Don't Use your Best Buy Rewards for Gifts!

My wife and I were doing some holiday shopping, and we decided to buy a few gifts at Best Buy with our Best Buy RewardZone gift certificates. We got to the checkout and asked for a gift receipt. The cashier told us that the recipient would't be able to exchange their gift. The only option would be to return it and the Rewards would be credited back to our account. We were told to go to Customer Service, return the items for the credit of our points and then re-purchase them with our credit card to enable the giftee to be able to exchange. We confirmed this with two other employees. Am I the only one who sees problems with this policy?

I've worked in 4 retail stores in my time, and I've never seen such a policy. If someone buys a gift using any currency (cash, credit, gift card, rewards, etc), the recipient should be able to make an even exchange for the value of the product. I can understand if it was a sale coupon for lets say 20% off, and the recipient would get a credit for the price paid for the item, but I can's see why this should be the case for rewards, which are basically like cash. Best Buy does not lose anything if the person even-exchanges the item for another product.

Whether or not that makes sense to Best Buy, all I can do is warn against using your points for a gift, as this is both bad for you and bad for the recipient. The recipient, if they want to exchange for a better product (what if you got them a piece of hardware that was in-compatible with their camera, for example), they will be most upset when they learn that in fact all they can do is return it for a refund to the original purchaser. It's no good for the purchaser either. Imagine if you got a gift for someone and then found out that they didn't like it because you suddenly got a reward refund. Imagine the awkward conversation that must take place:

"I see you returned my gift--did you not like it?"

"Um . . . it was incompatible -- can you give me your Best Buy Rewards that were refunded to you from my gift?"

"Erm, why don't we go to Best Buy together and you can show me the right equipment to get you"

I certainly wouldn't want to get in that conversation. In fact, I'm less inclined to build a rewards balance there in the future.

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 Image on flickr's Creative Commons by bdjsb7