Last night, Best Buy had a Private Event for members of their Reward Zone program who had reached a certain standing. I had been previously invited to one of these events, but either forgot or didn’t care enough to go. This time, I figured it might be worth my time (partially because showing up granted a free mini notebook mouse and I needed a mini-mouse).
As I pulled up to the store (about 5 minutes before it was due to start), I noticed there was a line — which I found unusual, but then I realized that they had closed the doors beforehand, so no customers could be inside before the event started. I got out of the car (invite in hand) and walked to the end of the line. There, an associate/employee/blue-shirt scribbled on my card and gave me a flyer for the special deals inside and a raffle ticket for a chance to win a $50 Gift Card. Later, one of her coworkers came up and asked for my cell phone number and zip code and handed me a coupon for 20% off any mobile accessory and a raffle ticket for some mobile thing or other.
Then the line was moving and we all stumbled inside where another associate/employee/blue-shirt was handing out the normal weekly ad. Wandered around a bit, saw the Samsung 46″ LED LCD TV — definitely looked brighter than the other LCD TVs, but that could easily have been due to fiddling with brightness properties of the sets. Unfortunately, its price was about where LCD TVs were 5 years ago, so I won’t be getting one anytime soon.
I looked through the Blu-Ray 2 pack for $30 bin and thought I saw a decent deal in the form of Patriot Games and Sum of All Fears, but a quick text to Amazon revealed it was available for $22.49 so I passed.
Browsing my handout, I noticed that they had a small selection of CDs being offered at 50% off and one of them was for the Beatles — Love, so I wandered over to the CDs to see what their price was (as they didn’t print them in the handout, which was annoying) — $19.99 — and to compare it to Amazon (again via the cool texting option they have), shockingly enough it was cheaper than Amazon. Since you can’t buy Beatles mp3s from Amazon, I figured I’d pick it up, especially if it would be 50% off. I say if because it turns out it wasn’t. I wasn’t paying attention at the checkout so I didn’t notice until later and thus wasn’t able to harass the clerk about it; so I paid the full price plus tax (though it was still cheaper than Amazon’s price — a surprising rarity). I was annoyed, but unwilling to turn around for at most $10.
The mouse I mentioned was handed to me as I left — they also collected my ticket so that they could call me if I were to win (no call so I presume I didn’t or they changed their mind).
All in all, I definitely wouldn’t have made a special trip just to go to the event, but as I had other business in town and it was on my way home I was willing to stop by and check it out.