Date: 03-21-2008
Best Buy has come up with an ingenious ploy to appease customers who bought HD DVD players and ended up on the losing side, offering customers $50 gift cards to buy whatever they want. Best Buy is planning to spend almost $10 million on the gift cards as part of their marketing strategy. Those customers who want to sell their players can even trade them in at Best Buy via its website www.bestbuytradein.com and get an additional card from the trade. The retail giant will also mail the gift cards proactively to customers who purchased HD DVD players from their stores. Unidentified users can even receive the cards by showing a proof of purchase for a player. Best Buy’s move comes in light of Toshiba’s surrender last month to Sony’s Blu-ray format, a surrender which stopped HD DVD production. This has effectively left Toshiba’s customers with devices capable of playing only standard DVDs.
