Punk’d: Get your Amazon gift cards – at Best Buy

I haven’t been a serious shopper at Best Buy for a long, long time. The last time I went there to buy something (not including the time I stopped by to pick up a free man-shaped USB hub), George Bush was still president. That was the Golden Age of Best Buy, a time when clearance items flowed like cheap wine at rock-bottom prices, and the employees were blissfully ignorant.

Times have changed, of course, and clearance items are now relegated to a small cage in the middle of Electronics. And the rest of the store? Still a giant retail-price money grab. Gift cards and store credit are wasted here.

But no longer!

Because you can now buy Amazon gift cards at Best Buy. They just look a little different, most notably emblazoned with “Amazon Kindle” on the front. But to the trained eye, they’re the same as regular Amazon gift cards. You can find them hanging on a peg in the e-reader section (Kindle, Nook, etc) in $25 and $50 increments. When you buy one, you simply scratch off the back and add the code to your Amazon account.

I should also add that you can use your Best Buy gift cards and store credit to buy Amazon gift cards.

So why would Best Buy, a megastore where probably 99% of the products are cheaper on Amazon, carry a competitor’s gift cards? There’s only one answer I can come up with, which is: they have absolutely no idea. This is, coming from someone who has watched the decline of Best Buy as a customer, something that makes me very happy.