Testing the Best Buy Reserve Online Pick Up In Store Option for a Sony Smart TV

I’ll share the moral of the story at the top: Never try to buy a TV on New Year’s Eve or January 2. We did and we ended up testing the Best Buy “Reserve Online Pick Up In-Store” system with mixed results.

Why Were We Buying a TV on New Year’s Eve?

OK, I still think this is SquawkFox’s fault. When I write up my review of our cable alternative antenna I’ll explain why. In the meantime:

My husband like most engineers who are professionals doesn’t get much time off. Sure he gets lots of vacation, he just doesn’t get to take it, nor get to carry it forward, nor get to be paid in cash in lieu of taking it. So when he had a chance to take off December 31, he did.

Immediately, I recognized that meant my strong husband who loves electronics would be available to buy and carry a TV. (I didn’t realize TVs aren’t heavy anymore. Our most recent one weighs over 75 lbs for a 24-inch screen, which isn’t much until you start counting the stairs and the fact it’s a very awkward shape for one person to carry.)

And I’d just done some math and realized I could get a TV essentially for free using some of our mountain of Petro-Points. I wanted to use the Best Buy e-Gift cards but I wanted to spend them almost as soon as they were printed because they say they won’t replace them if they get lost or stolen.

So I printed out the e-Gift cards, and blithely sent him out to Best Buy to get the Sony Smart TV that was on sale that week in the Boxing Week flyer.

Bad mistake. I figure I owe him at least one more Shabu-Shabu and a chocolate cake in recompense.

He ended up back home over an hour later, after visiting 2 Best Buy’s, with some dubious advice and no TV. He said he’d been told we should use the “Reserve Online Pick Up In-Store” option to get the TV. So we did.

How Do You Use the Best Buy Reserve Online System?

It’s a very simple system. You basically just look for the TV online and click on the Reserve In Store button. Then you choose the store you want to shop at. It will advise you of the availability and the total price. You confirm that it’s ok and enter your email address. When they’ve received the order, they will send you a confirmation email saying it’s ready to be picked up. You print off that notice and take it to the store. At our store, they have a separate desk near the front to pickup online orders. You line up, show your order, and pay for your TV.

Of course, by the time we placed our order it was too late in the day to get the confirmation email and get to the store. Everything was closing early for New Year’s Eve, as it should. We did get an email, though, after the store closed saying the TV was ready for pickup. Of course, that meant we would have to wait till January 2 when my husband would be back at work. Fortunately for me, LED TVs are a lot lighter than cathode ray tube ones.

So far our test was proceeding fine. Unfortunately, the next part wasn’t so great.

Picking Up Our TV at Best Buy After Receiving our Reserve Online Confirmation Was Eventful

Exactly 2 minutes after the store opened on January 2, I arrived to pick up our TV. There were 3 people in line ahead of me and there was no sign of a clerk.

After 7 minutes, the clerk arrived back. He spoke to the first customer and explained that
although she had received an email confirmation that her item was ready to be picked up, it wasn’t. In fact there wasn’t even one of those items in the entire store or the warehouse. He promised to phone her when one came in, and she left, understandably not thrilled.

Uneasily, I watched the exact same thing happen, over the next 15 minutes, to the next customer in line. Sorry, despite the email your item is not here.

Needless to say I was becoming unsettled.

The next Gentleman stepped up to the desk. And he was a true Gentleman and very kind and gracious and I will always be thankful to him.

Because he said he had not pre-ordered anything but he would like to BUY MY TV. Ok, he just wanted the exact same TV I wanted. He was asking to place an order for one as there were none on the floor.

The clerk checked a few things and said he couldn’t order one because they were no longer on the online system. Then he said “But wait a sec, I think there’s one back here.”

Darn right, I was thinking. MINE IS.

He brought it out of the back room, and I had to speak up. I asked, as politely as I could, considering I had been waiting for over 20 minutes, “Are you sure that’s not MY TV?!”

There was no reservation code or name on it.

The clerk said his system said there was one more “in the warehouse.”

I was as polite as I could, again, but pushed by asking twice if he was sure.

Fortunately, the Gentleman ahead of me said: “Maybe you could check the warehouse BEFORE I buy this one.”

Off went the clerk. During the 7 minute gap, we inspected the TV, discussed its specs and so on. The Gentleman said he had considered going to the Sony store nearby and asking for a price match to Best Buy.

When the clerk came back, you guessed it, there was NOT another TV in stock.
That’s when the Gentleman really earned my respect. He said he was perfectly willing to put in an order and wait three days for it to come in. He had only planned to do that when he lined up.

And so, I got my TV. But it was thanks to the Gentleman ahead of me, not because of the Reserve Online system.

I think what might have happened is that they picked my order based on the Online request but forgot to label it. It was New Year’s Eve, after all. That would explain why it was at the front pickup counter, not in the warehouse.

Why Did I Pick the Wrong Day to Review the Best Buy Reserve Online System?

My test would have been fairer to Best Buy if I hadn’t placed a reserve online order on what is quite possibly one of their most busy sales weeks of the year. Placing the order on New Year’s Eve was probably even more inconsiderate. Still, Best Buy could have removed the option from its website during Boxing Week if they thought it would become unmanageable.

We used the system on this particular day because that was the recommendation of the sales clerk at one of the two Best Buy stores my husband visited. Both stores had shown the TVs as “in stock” when he checked before driving over.

Apparently, the “in stock” number shown online before you visit the store includes the items that are available through the Reserve Online system. Those items are not necessarily allowed to be sold directly off the store floor.

So while at the store, a clerk told my husband that if he placed a Reserve Online order he could probably get the TV we wanted even though he couldn’t get it by simply visiting the store without a Reserve Online filled order.

Was the clerk correct? I don’t have any way to know. Perhaps a Best Buy retailer will read this and chime in with further information.

For us, it was worth a try. And, in a roundabout way, it worked.

Would I Use the Best But Reserve Online Pick Up In-Store Option Again?

Yes. While the system is only as good as the people receiving the orders, picking them, labeling them and putting them where they are expected until pickup, it could be a good system.

It’s no worse than driving to the store and finding the item is not on the shelf. And if it’s working properly, it could be a whole lot better.

How Is Our Sony Smart TV?

So far, it’s excellent. Of course when you’re comparing to a 21-inch cathode-ray-tube TV from 1986 or one from 1974 that’s only started to colour shift a bit into the red spectrum, your judgment may be different than that of someone who upgrades their TV every 6 months.

I do wonder, though, whether it would have been simpler to just buy another monitor. So far it’s been used 90% of the time to watch YouTube (Captain Sparklez anyone?!) or to watch DVDs. (Downton Abbey Season 3. Yes, we know Matthew dies.) I did mention way back when we decided to cut cable https://financialcrooks.com/why-im-pulling-plug-rogers-cable-tv-cancellation-policy-seems-illegal/  that we don’t really watch much TV.

What Else Do I Have to Worry About: Is my Sony Smart TV the Stupidest Purchase I Could Have Made?

Now, of course, I am brooding about whether my Smart TV will lead me to ruin at the hands of hackers intent on taking over the western world through our appliances. I thought I was so smart having a stupid fridge https://financialcrooks.com/my-stupid-fridge-thwarts-hackers-better-than-smart-fridge/  but perhaps I’m just as mentally-stunted as that Kenmore. Time to start keeping an eye on our internet account, I guess.

The fact that 95% of the time the TV is unplugged (because I refuse to pay electric bills to keep a TV on standby) may help a bit.

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Have you used this Best Buy pre-order option? Did you have better success than the two people in line ahead of me? Please share your experiences with a comment.

Redeeming Petro-Points: Fast, Easy and Effective and I Score a New TV

As I mentioned earlier, we had built up quite a mountain of Petro-Points. For fun (yes, I’m that kind of person) I checked out what the $ value per 1000 points was if I redeemed the points in various ways.  Then, gleefully ignoring all of the results, I went ahead of scored a new TV using the Petro-Points system for a fast, easy and effective reward.

Frankly, it’s all Squawkfox’s fault.

Getting a CAA Membership Using Petro-Points For the Best Reward

I did pay some attention to my own analysis. Using Petro-Points to buy a CAA membership, if (and this is important!) if you are going to get one anyway, is the best $ reward you can get per point.

So when I renewed our CAA memberships this year, I bought each of us the CAA Basic using Petro-Points. Then I redeemed some more points for CAA dollars. Then I phoned CAA and used the CAA dollars to upgrade our CAA memberships to the higher tier with the longer towing distance. We don’t drive to work so what we want towing for is if the car dies on one of our cross-Canada pleasure jaunts. None of those destinations is within 50 km of a gas station, must less 10 km.

The CAA reward also comes with an extra financial bonus I didn’t include in my assessment of the value of Petro-Points: At many places you can use your CAA membership to get a discount of 10% or more. For example, we’ve often saved money on hotels, entrance fees to attractions like the wonderful aquarium in Quebec City, and even eyeglasses. Considering we don’t pay cash for our CAA membership, this 10% off (or more) is like found money.

Anyway, the point is that I spent some Petro-Points on CAA memberships, but I still had a ton left. I even got my Mom a membership when hers expired. (My Dad has OnStar.) And still the mountain was so high I could have retired on it if those were dollars not points.

How Long Can a TV Last?

Unfortunately for my children, my husband and I aren’t big TV fans. So until extremely recently, our newest TV was a cathode-ray tube pseudo-flatscreen 24” RCA. I’m not sure when we got it or how, but I believe it may have involved a relative and President’s Choice points. But that’s another article.

Our older TV pre-dates RCA connectors. Don’t ask.

The problem with these TVs is that, like my Tandy 1000 TL/2, they still work just fine. It’s the world that has moved on and left them bewildered and afraid. They don’t do digital.
Being analog became a problem when the TV networks all switched to broadcasting over-the-air in digital. Actually it didn’t become a problem until we quit buying cable service. Both TVs still worked fine on cable. But neither could understand a signal from an over-the-air antenna unless we bought a digital to analog decoder box. In the USA that would cost $7. Here it would cost about $85.

And to say that neither was “Netflix ready” is a considerable understatement.

Don’t Forget Petro-Points Can be Redeemed for Best Buy e-Gift Cards

Right now, in January 2014, it’s possible to redeem Petro-Points for Best Buy e-Gift cards. These are basically an emailed voucher that can be used to buy stuff from Best Buy. They are not a plastic gift card.

These are not the best use for your Petro-Points. You can save more money by getting Fuel Savings Reward cards topped up online.

Still, they’re a reasonably good use of Petro-Points, considerably better than the value you get for redeeming them for plastic gift cards.

And there’s something strangely appealing about getting a TV for “free.”

So I redeemed most of our mountain of points for Best Buy e-Gift cards. I read the terms carefully first though.

Please note that at the time this was written on January 19, 2014

  • You can use an unlimited number of Best Buy e-Gift cards for an in store purchase but
  • You can only use up to 2 e-Gift cards per transaction if you are buying from Best Buy online. And
  • Lost or stolen e-Gift cards cannot be replaced. (!)

So there is a risk using this method of redeeming your points.

Since I’m foolish enough to take the risk and buy individual stocks on the TSX, it likely comes as no surprise to you that I was also stupid enough willing to take this risk.

How to Redeem Your Petro-Points for Best Buy e-Gift Cards

First, I strongly suggest you read all of the FAQs about Best Buy e-Gift Cards from Petro-Points. Then, read the Terms and Conditions.

If you’re still willing and aren’t being influenced by this post (remember I’m not a licenced financial planner and I’ve been known to give lots of bad advice in the past, just ask my children), here’s what to do:

  1. Go to the Petro-Points website http://retail.petro-canada.ca/en/petropoints/38.aspx
  2. Click on the link to Sign In to your My Petro-Canada account.
    1. In the Email: field, type your email address
    2. In the Password: field, type your password
    3. Click on the Log In arrow.
  3. Under the heading Redeem My Points, click on the Redeem Points button.
  4. Under the Best Buy Canada section, with the graphic for the Best Buy Gift Card, click on the Redeem your points link.
  5. The My Petro-Canada Best Buy Canada e-Gift Card screen will open.
    NOTE: As they say it is *important* to check your email address is correct.
    The e-Gift card will be sent to that email address. So if you thought it was funny to register for a Petro-Canada account as, say Donald_trump@Gmail.com, you want to be careful, or the Trumpster will be out at Best Buy spending your hard-won dollars tomorrow.
    Click the next step button.
  6. On the Step 1 of 4 : Confirm your email address screen
    1. Look at the email address and make sure it’s the one you want to receive the Best Buy certificate.
    2. If it’s ok, click on the confirm button.
  7. On the Step 2 of 4: Choose your e-Gift Card demomination [sic] screen
    The choices are

    • $10 Best Buy e-Gift card for 12 000 Petro-Points
    • $25 (30 000 points)
    • $50 (60 000 points)
    • $100 (120 000 points)
    • $250 (300 000 points)
    • $500 (600 000 points)
    1. Click to select the radio button beside the amount of points you want to redeem for a specific number of Best Buy $.
      NOTE: You may have to repeat this whole process a few times if you need to get a large $$ value in gift cards. Remember you are limited as to how many e-Gift cards you can redeem in a single online purchase. Check the limit before buying!
    2. Click on the redeem button.
  8. On the Step 3 of 4: Confirm your Order screen
    Confirm the order.
    Your e-Gift card will be generated and sent to your email address.
  9. Sign out of your My Petro-Canada account.
  10. Check your email inbox for the e-Gift Card. You can print it to take to a Best Buy store, or use the code on it to enter at Best Buy online. (Remember you are limited as to how many e-Gift cards you can redeem in a single online purchase. Check the limit before buying!)Your email message will be something like the following:
    Congratulations! You have successfully redeemed 120,000, 000,000 Petro-Points™ for a $100 000 e-Gift Card for Best Darn Buy Canada.
    Please visit ExtremlyLongURL.com to access your e-Gift Card, or copy and paste it into the “Address” field of your web browser and follow the instructions to access your e-Gift Card.
    Your secret code is: SomethingReallyUnlikely
    Your selection: Best Darn Buy $100 000 e-Gift Card
    Your transaction number: extremely long number that should be in scientific notation
    Amount of certificate: 100 000
    Reference numbers: like transaction number but with bells on
    Number of points redeemed: 120,000, 000, 000
    Questions about your Best Buy e-Gift Card redemption? Give us a call at these numbers.

What Happened When I Went to Redeem my Best Buy e-Gift Cards to Score a New TV?

So, with my e-Gift cards, which are really pieces of printer paper, clutched hotly in hand, I drove off to Best Buy to get my TV.

What happened next? Did I need to call CAA? Did the FutureShop S.W.A.T. team take me down?

Hopefully I’ll get around to sharing that inglorious moment in another post soon. Suffice it to say, it may be entitled “Why I Think Best Buy Needs to Call the Geek Squad for Their Online ‘Reserve and Pick Up’ System.”

But while you’re waiting, or even if you aren’t, from the point of view of the Petro-Points redemption and the Best Buy e-Gift Card redemptions themselves, all went very well. I found both of those parts quite satisfactory.

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Do you always redeem your reward points to earn the most value per point, or do you sometimes redeem them for the slightly-wasteful-but-more-emotionally-satisfying experience of picking up something for “free”? Please share your experiences with a comment.