3 pack of 10$ itunes gift cards 25$ @ bestbuy no tax, in store only

You know, my immediate thought was "quick, click on this thread to watch the OP get flamed to hell for posting a non-gaming related deal! :lol:" but then I read your post and I was like "oh, yeah! I do buy games with that credit too :)" heh.
 
yea i have spent about 50 bucks this month on games on my phone and ipad.. it would have been 40 if i had known about this

i accidentally made 2 of these threads lol but i closed the other one
 
And bredbu, the other plus is that BB doesn't charge sales tax on iTunes GCs, and Apple doesn't charge sales tax on purchases made using iTunes Store credit balance. So you're getting an extra discount equal to your state's sales tax as well. This is why I buy a $15 iTunes GC from BB every single week instead of just letting Apple charge my credit card :) And I save up my RZ points for when the GCs go on sale and spend more than the usual $15 during those weeks :D
 
Ordered 2. Op should mention that there is no tax and shipping is free. And for those bad at math, this is a 17% discount.
 
[quote name='ianoid']Limit of 2, $50 for $60 in iTunes cash. Did it.[/QUOTE]
Limit is 2 per order. Nothing to stop you from placing multiple orders AFAIK, and certainly no limit of 2 in-store unless you've pissed off the store manager trying to persuade him to let you have a 5th copy of Fairytale Fights for free...
 
Mandatory
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good deal/idea for christmas gifts, but they usually do it again around late november or early december so I'll wait.

Also, I'm about sick of anything that starts with " i "
 
[quote name='gamerdogbert']and Apple doesn't charge sales tax on purchases made using iTunes Store credit balance. So you're getting an extra discount equal to your state's sales tax as well. [/QUOTE]

For real? I need to talk to someone, I always have a credit balance but still get charged sales tax in PA.
 
Had to bite on this one since I had a $10 RZ coupon. I've been eyeing Omnifocus for the iPad since it came out and this just helped my decision.

Thanks OP.
 
Yep, games or not apps are not going away. I've never seen a deal on these. With $15 Reward Certs, plus the points I'll get towards more Rewards Certs, definite no-brainer. It probably doesn't count towards the $150 gamer special reward though.
 
Best Buy actually has a sale on the set of 3 $10 iTunes gift cards often - normally once every month or two months. I found this deal in their weekly ad some time last year, and now I keep an eye out each week in the ad to see if they have them on sale. Great deal - especially if you buy a lot of games for iPhone or iPad.
 
Yeah, they usually do either this sale or just a general 10% off all denominations roughly once a month. It is usually tucked somewhere in the weekly ad, although I just make a habit of doing a web site search for the itunes cards every sunday and see if any sale prices come up.

Nocturnal, double check your credit balance both before and after the next time you buy something. I'm willing to bet that if you buy a 99 cent item your balance will have only changed by 99 cents, not $1.xx (whatever your tax rate on a dollar is). It's worth verifying.
 
Thanks guy!

Edit: Tax I believe depends on the state (whether the legislature has gotten around to taxing digital media), in PA we get charged on iTunes purchases.
 
I have a sincere question about point cards and iTunes cards and whatnot...how is it that they bring in so much value? On eBay you'll often times see 1600 MS points sell for 23.xx plus shipping. Then, like right now, these things are just $5 off and people think this is amazing, same for 1600 points. However, we can get a game to drop 50% and people will say 'eh...not a deal. gonna wait awhile.'

What gives?
 
[quote name='drock']Thanks guy!

Edit: Tax I believe depends on the state (whether the legislature has gotten around to taxing digital media), in PA we get charged on iTunes purchases.[/QUOTE]
Apple charges sales tax in ALL 50 states, and always has as a matter of corporate policy, even before they actually had stores in all 50 states. However, what we're talking about is the difference between whether you have a positive balance of store credit that you can spend on purchases, instead of paying "cash" for them by letting Apple charge your credit card. If you have a $0.00 balance on your account and you make a purchase, Apple automatically charges your credit-card-on-file and they add sales tax. But, I discovered that any time you have sufficient store credit from a gift card to cover your purchase, only the actual purchase amount is deducted from your balance, NO sales tax is added on. Test it, I bet you'll be surprised.

[quote name='mr_bungle']I have a sincere question about point cards and iTunes cards and whatnot...how is it that they bring in so much value? On eBay you'll often times see 1600 MS points sell for 23.xx plus shipping. Then, like right now, these things are just $5 off and people think this is amazing, same for 1600 points. However, we can get a game to drop 50% and people will say 'eh...not a deal. gonna wait awhile.'

What gives?[/QUOTE]
It all boils down to how easily and likely it is to get a deal. Real world products purchased with cash come from retailers who act as a middleman in-between us and the game/music companies, and they need to continually reduce prices in order to keep sales up, so the game/music companies have no choice but to go along with it. However, digital distribution removes that middleman and also removes most of the costs and overhead that would necessitate a steady curve of markdowns to stimulate sales. If they go 2 months without selling a single digital copy, they've lost very little money, whereas a retail store would have lost a ton. And their profit margin is also sky high because they get to keep the cut the retailer would have gotten, plus the overhead savings too. Basically they can milk it for all its worth with nearly zero risk. So they only budge on prices JUST enough as what they barely have to. Aside from Steam, what digital distribution service do you ever see doing aggressive, deep sales? None. iTunes doesn't, for sure. You'll get the occasional $1-3 discounted album, but you're not going to find page after page of 75% off music, ever. So we take what we can get, and try to buy gift cards at less than their face value. I mean, if you wanted to buy a hamburger and you had a $10 bill, but I offered to sell you a punch card good for $10 worth of hamburgers for $9, why wouldn't you buy it? You'd still be getting $10 worth of the hamburgers you enjoy, which basically never go on sale, but you'd also walk away with an extra $1 bill in your pocket that you could buy a candy bar or a soda some other day. If that's the best deal the hamburger chains are going to allow you to have, then either you take the deal or you pay full price. Why not take the deal?
 
[quote name='gamerdogbert']Apple charges sales tax in ALL 50 states, and always has as a matter of corporate policy, even before they actually had stores in all 50 states. However, what we're talking about is the difference between whether you have a positive balance of store credit that you can spend on purchases, instead of paying "cash" for them by letting Apple charge your credit card. If you have a $0.00 balance on your account and you make a purchase, Apple automatically charges your credit-card-on-file and they add sales tax. But, I discovered that any time you have sufficient store credit from a gift card to cover your purchase, only the actual purchase amount is deducted from your balance, NO sales tax is added on. Test it, I bet you'll be surprised.


It all boils down to how easily and likely it is to get a deal. Real world products purchased with cash come from retailers who act as a middleman in-between us and the game/music companies, and they need to continually reduce prices in order to keep sales up, so the game/music companies have no choice but to go along with it. However, digital distribution removes that middleman and also removes most of the costs and overhead that would necessitate a steady curve of markdowns to stimulate sales. If they go 2 months without selling a single digital copy, they've lost very little money, whereas a retail store would have lost a ton. And their profit margin is also sky high because they get to keep the cut the retailer would have gotten, plus the overhead savings too. Basically they can milk it for all its worth with nearly zero risk. So they only budge on prices JUST enough as what they barely have to. Aside from Steam, what digital distribution service do you ever see doing aggressive, deep sales? None. iTunes doesn't, for sure. You'll get the occasional $1-3 discounted album, but you're not going to find page after page of 75% off music, ever. So we take what we can get, and try to buy gift cards at less than their face value. I mean, if you wanted to buy a hamburger and you had a $10 bill, but I offered to sell you a punch card good for $10 worth of hamburgers for $9, why wouldn't you buy it? You'd still be getting $10 worth of the hamburgers you enjoy, which basically never go on sale, but you'd also walk away with an extra $1 bill in your pocket that you could buy a candy bar or a soda some other day. If that's the best deal the hamburger chains are going to allow you to have, then either you take the deal or you pay full price. Why not take the deal?[/QUOTE]


I graduated with a degree in business, and while we went over tons of commerce stuff, they never went over this. While I knew a lot of this already, some of it I never thought about. I learned something today, thanks to you:applause:
 
Just bought a pack for instore pickup, also applied a $5 rewards certificate. I will take $30 in giftcards for $20 any day of the week, thanks!
 
[quote name='gamerdogbert']
Nocturnal, double check your credit balance both before and after the next time you buy something. I'm willing to bet that if you buy a 99 cent item your balance will have only changed by 99 cents, not $1.xx (whatever your tax rate on a dollar is). It's worth verifying.[/QUOTE]

I should have mentioned I only buy apps and rent movies (AppleTV) and only get charged tax on apps (even though PSN "apps" don't get charged tax). My emailed receipts show the tax but I will need to pay attention to the balance next time. There was a time when apps weren't taxed, it's not much but I'd still like to figure out why this is the only digital distribution I get taxed in PA.
 
[quote name='ynocturnal']I should have mentioned I only buy apps and rent movies (AppleTV) and only get charged tax on apps (even though PSN "apps" don't get charged tax). My emailed receipts show the tax but I will need to pay attention to the balance next time. There was a time when apps weren't taxed, it's not much but I'd still like to figure out why this is the only digital distribution I get taxed in PA.[/QUOTE]
It could be a separate line item tax than just standard sales tax, like how your neighbor New York has an extra tax on music downloads on top of the normal taxes. Dunno. But I can tell you that here in Iowa, I have been able to avoid paying sales tax on all iTunes purchases by using gift cards, so even if it turns out not to be universal, I'm guessing a great many people could make use of the tip. And even if they don't, it's still nice to earn RZ rewards for your digital purchases :)
 
[quote name='gamerdogbert']

It all boils down to how easily and likely it is to get a deal. Real world products purchased with cash come from retailers who act as a middleman in-between us and the game/music companies, and they need to continually reduce prices in order to keep sales up, so the game/music companies have no choice but to go along with it. However, digital distribution removes that middleman and also removes most of the costs and overhead that would necessitate a steady curve of markdowns to stimulate sales. If they go 2 months without selling a single digital copy, they've lost very little money, whereas a retail store would have lost a ton. And their profit margin is also sky high because they get to keep the cut the retailer would have gotten, plus the overhead savings too. Basically they can milk it for all its worth with nearly zero risk. So they only budge on prices JUST enough as what they barely have to. Aside from Steam, what digital distribution service do you ever see doing aggressive, deep sales? None. iTunes doesn't, for sure. You'll get the occasional $1-3 discounted album, but you're not going to find page after page of 75% off music, ever. [/QUOTE]

Your thinking is flawed in the fact that itunes and amazon ARE middlemen between the content owner and end consumer, and they take their cut along the way just like a brick and mortal store would. The only money saved in digital distribution is the production cost of the media (paid by the content owner) and distribution (content owner/retailer) and retail stocking cost (retailer). And while those savings aren't minor, they aren't a huge component of the standard list price, and they are also sunk costs (ie, non-recoverable costs), so once you've made the product and put it on the shelf, it doesn't really cost much to keep it on the shelf (although retailers might lose out if it is crowding out other items that would sell better/faster) and the retailer isn't the one holding most of the production/distribution cost liability...it is the content owner. If something doesn't sell, the retailer can always dump the unsold stock back on the content owner. And you can bet that Apple and Amazon have thought about all this when pricing their services to the record labels

Contrary to your supposition that digital distribution give content owners pricing power, it just gives them a distribution advantage in case some thing becomes super popular, they are not constrained by production and distribution limitations (ie, itunes is never out of stock). While they have perceived pricing power over new content, the fact is that music/games are easily substituted products (ie, my life doesn't depend on buying this specific song...I can spend money on this song or millions of other ones if I choose to do so, or not buy any music at all and buy some other entertainment product), and this is reflected by the fact that they try to charge alot for brand new stuff, but soon the price drops more, and after a certain point, it drops even more to standard price floor. But that said, amazon has no shortage of discounted digital content...including $3-5 albums on one day sales on recent LPs plus 100 back catalog LPs at $5 each month. As you point out, since the incremental costs of selling a digital product are so low, content owners can now sell things at lower costs without production/distribution costs swamping most of the expected revenue. A $5 CD doesn't hold much interest for content owners or b&m retailers, given the low margins due to production and distributions costs...but a $5 download with hardly any incremental costs works for both content owners and online retailers.

The reason why you don't see massive fire sales on digital content, is that fire sales are designed to disposed of the physical media so can they can recover at least the production/distribution costs expended to make them and so they don't have to spend money shipping them back somewhere. So digital distribution removes that "I need to recover something to cover the production cost" motivation for a 'just move that stuff out the door' type sale that physical media can generate.
 
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[quote name='gamerdogbert']But, I discovered that any time you have sufficient store credit from a gift card to cover your purchase, only the actual purchase amount is deducted from your balance, NO sales tax is added on. Test it, I bet you'll be surprised.
[/QUOTE]

Not true at all, I had $30 n credit this morning and this is what I was charged

Capture-7.jpg
 
[quote name='jacknicklson']Not true at all, I had $30 n credit this morning and this is what I was charged

Capture-7.jpg
[/QUOTE]



best album ever
 
[quote name='gamerdogbert']However, what we're talking about is the difference between whether you have a positive balance of store credit that you can spend on purchases, instead of paying "cash" for them by letting Apple charge your credit card. If you have a $0.00 balance on your account and you make a purchase, Apple automatically charges your credit-card-on-file and they add sales tax. But, I discovered that any time you have sufficient store credit from a gift card to cover your purchase, only the actual purchase amount is deducted from your balance, NO sales tax is added on. Test it, I bet you'll be surprised.
[/QUOTE]

Actually, Apple did charge me tax on my purchase today using my giftcards. I purchased Omnifocus and ended up having to pay the $39.99 plus tax which ended up being $3.20 for a total of $43.19. Out of my $60 credit, I only have $16.81 left.
 
Technically a deal, but I can't get excited about $5 off $30 at iTunes when Amazon Mp3 does amazing deals all the time. Freakin' iTunes never puts anything on sale.
 
[quote name='jacknicklson']Not true at all, I had $30 n credit this morning and this is what I was charged

Capture-7.jpg
[/QUOTE]

[quote name='sharpeone']Actually, Apple did charge me tax on my purchase today using my giftcards. I purchased Omnifocus and ended up having to pay the $39.99 plus tax which ended up being $3.20 for a total of $43.19. Out of my $60 credit, I only have $16.81 left.[/QUOTE]
Well, like I said, test it out and see if it turns out to be a universal thing or a state-by-state basis. This now confirms that it varies from state to state. Too bad for you guys, but here with an Iowa address, I can avoid being charged sales tax on iTunes by using store credit instead of my credit card, and I'm sure there are numerous other states where this happens as well, so it's worth checking on to see if you can save some extra money.
 
Hmm...tempting. I have "bought" some audio books and whatnot, though it'll be a long time before I actually spend $25 through there, plus I get 5% cash back through Discover (supposedly) soooo hmm.
 
To get back on topic here, I stopped into Best Buy at lunch and picked up a pack for the sale price. All of the stickers on the numerous places throughout the store listed the price as $30 but they rang up as $25.

I agree that this isn't a great deal for iTunes music/movie purchases. Apple has the worst music pricing of any digital distributor. But for gaming and Apps it is definitely worth it. I purchase a ton of games and apps for the iPhone, having an extra $5 will go a long way.
 
Picked up 1 pack. Had $20 GC from PMing Target for 2x $50 PSN cards.

I will use it for apps/games for my iPhone/iPad. I usually buy music at Amazon.
 
Didn't have time to print a RZ cert before I left, so I picked up 1 pack tonight. I'm gonna order a second 3-pack before the sale ends Saturday night & use my $15 RZ credit on it.
 
[quote name='Vegan']Technically a deal, but I can't get excited about $5 off $30 at iTunes when Amazon Mp3 does amazing deals all the time. Freakin' iTunes never puts anything on sale.[/QUOTE]

Agreed, I buy Amazon music regularly because it goes on sale ($5 for the new LCD Soundsystem? I'll take it!) I never buy iTunes music. But having $60 in my account for some shows or movies for a trip or whenever is nothing to whine about. It's very easy to spend and you can never get a better discount. I think Apple's primary flaw in the iTunes store is the utter lack of discounting.

And I'm even worse than that as far as music cheapness. I buy many CDs at flea markets and yard sales for $1-$3 and rip them. Except you can't pick when you get what you get. Although Amazon's MP3 deals aren't that different.
 
[quote name='ianoid']Agreed, I buy Amazon music regularly because it goes on sale ($5 for the new LCD Soundsystem? I'll take it!) I never buy iTunes music. But having $60 in my account for some shows or movies for a trip or whenever is nothing to whine about. It's very easy to spend and you can never get a better discount. I think Apple's primary flaw in the iTunes store is the utter lack of discounting.

And I'm even worse than that as far as music cheapness. I buy many CDs at flea markets and yard sales for $1-$3 and rip them. Except you can't pick when you get what you get. Although Amazon's MP3 deals aren't that different.[/QUOTE]

I don't think Apple's video encoding is any good, especially on HD stuff (remember, video quality is determined by resolution AND bitrate; HD only refers to resolution). I'd rather get discs and Handbrake myself.
 
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