BEST BUY'S BUY BACK PROGRAM NOT VERY GOOD

Best Buy has been spending a lot of money lately advertising their new Buy Back Program on prime time television. In fact, you’ve very likely seen the ad, in which Ozzy Osborne is so befuddled by the rapid advancement of tech that he is soon replaced by a young Justin Bieber, who — being younger and not drug-addled — can keep up with the march of tech.

The idea’s this: when you buy any gadget at Best Buy, you can opt to pay them a fee that guarantees that when you decide to upgrade it in a year or three, Best Buy will buy it back from you. Let’s say, for example, you spend $2000 on a new iMac: for just $60 more, Best Buy will guarantee to buy it back for you next year at a fixed price so you can upgrade to the next model.

Sound too good to be true? It is. Let’s take our theoretical iMac: after a year, Best Buy will buy it back from you, sure, but they’ll only give you thirty percent of the price you paid for it. That’s only $666 dollars, far below what you’d get for the same computer on Craigslist or eBay.

It gets even worse, though. Best Buy won’t hand you cash: instead, they’ll pay with gift cards. That means that Best Buy’s effectively paying you even less money out of their pocket.

Now deduct the $60 fee. Getting the picture? When all is said and done, Best Buy’s paying far, far less for your computer than what you’d get if you sold it pretty much anywhere else… even if you decided to just take the first offer. Heck, at the end of the day, Digital Trends found that if you tried to sell your iPhone 3GS to Best Buy througg this program, you’d make $215 less for the handset than the going rates on eBay.

In other words, ignore the Biebers being thrown at you: Best Buy Buyback is just as much of a sucker’s deal as their warranty service.