BestBuy Enforcing Removal of GCU If You Go Past 3 Game Limit

I lost a lot of points. I deserve it. Fortunately spent $100 of it a couple days before the ban.

The thing that bothers me the most though is the points I got for use of the credit card on outside of Best Buy spending. For that, I want Citi to step up. Haven't contacted them yet though.
 
Best Buy is turning into one of the stupidest excuses for a retail store. They haven't reached the coveted gutted games sold as new like GameStop does, but they're getting really close.

People will take advantage of any system that ALLOWS them to. This is why as a store they need to setup limits early on. That limit was set at 3 games. I really thing they're too liberal here. It should be set at 1 game per account at GCU discount. 

I can understand the removal of points if more then 3 games were purchased because said points shouldn't even exist. Are these people abusing the system to blame for the shutdown of GCU? NO.

This is the equivalency of taking your Porsche and leaving the keys in the ignition outside your house. Then giving your friends a punch card and saying "ring my doorbell when you want to take it for a ride and I'll punch your card. When you reach 3 punches, you're done." Then wondering why they're driving it more then 3 times. You were a dumbass and hired nobody to watch your car and stop people from misusing it.

I can only think that someone was put in charge of cleaning this up by hand at corporate. They didn't know how to set global rules. They didn't want to do this by hand on a bazillion accounts. It's easier to just nuke the entire accounts then actually doing the job asked of them. Why they were even authorized to do so is beyond me. It's poor judgement. It will bite them in the butt. You don't run a business successfully by staying in damage control 24/7.

 
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Stele said:
Nah, they didn’t even ban the accounts this time. It used to be ban based on CC info, address and phone #. All that happened this time was that the account got refreshed. You can still make orders, and anyone that has exploited GCU well up to this point has come out WAY ahead already.
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So we shouldn't be able to buy anything from best buy again. Because that makes alot of sense
 
I don’t know why you’re replying to me as if I’m making the decisions on behalf of BBY. I’m saying that’s what they did before. Wiping out a few points hardly matters when someone could have made thousands in profit dropshipping straight from Best Buy. And those thousands are direct losses to Best Buy, made even worse by Elite 2-day shipping.
 
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Actually any of you that lost points, had nuked accounts, whatever count your blessings.

There's someone on the Best Buy support forums complaining about a $1900 laptop they bought and returned to the store. BB issued them a refund check which they received a week later. They took it to their bank and was told it was "never funded by the merchant" essentially a bounced check. They called customer service and was told a check would be reissued, taking up to 6 more weeks. They asked for a supervisor and got disconnected. Called back, got sent to Telechex which was a dead end since it only handles personal checks not corporate ones. 

Best Buy didn't ask anyone to hold their beer, they just spilled it on their own because they're too drunk.

 
Screw BB. They canceled my account and wiped out my (measly) $10 rewards and elite plus status.

Filed a chargeback right away for the GCU (renewed in feb), got the permanent credit today

For good measure i told BB i didnt receive the last game i ordered. Oops. Zero fucks given since they decided to steal my stuff since i ordered 5 copies of some shitty $9.99 game for stocking stuffers around christmas time. Wiped out my cheap preorders from the last verified by visa or whatever sale too. I spent $7,224 there last year, and they canceled me for $10. Ok BB....
 
SirConnery said:
This is the equivalency of taking your Porsche and leaving the keys in the ignition outside your house. Then giving your friends a punch card and saying "ring my doorbell when you want to take it for a ride and I'll punch your card. When you reach 3 punches, you're done." Then wondering why they're driving it more then 3 times. You were a dumbass and hired nobody to watch your car and stop people from misusing it.
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"She was dressed too provocatively! Why did her parents let her leave the house like that anyway?"
 
SirConnery said:
Actually any of you that lost points, had nuked accounts, whatever count your blessings.

There's someone on the Best Buy support forums complaining about a $1900 laptop they bought and returned to the store. BB issued them a refund check which they received a week later. They took it to their bank and was told it was "never funded by the merchant" essentially a bounced check. They called customer service and was told a check would be reissued, taking up to 6 more weeks. They asked for a supervisor and got disconnected. Called back, got sent to Telechex which was a dead end since it only handles personal checks not corporate ones.

Best Buy didn't ask anyone to hold their beer, they just spilled it on their own because they're too drunk.
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Must be a sad life to hate on Best Buy so much that you have to frequent their forums.
 
I spent 65k in games last year at best buy and similar amounts in the years before.  I have a small retail store and would buy the games and sell them at pretty much the same price as bb with gcu discount since we don't really make any money buying from a distributor on new games anyways.  Many other local independent game stores did the same thing at our bb (not sure what they sold them for at their stores).  Management at the store encouraged all of us to buy as much as we can.  We had a friendly working relationship with the store.  They would get all midnight releases because the numbers the bb had were so large compared to the rest of the stores in our region.  The system would purge my gcu account several times a year and I would just rebuy new accounts every 3 or 4 months or so.  I didn't receive rewards points since it was for resale, so it didn't matter to me if I had to spend another 30 bucks every 3 months.  I'd gladly slip bb a large sum of money to be able to keep the program or buy other peoples active gcu accounts.  No point in my story except just to post it. 

 
A_Null_Entry said:
I spent 65k in games last year at best buy and similar amounts in the years before. I have a small retail store and would buy the games and sell them at pretty much the same price as bb with gcu discount since we don't really make any money buying from a distributor on new games anyways. Many other local independent game stores did the same thing at our bb (not sure what they sold them for at their stores). Management at the store encouraged all of us to buy as much as we can. We had a friendly working relationship with the store. They would get all midnight releases because the numbers the bb had were so large compared to the rest of the stores in our region. The system would purge my gcu account several times a year and I would just rebuy new accounts every 3 or 4 months or so. I didn't receive rewards points since it was for resale, so it didn't matter to me if I had to spend another 30 bucks every 3 months. I'd gladly slip bb a large sum of money to be able to keep the program or buy other peoples active gcu accounts. No point in my story except just to post it.
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This is also part of the problem. Totally violates the spirit of GCU.

 
A_Null_Entry said:
I spent 65k in games last year at best buy and similar amounts in the years before. I have a small retail store and would buy the games and sell them at pretty much the same price as bb with gcu discount since we don't really make any money buying from a distributor on new games anyways. Many other local independent game stores did the same thing at our bb (not sure what they sold them for at their stores). Management at the store encouraged all of us to buy as much as we can. We had a friendly working relationship with the store. They would get all midnight releases because the numbers the bb had were so large compared to the rest of the stores in our region. The system would purge my gcu account several times a year and I would just rebuy new accounts every 3 or 4 months or so. I didn't receive rewards points since it was for resale, so it didn't matter to me if I had to spend another 30 bucks every 3 months. I'd gladly slip bb a large sum of money to be able to keep the program or buy other peoples active gcu accounts. No point in my story except just to post it.
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EvilChamp said:
This is also part of the problem. Totally violates the spirit of GCU.
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I agree with EvilChamp on this. Just because you own a local video game store doesn't give you or anyone else free reign to buy as many copies of a game that you can. You need to go through the distributor like everyone else so that the developers and publishers are properly paid for their work. Otherwise, don't carry new games in your store.

It's a damn shame that there are people like this who consistently abused the program, got banned for it and then just started new accounts to repeat the process. Spending 65K last year on games alone must mean that this guy was buying dozens of copies, maybe every copy the store had in stock at the time even. That is simply a dick move to other CAGs and GCU members looking to pick up a single copy to enjoy for themselves. I know you claim to sell these at GCU price in your store, but that doesn't make what you are doing any better.

 
Sigma said:
I agree with EvilChamp on this. Just because you own a local video game store doesn't give you or anyone else free reign to buy as many copies of a game that you can. You need to go through the distributor like everyone else so that the developers and publishers are properly paid for their work. Otherwise, don't carry new games in your store.

It's a damn shame that there are people like this who consistently abused the program, got banned for it and then just started new accounts to repeat the process. Spending 65K last year on games alone must mean that this guy was buying dozens of copies, maybe every copy the store had in stock at the time even. That is simply a dick move to other CAGs and GCU members looking to pick up a single copy to enjoy for themselves. I know you claim to sell these at GCU price in your store, but that doesn't make what you are doing any better.
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I purchased what I needed. As for the developers and publishers, the more best buy sells, the more they order, and the more they order, the better the developer or publisher or whoever does . The "spirit" of the promotion doesn't mean anything to me. If they didn't like it, pay a programmer to put a limit on how many I can buy. The manager would ask me how many copies of the new releases I wanted, they would put them aside, and I would pick them up. I would also buy a lot of the junk that doesn't sell that great for them, but would sell well in my store. Our best buy was never out of games simply because they were doing tremendous volume and were restocked frequently. I'm not mad they ended the program, more discouraged, just sharing.

 
A_Null_Entry said:
I purchased what I needed. As for the developers and publishers, the more best buy sells, the more they order, and the more they order, the better the developer or publisher or whoever does . The "spirit" of the promotion doesn't mean anything to me. If they didn't like it, pay a programmer to put a limit on how many I can buy. The manager would ask me how many copies of the new releases I wanted, they would put them aside, and I would pick them up. I would also buy a lot of the junk that doesn't sell that great for them, but would sell well in my store. Our best buy was never out of games simply because they were doing tremendous volume and were restocked frequently. I'm not mad they ended the program, more discouraged, just sharing.
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This might be the dumbest justification I have ever seen. Not only did you abuse the GCU program beyond all reasonable limits, but you also then engaged in direct competition with Best Buy through price matching of the very program you abused. You essentially built your own business on practices you knew violated the terms of the GCU. While the publisher might not have cared, you did very real damage to Best Buy and likely the local video game market by abusing the program. Frankly, it's things like this that have permanently turned me away from supporting small video game businesses as I have generally found that they are just as unethical and dishonest as the big chains they purport to be better than.

 
bojay1997 said:
This might be the dumbest justification I have ever seen. Not only did you abuse the GCU program beyond all reasonable limits, but you also then engaged in direct competition with Best Buy through price matching of the very program you abused. You essentially built your own business on practices you knew violated the terms of the GCU. While the publisher might not have cared, you did very real damage to Best Buy and likely the local video game market by abusing the program. Frankly, it's things like this that have permanently turned me away from supporting small video game businesses as I have generally found that they are just as unethical and dishonest as the big chains they purport to be better than.
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I already said on the last page that I do like what Null did here, but to his defense, it sounds like the Best Buy store he had done this at had no problem with it and actually helped him do this. The store manager that allowed this to go on should be reported to corporate and promptly fired for this. I don't care if you are buying 50 games and the store has 250 copies. You are still abusing the program and using in a way that it isn't intended to be used. I understand buying 2-3 copies of a game for various reasons, maybe you have multiple consoles or people who want to play the game in your home. Maybe you want to take an extra copy to Gamestop to flip for credit and that to me is fine as long as you aren't buying more than 2-3 copies of a game.

 
intent said:
For resellers, if the games don't sell do you eat the loss or do you return them to Best Buy?
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I bet they try returning them to Best Buy depending on how many copies they have laying around and not selling. It's the smart move if you are running a business, still a shitty thing to do, to begin with.

 
intent said:
For resellers, if the games don't sell do you eat the loss or do you return them to Best Buy?
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Others did, I never had a problem selling what I bought from them since I was selling them for $10 under what new releases retailed for.

bojay1997 said:
This might be the dumbest justification I have ever seen. Not only did you abuse the GCU program beyond all reasonable limits, but you also then engaged in direct competition with Best Buy through price matching of the very program you abused. You essentially built your own business on practices you knew violated the terms of the GCU. While the publisher might not have cared, you did very real damage to Best Buy and likely the local video game market by abusing the program. Frankly, it's things like this that have permanently turned me away from supporting small video game businesses as I have generally found that they are just as unethical and dishonest as the big chains they purport to be better than.
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What damage did I do to the local video game market by abusing the program?

Edit - Also, couldn't all of this have been prevented by adding a simple line of code to the computer system as well?

 
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A_Null_Entry said:
Edit - Also, couldn't all of this have been prevented by adding a simple line of code to the computer system as well?
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There’s a reason why top software companies pay fresh out of undergrad, green as hell developers total compensation packages north of $150K these days (and can quickly be over $250K with a few years of experience). Because it’s not just a few simple lines of code to do what you are describing.
 
Stele said:
There’s a reason why top software companies pay fresh out of undergrad, green as hell developers total compensation packages north of $150K these days (and can quickly be over $250K with a few years of experience). Because it’s not just a few simple lines of code to do what you are describing.
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Fine, spend 250k and do it if they really cared about it.

 
A_Null_Entry said:
Fine, spend 250k and do it if they really cared about it.
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Why spend the money when they can just do exactly what they did this week and did to you multiple times when you abused the system? Honestly, until you posted your story, I assumed they were just worried about some flippers, but the fact that commercial businesses were abusing their program in such volume makes me feel some real sympathy for Best Buy and some anger towards you for destroying the program with your greed.

 
A_Null_Entry said:
I spent 65k in games last year at best buy and similar amounts in the years before. I have a small retail store and would buy the games and sell them at pretty much the same price as bb with gcu discount since we don't really make any money buying from a distributor on new games anyways. Many other local independent game stores did the same thing at our bb (not sure what they sold them for at their stores). Management at the store encouraged all of us to buy as much as we can. We had a friendly working relationship with the store. They would get all midnight releases because the numbers the bb had were so large compared to the rest of the stores in our region. The system would purge my gcu account several times a year and I would just rebuy new accounts every 3 or 4 months or so. I didn't receive rewards points since it was for resale, so it didn't matter to me if I had to spend another 30 bucks every 3 months. I'd gladly slip bb a large sum of money to be able to keep the program or buy other peoples active gcu accounts. No point in my story except just to post it.
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if anyone is still wondering why gcu is over.....

 
bojay1997 said:
Why spend the money when they can just do exactly what they did this week and did to you multiple times when you abused the system? Honestly, until you posted your story, I assumed they were just worried about some flippers, but the fact that commercial businesses were abusing their program in such volume makes me feel some real sympathy for Best Buy and some anger towards you for destroying the program with your greed.
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I had no problem paying the $30 each time. There are plenty of other stores around the country that did the same thing as the stores in our area, doesn't really mean anything, but it's the truth. I would be willing to bet at least 15% of their gaming revenue was from other resellers. As far as why should they have spent the money? Look at all the anger and backlash they are facing because of canceling gcu if it was because of resellers or not (not sure they have had an official statement on the reason yet).

 
look it is as simple as this. maybe a small percentage of people were not aware of the limit on purchases. that said when you know there is a limit, but then need to find reasons such as 'the system should have limited after three' or 'a line of code would have solved the situation. stop. this is trying to justify blatant bad behavior. there are systems everywhere in all walks of life that can be abused or taken advantage of. many people do this. does that make it any less of a shitty thing to do. nope. if you knowingly exploited a system for self gain, you get whatever punish is dished out. how about people just practice some common sense and follow the rules as they were clearly written. 

 
‘A small retail store’ lol. It’s probably an ice cream truck called Neckbeard’s.
You know it’s coming when you hear anime music.
 
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Thanks for ruining GCU for everyone by using it to run your retail store? Not sure why you're still trying to justify it lol
 
If you aren't able to get 20% off and no tax on your stock as an independent reseller, then you aren't trying very hard.   Why you were looting BB is beyond me. 

 
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I guarantee flippers clearing out new games from one spot, opening them and trading them into another has done more damage to the video game market than whatever Null Entry was doing (and he at least, reportedly, did so with the local management's approval). Don't get me started on boomerang-ers. 

A sudden influx of used titles makes Gamestop (or whoever) lower their prices on them, which makes new copies of that title even less attractive. So new games rot on the shelf and don't get reordered so then publishers/developers see fewer sales, and dudes that bought the game to play it, can't get crap for it on trade in when they're done with it because nerds like us flooded the market with copies. So maybe that dude doesn't buy his next game new and instead waits for a cheap used version to pop up, costing publishers even more in lost sales.

At worst what Null Entry and retailers like him were doing was trying to compete with Best Buy in a very unfair, lopsided market. It's well known, and ridiculous, that the general public can often get games cheaper than actual retailers thanks to programs like GCU and Prime, or even just a decent sale.  If I were a retailer and I had the option to buy from Best Buy, where I had no mandatory minimum purchase, free shipping, and perks like My Best Buy points, and spend the same or even less than using a wholesaler, I sure as hell would make use of it too. 

No one who abused the program has a leg to stand on when bitching about it's demise. At the same time Best Buy doesn't have a leg to stand on when bitching about abuse when it should have implemented a better system to counter abuse. It's no different than the Target Cartwheel Price Match debacle. Should people abuse it? No. Are they going to anyway? Yes. So it's on Best Buy and Target to lock it out on a system level if they really care about it. 

 
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Big abusers should get the ban. One or 2 over at least a warning or some way to track purchases easier.
 
kraftwerks said:
A sudden influx of used titles makes Gamestop (or whoever) lower their prices on them, which makes new copies of that title even less attractive.
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IDK, about this one. Game Stop usually sells a used copy of a new game for $54.99 and recently (a bit before this announcement) $56.99. I don't think it really drove down the price for used or new at GS. If anything it just killed the TIV at GS.

 
A_Null_Entry said:
I spent 65k in games last year at best buy and similar amounts in the years before. I have a small retail store and would buy the games and sell them at pretty much the same price as bb with gcu discount since we don't really make any money buying from a distributor on new games anyways. Many other local independent game stores did the same thing at our bb (not sure what they sold them for at their stores). Management at the store encouraged all of us to buy as much as we can. We had a friendly working relationship with the store. They would get all midnight releases because the numbers the bb had were so large compared to the rest of the stores in our region. The system would purge my gcu account several times a year and I would just rebuy new accounts every 3 or 4 months or so. I didn't receive rewards points since it was for resale, so it didn't matter to me if I had to spend another 30 bucks every 3 months. I'd gladly slip bb a large sum of money to be able to keep the program or buy other peoples active gcu accounts. No point in my story except just to post it.
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For those wondering why BB Corp would set item limits to purge accounts, or cancel the program entirely...

 
A_Null_Entry said:
I spent 65k in games last year at best buy and similar amounts in the years before. I have a small retail store and would buy the games and sell them at pretty much the same price as bb with gcu discount since we don't really make any money buying from a distributor on new games anyways. Many other local independent game stores did the same thing at our bb (not sure what they sold them for at their stores). Management at the store encouraged all of us to buy as much as we can. We had a friendly working relationship with the store. They would get all midnight releases because the numbers the bb had were so large compared to the rest of the stores in our region. The system would purge my gcu account several times a year and I would just rebuy new accounts every 3 or 4 months or so. I didn't receive rewards points since it was for resale, so it didn't matter to me if I had to spend another 30 bucks every 3 months. I'd gladly slip bb a large sum of money to be able to keep the program or buy other peoples active gcu accounts. No point in my story except just to post it.
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So you bought the games at Best Buy and then sold them in your store for the same price you got them for from Best Buy?

Neat.

 
A_Null_Entry said:
I spent 65k in games last year at best buy and similar amounts in the years before. I have a small retail store and would buy the games and sell them at pretty much the same price as bb with gcu discount since we don't really make any money buying from a distributor on new games anyways. Many other local independent game stores did the same thing at our bb (not sure what they sold them for at their stores). Management at the store encouraged all of us to buy as much as we can. We had a friendly working relationship with the store. They would get all midnight releases because the numbers the bb had were so large compared to the rest of the stores in our region. The system would purge my gcu account several times a year and I would just rebuy new accounts every 3 or 4 months or so. I didn't receive rewards points since it was for resale, so it didn't matter to me if I had to spend another 30 bucks every 3 months. I'd gladly slip bb a large sum of money to be able to keep the program or buy other peoples active gcu accounts. No point in my story except just to post it.
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Not gonna judge you for trying to make a profit, but why didn't you try to set this up in a way that wouldn't constantly send up red flags and lead to account bans? If you got banned every 3 months, that's 8 accounts in 2 years. If you had just had 8-10 separate accounts running from the start, then you still could have bought 20-30 copies of any game without "abusing" the program. Unless you were buying a lot more than that, in which case you more than likely could have struck a better deal with a distributor.

If only a few dozen resellers nationwide were constantly getting banned for buying ~30 copies of every new release, we're now talking about tens of thousands of units getting the 20% discount without any extra revenue coming from extra GCU accounts. It's a lot easier to see the program failing from that perspective.

Honestly the blame lies everywhere in hindsight. Resellers trying to maximize short term profits, employees not understanding the program and/or advocating abuse of it, and BBY Corporate for not having a decent wholeseller program and inviting this abuse on themselves.

 
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A_Null_Entry said:
I ruined GCU for everyone *shrug*
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Honestly it's Best Buy's fault for not having a proper system in place to stop such rampant abuse. The stores who colluded with guys like this should've been punished as well..... instead, the rest of us get to lose our nice 20% discount on the games we were actually buying for ourselves.

Congrats, A_Null_Entry - you're a shining example of capitalism working as designed.

 
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This is in response to This comment

If you aren't able to get 20% off and no tax on your stock as an independent reseller, then you aren't trying very hard.   Why you were looting BB is beyond me.

I did not use games unlocked myself to stock my stores, but the above comment is really completely invalid.

I own 6 stores and I do not get 20 percent off. There is no negotiating with a distributor. I pay $51 on average for new games.

I assure you I have tried- contacted every single large distributor etc- you can not get 20 percent or better at any distributor, no matter the quantities.

I would rather pay $51, though, and not deal with the hassle of gamers unlocked/ amazon, but I will just add that $48 is NOT attainable for a small video game store owner for new releases.

 
Speaking of terms of service...did this thread finally violate CAG's TOS?  About freakin' time!!!

EDIT:  Nope...there it is on the front page of the deals section again dammit!

 
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