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Best Buy Accepts 12-Year-Old Gift Certificate

Written by Evan Schuman
June 23rd, 2009

Here’s something to baffle a store associate and to completely confuse a POS system: Try and accept a very old coupon—in this case, 12 years old—that hasn’t been used in years and that the current POS has no way to accept. One Best Buy store was put in that position and opted to accept it, without hesitation.

Best Buy? Was this in an old episode of Twilight Zone or Star Trek, where everything is in an opposite universe? Nope. According to The Consumerist, a wonderful site owned by Consumer Reports, the incident happened in Springfield, IL. The comments in the piece show a wide range of examples of other retailers accepting such antique pieces of nostalgic currency. Levity aside, that is a wonderfully clever approach. There simply aren’t that many gift certificates that old so why not get some brownie points for accepting them? (Yes, we know that they can be easily forged, but if Best Buy can be nice, we can be nice.)

Posted in In-Store, Payment Systems, Security/Fraud
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One Comment | Read Best Buy Accepts 12-Year-Old Gift Certificate

  1. Joseph H Russo Says:
    June 25th, 2009 at 10:03 pm

    An example of outstanding customer service and keeping a customer for life!!! Bravo to Best Buy!!!

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