketing, not charity.
Disc are obsolete anyway–it’s all going digital.
I still have my spindle of 50 dvd-r’s I bought last year collecting dust on my shelf. My collection of external hard drives is rather impressive, however.
“Disc are obsolete anyway–it’s all going digital.”
I’ve been hearing that statement over and over for over a decade now. I’ll believe it when it actually happens. Personally, I would rather take owning a physical disc over a DRM-laden rental any day.
Like someone else said, HD-DVD losing the format war doesn’t mean HD-DVD gear suddenly stops working. I knew Blu-Ray was going to win a long time ago and still bought an HD-DVD player (the Xbox 360 attachment).
At a time when options for HD content where I live were very limited and/or low quality, it was an inexpensive choice that I don’t at all regret buying. Seeing as it enabled me to watch plenty of good HQ HD material using it, I would say it has more than justified itself.
Everything goes obsolete eventually, and anyone whom actually owns a large screen HDTV (emphasis on large) will tell you that it’s not about the format; it’s about HD content and having as much of it as possible, something I think the war helped move forward.
So, If I bought a laptop that has a HD-DVD Player (Acer 5920G T5250) do I get this $50 card? I have the receipt….
I better damnit, maybe I should petition Acer for a similar deal- or get a replacement as I think some of the 5920g’s (europe models- they even had better procs too) got Blueray….
Why are all you ba****ds complaining about getting only $50. Would you rather get nothing? At least they are giving you something, unlike any other retailer. And they aren’t even obligated to give you s**t. They are taking money out of their pocket, to help people who bought an HD-DVD Player instead of a Blu-Ray Player. It’s too bad unthankful s**t’s like yourself might actually get the $50 gift card.