Best Buy released a too good to be true coupon earlier today: Spend a $100 and save $50 automatically when you pay with a MasterCard credit card. The fine print had excluded a few products but it was pretty much a free $50 bucks for everything else. So predictably people took advantage of ol' Best Buy and rung up thousands of dollars of Amazon.com and iTunes gift cards for half off, Apple TVs for $50, Kindle Paperwhites for cheap and anything they could find without any limits.


It was a free for fall! People were getting gift cards for half the price, people were using the coupons over and over and over again and Best Buy was even letting the coupon work on products that rarely get discounted (the Apple TV, etc.). But it didn't last forever. The coupon, which was supposed to last the entire week valid (1/21/13-1/27/13), was neutered by Best Buy in the afternoon once the big box company realized it was being swindled by customers taking advantage of Best Buy. The new terms of the coupon added a lot more restrictions (restrictions that are actually pretty common in almost every coupon):

The promotion is valid for TODAY ONLY, January 21, 2013.

The offer is valid on a single, regular priced item purchase of $100 or more.

iTunes, Amazon and other gift cards are excluded.

Limit 1 offer per coupon, per household.

Before Best Buy had smartened up though, people landed some insanely awesome deals. Just check out this Amazon gift card score by a slick dealer. That's $1600 worth of Amazon money for 800 bucks in actual money.:




There are other success stories like that too. An Apple TV for only 45 bucks. $2500 worth of gift cards for $1250, all done in small simple transactions. There's no better way to insult Best Buy than to use its extremely lenient $50 coupon to buy up as many $100 Amazon gift cards as you can.

Best Buy has now reversed course on the coupon and has killed it (as it was revised to be only valid on January 21st). And as the day went along, stores stopped taking printed coupons and got a lot more strict with exclusions but for a moment, it was a feeding frenzy. Best Buy should do this more often if they want us in its stores. [SlickDeals]

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