In-Depth Guide to Saving Money at Best Buy

Best Buy is one of the best electronics stores around, especially because some of them aren’t lasting at all now that we’re in the internet age. They’ve lasted — and honestly, thrived — because they have such a huge selection of quality products with very reasonable prices. Of course, these reasonable prices can still be cheaper, and there are some really great ways to save money at Best Buy when you want a better deal.

The first, and best, way to save money at Best Buy is by joining the My Best Buy rewards program. This program has been around for quite a while, but it was overhauled in 2013. There are a variety of benefits for membership, and the basic membership is completely free and requires no minimum purchase. You can join in-store or online, and the only information it requires is your name, email address and phone number.

There are three main perks to joining My Best Buy. The first, and most important, are the rewards certificates. You earn a $5 rewards certificate for every $250 you spend at Best Buy, which is a pretty solid percentage for a free reward program that doesn’t even require a credit card. If you’d prefer, you can change your settings so that you bank your points for larger rewards certificates, up to $20 for spending $1,000. Be careful with choosing these higher certificates, though — the points expire after one year. The rewards certificates are basically just coupons, and there’s no minimum purchase other than the price of the coupon.

There are two other great perks of the reward program. Being a member of the reward program gives you access to member-only exclusives. There are plenty of member-only special offers. There are offers like percentages off of particular items, bonus points when you purchase things from specific brands, and more. You’ll be notified first for upcoming sales and given early access to some promotions. The other perk is free shipping on all purchases of $35 or more. This is especially great if you’re buying something like a laptop that can have higher shipping fees than usual. This shipping offer doesn’t apply to large items that require scheduled deliveries.

My Best Buy has two premium membership options that make even better rewards available to you. Spending $1,500 at Best Buy in a calendar year qualifies you for the Elite membership, and spending $3,500 in a calendar year earns you the Elite Plus membership. There are tons of great benefits. The most important is the point bonuses. You earn points much faster with the higher-level memberships. With a base membership, you’re earning a very straightforward one point for each dollar. As an Elite member, you earn 1.1 points for every dollar spent, which equals $5 in rewards for every $227.27 spent. As an Elite Plus member, you earn 1.25 points for every dollar spent, which equals $5 back for every $200 spent. You can also bank your points toward a higher-value reward certificate, and your points never expire, though if you don’t meet the membership requirements in any given year, you lose your status and the points will be cashed out automatically. Another great perk is extended returns and exchanges. The return policy at Best Buy isn’t that great — usually only 15 days. Elite members have 30 days and Elite Plus has 45 days.

My Best Buy also offers a credit card, so if you shop with them on a regular basis, it’s definitely something to consider. With the credit card, you earn 5 percent back in points with every purchase, rather than the 2 percent for the basic reward program. It’s also much easier to reach Elite or Elite Plus level with the credit card, because any purchase you make on the card goes toward your spending requirements.

Best Buy has a Deal of the Day section on its website, and there are also clearance sales in-store and online. The Deal of the Day concept is very straightforward, similar to Amazon’s Lightning Deals. There’s a huge discount on a new product every day. These deals expire at the end of the day, of course, and supplies are sometimes limited, so it’s best to check pretty early in the day and go ahead and jump on the deal if it’s something you’re interested in. You can sign up for the daily deal newsletter if you’d like to keep up on the sales.

The online outlet is one of the best ways to save money at Best Buy. There are four types of items available at the Best Buy outlet — clearance items, open-box items, refurbished items and pre-owned items. They all pass Best Buy’s quality check, so it’s not like pre-owned items are falling apart or a huge gamble. Items purchased from the outlet can be picked up for free in-store. If the item has a warranty still in place, it does transfer ownership when you buy it, but some warranties may have expired, so check out the details on each item if that’s something you’re concerned about.

Best Buy offers a really great price match. They match any local retail competitor’s online or in-store price. In order to compete with the online shopping uprising, they now match prices on identical products sold at Amazon, B&H, Crutchfield, Dell, HP, NewEgg and Tiger Direct. They’ll also match prices from their own website. They don’t include products from third-party marketplace sellers. Flash sales, Clearance, coupons, mail-in rebates and outlet items are also excluded. They also, understandably, exclude any price matches from Thanksgiving day through Cyber Monday.

You can also save a bunch of money at Best Buy through buying gift cards from Cardpool.com. They offer discounts of about 5 percent to Best Buy. Buying these gift cards in advance of shopping saves you that 5 percent every single time you shop. You can use up to 10 gift cards in a single purchase, so even if you’re buying something more expensive, you can buy these gift cards to save some money.

One more is to also check out 28coupons.com voucher and promo codes for Temu.

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