Best Buy GCU to be discontinued 3-1-2021

Nephilim

Nephilim

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Ugh. I had a year left. Oh well, good while it lasted.

——

We have an important announcement to share about your Gamers Club Unlocked* membership.

Thank you for being a My Best Buy® member and part of the Gamers Club Unlocked program. We have made the decision to end the current Gamers Club Unlocked program which means we will cancel remaining memberships and discontinue all current benefits as of March 1, 2021.

As a current Gamers Club Unlocked member, we will be refunding you the purchase price of your unexpired membership(s). We will mail you a refund check equal to $30 for each membership. You can expect to receive your check by the end of March 2021. To ensure you receive your check, please log into your account at https://www.bestbuy.com/profile/c/address/shipping and confirm your primary address is up to date. Your Gamers Club Unlocked benefits will remain active through February 28, 2021.

Despite this change, you will remain a member of My Best Buy which earns you rewards on your Best Buy purchases and additional member benefits.

If you need assistance with this, or have questions, please feel free to contact us at
1-888-BEST-BUY (1-888-237-8289) or through our chat channels on BestBuy.com.

Thank you for continuing to be a loyal Best Buy customer!

The Best Buy Team
 
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Damn man, least you till had it lol. Mine went out back in early 2019. Get those pre-orders in while you still can folks.

 
Jeez man really cmon lol I mean how many people even still had GCU at this point for them to want to just straight up cut them out of it now.

Possibly introducing a new membership and they want to phase GCU out completely? 

 
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Mine was ending March 2nd anyways, but this is awful for all the people who had it going deeper into this year and next.

I got this e-mail as well too, which makes me wonder if I will get a $30 check even though I only have 1 extra day. That would be nuts lol 

 
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End of an era.

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Eh, mine was scheduled to end a few months later anyway. I don't buy many new games at full price anyway so getting $30 back is probably the better deal... especially since I'm sure I didn't actually pay that much for it.

 
Nov 2022 here. I expected this would happen. Time to load up on preorders.

I doubt we’ll get the usual coupon at the end since we’re getting a $30 check.
 
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Now I don't feel so bad about not stacking up 20 years from that cell phone deal.  Only misjudged the end by a year.

Prepare for your BBY spending to drop off a cliff, that's what happened to me without GCU anchoring me to achieve the Elite tiers.

 
Well I guess it had to come to an end. I was still good through November 2022 but I guess that’s done.

Since I won’t be spending thousands of dollars there anymore and hitting Elite, I guess I should figure out what to cash my RZ points on before the year is up.

Add in amazon price matches, access to a target team member discount and the fact that both store cards give back the 5% instantly, I doubt I’ll ever buy almost anything from bestbuy ever again after pulling this.
 
GCU getting canceled the first time has saved me so much money. I stopped buying so many games, switched over to digital only and only bought games I know I’d really like (and when on sale). I never even had time to play the games I was buying with GCU anway.
 
Mine was due to expire in October.  Had a good run with it. 

As was said earlier in the thread, definitely time to look at a few pre-orders before March to ensure I get the last of the benefits from it. 

 
Tyf said:
Mine ran out in 2019, which was not coincidently the last time I bought a game from Bestbuy.
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I mean you say that like it wasn't a loss leader for them. Unless you bought a lot of other things from them you weren't a profitable customer for them.
 
Still glad I got pre-orders in for Bayonetta 3 and Metroid Prime 4 before mine ended early last year. At least those are already paid for since I used PayPal, so I don't think there is a risk of getting up charged.
 
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I also got this e-mail. 

Whelp, what are our alternatives after March 2021?

What upcoming games should we PO immediately?

--

I just looked and it's bleak. Guess that COVID-19 and the next-gen really disrupted the new game releases.  Not really a whole lot to look forward to. And E3,etc isn't until June, which is when most releases get announced, at time which we could PO.

Wow, can't believe it but this is another BOON for Gamestop. Not a huge one, since there aren't many of us with GCU left, but GS seems to be the only place with a program for game discounts.

 
"Thank you for continuing to be a loyal Best Buy customer!"

Yeah, we wont be.  When i had GCU, I was at Best Buy all the time.  I'd buy other electronics there too.  I go there like 2 or 3 times a year now.

 
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winb83 said:
I mean you say that like it wasn't a loss leader for them. Unless you bought a lot of other things from them you weren't a profitable customer for them.
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A lot of GCU customers were Elite or Elite Plus. Due to the discount stacking with any random game sale, it was essential to have free shipping year round to snipe those random deals. Hitting Elite tiers for free shipping (for me at least) required buying other stuff every year like TVs, appliances, electronics, etc. GCU spending provided the anchor, but to complete the progress bar put Best Buy always on top as the #1 retail option to buy the other stuff.

Without GCU, there is no anchor. There is no need for free shipping, since all the deals are concentrated in the holiday period where it is trivial to bundle up the stuff you want. Therefore there is no need for Elite. Therefore there is no need to buy other stuff to hit Elite. Almost all my spending, not just game spending, got shifted away from Best Buy. I don't even bother buying those 10% discount gift card deals for BBY anymore, because who knows when is the next time I can use it?

Now of course there were definitely hardcore resellers that max 3x everything. That's where the losses came from, and ultimately why Best Buy discontinued the program. Not because of normal people buying games to play.

 
winb83 said:
I mean you say that like it wasn't a loss leader for them. Unless you bought a lot of other things from them you weren't a profitable customer for them.
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Probably. I think Bestbuy's gamble was using GCU to leverage other purchases, like TVs, etc. Maybe sites like this made it a bad bargain for them, or maybe they are doing so poorly financially that they can't afford to build long term brand loyalty by eating the cost on video games. Honeslty, I don;t care, I just know that w/o GCU, Bestbuy is rarely the best price.

 
Hey, the good news here is after 3/1 i won't have to endure the eye poke every time a deal from BB is posted somewhere and it's mentioned how much cheaper it is with GCU or how the deal is only good because of GCU.

I never had GCU as there isn't a BB store anywhere close enough to take advantage of many of the in store only deals that used to be common.  These days for new releases, the few that I buy, I just get from Walmart in person and save the $10 up front without needing to be in a program.  BB, last year, I actually ordered a lot of games from them as they had better prices and better free shipping service than Amazon or anywhere else.  So if the price was the same between bb & amazon... I'd just go with BB as I'm not paying for prime and free shipping from BB for the most part was lightning quick vs free shipping from amazing.

 
Hopefully you guys get your checks like they say. They gave me and plenty of other people a single use 25% off code as a way to say goodbye, but the codes they gave us were not valid
 
WindyJ23 said:
Possibly introducing a new membership and they want to phase GCU out completely?
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I doubt it. I though the only reason Best Buy created GCU in the first place was to compete with Amazon when they were discounting new games and the idea people coming into stores to buy discounted games would lead to other higher profit purchases like strategy guides and hardware.

 
If they would like my business again, they will need to somehow incentivize me in some way. Reward points are good, but not good enough... not when I can get "free" shipping for most games on amazon (over $35 on BBY gives free shipping)... I really would like to see what happens here.

 
Yeah, I totally called this when they announced ending the program.  Last April was when everyone that didn't stack ended because that was two years from the date.  They gave it a bit of grace (about a year) to let most others time out naturally then are going to simply refund and cut it off completely for folks that stacked years upon years.

I was fortunate to have reupped right before they ended it so got another two years, but I really doubted they would have this run indefinitely for the small fraction of people that stacked large amounts.

 
indieman said:
If they would like my business again, they will need to somehow incentivize me in some way. Reward points are good, but not good enough... not when I can get "free" shipping for most games on amazon (over $35 on BBY gives free shipping)... I really would like to see what happens here.
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Nothing will happen here. Best Buy has had record profits this year by selling phones, tablets, other electronics, printers and home office equipment. Video games have never been particularly profitable and creating another program that loses them money on slim margin items at a time when people aren't even coming into stores and buying other high margin items in a lot of areas makes zero sense.

 
You all realize Best Buy was losing money on this, right? Selling $60 games for $48 is pretty much what they buy therm for, if they are so lucky.

 
indieman said:
If they would like my business again, they will need to somehow incentivize me in some way. Reward points are good, but not good enough... not when I can get "free" shipping for most games on amazon (over $35 on BBY gives free shipping)... I really would like to see what happens here.
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I doubt they care about getting GCU members back. They lost money on it.

 
Thoraxes said:
Well I guess it had to come to an end. I was still good through November 2022 but I guess that’s done.

Since I won’t be spending thousands of dollars there anymore and hitting Elite, I guess I should figure out what to cash my RZ points on before the year is up.

Add in amazon price matches, access to a target team member discount and the fact that both store cards give back the 5% instantly, I doubt I’ll ever buy almost anything from bestbuy ever again after pulling this.
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You sure have a lot of guessing going on😁
 
Psykoboy2 said:
Had it through 2032. Used THE HELL out of it, especially this year since it stacked with their BF deals.
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phoenixlau said:
Now of course there were definitely hardcore resellers that max 3x everything. That's where the losses came from, and ultimately why Best Buy discontinued the program. Not because of normal people buying games to play.
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To which point, I wish they would have just banned those people under the "we can kill a membership for any reason" clause but that would prob take a lot of work.

 
phoenixlau said:
Now of course there were definitely hardcore resellers that max 3x everything. That's where the losses came from, and ultimately why Best Buy discontinued the program. Not because of normal people buying games to play.
Click to expand...
They lost on literally every game purchased at 20% off.

 
GizmoGC said:
I doubt they care about getting GCU members back. They lost money on it.
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bojay1997 said:
Nothing will happen here. Best Buy has had record profits this year by selling phones, tablets, other electronics, printers and home office equipment. Video games have never been particularly profitable and creating another program that loses them money on slim margin items at a time when people aren't even coming into stores and buying other high margin items in a lot of areas makes zero sense.
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Excellent... then they have lost my business. I guess they still win since it doesn't matter to them.

 
They buy games that cost $60 for $45-48 so they were breaking even until you factor in free shipping and the $10 certs are done in partnership with the publishers to get their preorder numbers up.

The amount of people that still had it a year after they stopped offering it was probably pretty minimal anyway. Surely Best Buy not offering up games "at cost" anymore is the beginning of their downfall. :p

 
This is why I stopped at 2020 back when the promotion was going. I thought they'd either terminate it eventually because so many people had it or they'd go out of business. I remember Best Buy wasn't doing so great back in like 2014ish and they had a pretty big rise after that.

I still hope at some point BB, Amazon, etc offer tiered subscription programs for game discounts. Maybe something like Prime Gamers Package where instead of the $120/year it's like $300/year and you get 20% off all games. People who buy tons of games per year could easily break even if they buy more than 10 games per year.

But yeah, once BB offered the subscription for $30 I knew everyone and their mother would sign up and it was doomed to be cancelled.

 
Use to buy tons of games from them.  My GCU ran out a year ago.  Since then the only thing I have bought from them is a $10 game on black Friday.  This was such a poor decision to end this program.

One could hope that maybe they are pushing everyone off because they plan to introduce a new program, but I doubt it.

 
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