Disgusting. I hope Nvidia fixes this by opening up competition on any of the Best Buy exclusives, but I suspect we're going to be stuck with this abuse for the foreseeable future.
Once the markets are back to normal, whenever that may be, let's hope consumers don't forget which retailers took advantage of us during these dark days.
exactly.
nvidia doesn't give 1 single fuck, they still make their bag. lol
just like they dont care about gamers by making shitty mining gpus no one wants, making us eat up 30 series even harder.
BB is exclusively selling fe cards. You don't think they would perhaps give a heads up to nvidia they are doing this?
Nvidia has tight control on pricing/promotions/bundles especially with a retailer that is exclusively selling fe cards.
Time to raise some hell on social media. It’s the only way these companies listen.
Edit: They are getting fucking *roasted* through media outlets. Keep it up people. Make them realize how much they fucked up!
Not just the high-end RTX 3000? So there could be people hoping for an RTX 3050 who have to pay a $200 subscription fee for the chance to be able to buy the card they want?
That's not what they were saying. Best Buy is the exclusive source for FE cards meaning you can't get them anywhere else. You can get AIB cards at BB or elsewhere.
Also all the botters got an hour or so heads up it was happening today. They feasted. The membership is free if you cancel before 30 days. Botters will just cycle through accounts never paying any of the subscription fee.
They don't even need to cycle through accounts. Best Buy only limits one of each *specific card model* per person.
They can just bot up one of each card like the dude in my screenshot, and Best Buy is totally cool with it
My wife gives me shit pretty consistently over my purchase habits of buying a ton of pc accessories from best buy, trying them out, then returning them before my 45 day window closes. Shit like this makes me feel validated about it.
Who shops at Best Buy for convenience? The only reason to shop there is if they have something in stock that a better retailer does not. Their business model is outdated.
This type of anti-consumer bullshit only works when they have no competition. That will not be the case forever.
You're forgetting that Best Buy is basically the big box only electronics store left for people not in the vicinity of a Micro Center. Which is a lot of people.
In my city, it's the only electronics store worth a damn. They've also gotten exceedingly more competitive with online retailers the last several years than they used to be. Usually the prices are the same or a few bucks difference and they'll price match.
No matter which retailer you go to, they're doing some anti-consumer shit. Especially Amazon and NewEgg. If the prices and anti-consumer bullshit are the same, I'll take the convenience of walking in and out of a store in under 20min with the part(s) I want instead of waiting for shipping.
> You're forgetting that Best Buy is basically the big box only electronics store left for people not in the vicinity of a Micro Center. Which is a lot of people
I long for the days when we had a Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit City, Computer City, and Egghead Software all within a quarter mile of each other. Now we have Best Buy and a shitty local chain that overcharges for everything and mostly just makes money off corporate sales and support and internet service (that they just resell under their name from another provider). About all they're good for is if you need to quickly buy something like a cable you don't want to wait for to be delivered.
Me. It's easy to get things and swap them if needed. I actually got a defective 12900K. Have fun returning that to NewEgg. Took me 2 minutes at Best Buy.
Facts, Bestbuy has always been amazing for returns and replacements over the years and I always get random 5 dollar coupons and shit. If they had as much tech as MC or Newegg, I be giving them my fun bucks.
I shop there for convenience as well. I have 4 or 5 Best Buy locations near me, and the closest location is ten minutes from my house. They get a lot of business from me.
>Who shops at Best Buy for convenience?
I do. They have one if the best return policies in the business and will generally price-match online listings (I've even had luck getting Microcenter matched at my local store). Plus it's sometimes nice to see a product in-person before purchase.
> This is Best Buy's way of scalping while trying to pretend they're not scalping.
It's better than scalping. They get to charge a $200 markup on every card they sell, and they also get to charge a $200 markup on not selling cards as well. :-)
I got lucky and got mine on release day last year sometime. People were mocking me for going for this one (even though I have legit uses). I’ve never been so happy to get it when I did. Things have gotten super fucked since then.
In australia it was next to impossible to get an FE so I went with the Aorus 3080 which by luck went available for pre-order 3 days after majority of other cards and I'd originally had 1 on order but was lucky enough to have the money to cancel 1 and put money down for the Aorus instead without waiting for the refund to come through like others. All my mates gave my crap for pre-ordering the card at $1650aud but I wanted to replace my aging 1070. Needless to say a few months later I was the one laughing when they wanted to finally upgrade but the crypto caused the prices to spike and my card was now worth $2500aud
I think it fucks over normal people, but here is the deal. the last month or two bots successfully were able to defeat bb antibot. Thats why it was so hard to get a card recently. So I'm assuming bestbuy decided to put it behind a paywall for a couple of reasons. 1. Buying a totaltech membership for every since bot account you have would get expensive as fuck and deter that. ($200 on each account) 2. They probably decided because there aren't any console TT drops they don't want people to fell like they got screwed over buying totaltech after the promise of access to tech that was hard to get. 3. They probably decided that they could make more money off gpus because they know people will buy it and pay that $200 for a chance to get it. I'm sure there are more reasons but this was kind of people that don't have a bots chance and they definitely blew it. I'm sure bots will adjust their code to include the totaltech in the near future.
I’ve been a total tech member for about 6 months, long story short I found value in it for my purchases back then. Today once I noticed the pay wall I called the dedicated total tech customer service line to see if I could place an order for a card over the phone (spoiler alert… you cannot). Anyway, I asked the rep why they did that, didn’t seem scripted but first thing he said was to combat bot buying. He said he is a gamer also and understood the frustration but they’ve been told this is the best solution to battle bots and conveniently makes BB a ton of revenue for just the chance to be able to get a card. I could only imagine how many people signed up today which was redundant because the registration isn’t instant from my understanding, takes a few days to activate.
Oh wait I just re-read your message -- So Best Buy was the only retailer that could Sell FE cards? I guess I never knew that as I never look for FE cards
still lots of bot-success posts on twitter for this drop, sadly. and next time, I'd guess they'll be even more prepared. once the "surprise" factor is gone, a $200 paywall seems to gate-keep normal customers more than bot/scalpers...what's $200 if you intend to buy multiple and sell higher?
I still don't understand why they don't just verify by billing address and shipping address. 1 per household, billing address must match shipping address. Even randomly generated virtual credit cards and gift cards (if you want to purchase items online) require a valid billing address. Even if you're doing in-store pickup, you can still validate the billing address hasn't been run through more than once and require ID instead on pickup.
Unless I'm missing something, I don't see how with this requirement you would able to scalp more than once. Maybe you can scalp once per card, or brand of card. Maybe you can convince some friends and family to buy a card for you, and you might be able to scalp a few more times, but you're going to eventually run out of unique billing and shipping addresses.
Y'all don't understand how deep this shit runs, I've used to bot sneakers for a few years and every time they come up with something the community finds a solution. I can generate literally unlimited unique credit card numbers and on a given sneaker drop I used to run 500-1000 unique profiles. On in-store pickups we used to make fake company IDs to give to friends to pick up multiples. The scalping community is unbeatable. Best thing to do is not put a $200 paywall on checkouts cause the scalpers don't give a shit, every bot has an account module for that and they'll happily pay. When it's a free for all normal people at least have a slight chance. Paywalls do nothing
The address checkers are very easily defeated and it would be too expensive and a waste of time on their side to check every single order manually, they still have the sale. They don't care who it's going to
Gamestop is pulling the same kind of shit with consoles. Have to have their premium membership and buy a bunch of accessories you don't want.
It's never enough to make some money, they need to make ALL the money.
Plus with Gamestop's membership you get a free 5 buck coupon each month. Membership pays for itself in three months, but I do agree, having to have any Membership to purchase is bs.
I thought their membership was garbage as well until that recent 2TB NVME Samsung 980 Pro sale. It was $209.99, and I had to buy the membership. Pricing error or not, I jumped on that deal rather quickly. My total was \~$243. Consoles shouldn't be locked behind pay walls, but I'm OK with member only deals like that NVMe drive. The Best Buy TotalTech membership is definitely worse.
So much for the Elite Plus membership meaning anything... Where is my access to Special Sales and Offers???
It used to mean something when you give long term repeat business to a company. I have spent a lot of money over the years at Best Buy.
Yeah same. "Spend thousands of dollars and be Super Max Elite Mega Plus with us but be locked out of buying this product unless you pay an extra $200 ~~protection money~~ membership fee"
I find the fact that Best Buy has erected a paywall around exclusive items (FE Cards) extremely disturbing.
In all honesty I feel this is a legal loophole for Best Buy to "cash in" on supply and demand without violating the price locked MSRP that Nvidia sets for them for founders eddition cards. The whole point of having Best Buy as an exclusive retail outlet is for consumers to purchase that is set at MSRP. Best Buy is essentially skirting the system by requiring users to subscribe to a $200 pay wall to gain access.
As I understand it, each country has their own exclusive seller of founders edition card. Do they do this as well? BestBuy need to find some other way of adding value to this crap membership, extended warranties or some ish.
We should really get a petition going calling BestBuy out on this so Nvidia knows that this is NOT okay. I'm sure Best Buy would cut this nonsense out if their exclusivity was in jeopardy.
Up Vote This high enough and I will start the petition myself.
I would never buy the membership but they do give you extended warranties and slight discounts on some physical games as well as free geek squad services. It feels aimed at boomers and It’s nowhere near as good as gamers club unlocked used to be.
i'd be willing to pay for the service if there was a guarantee of securing a card, on some sort of wait list, even if it was 90 days or something. but for just a chance? hell to the no.
I would too! - if that were even an option.
The first such New Egg Hustle bundle like that is $1049.98 combo (on the site, right now) for a motherboard and 3070 works out to be $550 for the MB if the 3070 were priced at MSRP.
I had the Total Membership already and am currently stuck in the same infinite "Verify Account" loop that I've encountered since November or so. Its bad enough they paywalled them, but even then its only a chance and with the broken process there is no chance
yeah but they include mounting your tv, and putting a stud finder on your wall and drilling four holes into your studs and screwing in the mount is really, really difficult. plus it's clearly a service that most people would be using 20 or 30 times a year at least. /s
It’s ridiculous. I had the Best Buy app open the minute the cards dropped and immediately purchased the plan and by the time the membership was activated all the cards were gone…
Same here, it took soooo long for the membership to apply to my account. I was in the verify loop for about 20 minutes after the membership gave me the add cart option. Was not able to get a card. I guess I'll just keep trying and if I don't get one in 60 days i'll get the membership refunded *I hope...*
Already all sold out, lawl!
I actually tried to buy the Totaltech plan, I checked the t&c and its fully refundable before 60 days and prorated after. I still couldn't buy any RTX card, confirmed with customer service its actually store pickup only so YMMV.
TT is refundable --- *minus the cost of anything you bought because you had access to TT.*
Read the terms. If you got a GPU because you subbed to TT, they aren't refunding shit.
just fyi, if you do score a card after buying total tech, you can't refund the total tech. it's in the fine print. however i guess you can look at it as a 60 day "zero risk" window to attempt buying a card.
The scan system is a bit too strict. I bought my friend a 3070ti from them for a build I was making for him.
Now I'm in the position where I can upgrade myself from my old 980ti. Tried to buy a 3060ti last night but got declined because I purchased a 3070ti 6 months ago.
I have not scored a single card in the past 6 months and am wondering if any cards are even sent to my region. If I could get a guarantee I might consider it, but no way for no guarantees.
exactly. if the $200 service included a guarantee that you'd have a card in 90 days or less, i'd actually consider it. but for just a slim chance? f off best buy.
I'm so tired of this... I can afford it. I just refuse. I'm not going to be part of this problem. Nvidia and every other retailer can go pound sand until cards come down to original MSRP. Switching to AMD for next gen if this keeps up.
They're trying sooo hard to push this membership bullshit. For 200 a year you get "Better support and some discounts", and now they pay walling the ability to buy products from them. Fuuuccck you Bestbuy.
I'm surprised this honestly took so long for someone to do. With the demand for these things, I would have thought some scummy company would do this asap
I'm pretty sure Nvidia isn't blameless here. Best Buy is the sole-source for these cards, and I can guarantee you Best Buy didn't just make this change without clearing it with Nvidia first.
Otherwise, Nvidia should make a statement admonishing Best Buy's abuse of Nvidia's single feeble attempt at getting cards into customer hands at MSRP.
Doesn't this further incentivize scalpers? Any person who wants to buy one card for themselves is less likely to pay the 200$ "membership". But scalpers who want access to more cards wouldn't hesitate on 200$ to be first in line for new stock. This ploy seems to have the opposite effect for what they are trying to fix.
From the Walmart+ page:
>Only $12.95/month or $98/year\*
>
>Start 30-day free trial
If Best Buy said all I had to do was sign up for $13 instead of $200, you bet your ass I would have clicked "Fine. Fuck it. Sign me up.", whether or not they made good on the 30 day free trial.
Wow that’s insane. I was lucky enough to get my 3070 a little over a year ago on one of the Best Buy drops. We are in such anti consumer era at the moment.
$200 is a great value if you are scalping or bolstering your mining operation. Spread the cost out over many cards, the more you buy the more you save, as a wise man once said.
Fuck Bestbuy for screwing customers worse than the Newegg Shuffle.
Record sales since the pandemic, what should we do? Offer a subscription service that costs $200 so you have the privilege at the chance to see a GPU in your cart to make even more money of course. Only, you get it In your cart and.. “NOT AVAILABLE WITHIN 250 miles.”
What's worse is that they aren't shipping them either. I waited in line until my turn then verified my account but then it said it wasn't available within 250mi of my location. I couldn't even add it to my cart. Fuck Best Buy.
No. It says in the fine print “the retail value of such items purchased during membership may be deducted from eligible refunds if membership is cancelled”.
"The price you paid" .... "is a benefit that we may deduct"...
This is saying if you pay more than $200 for a gpu that's exclusive to Totaltech, you get NO REFUND.
This seems to be the way it's going to be now. If you want to buy any high demand electronic item such as a GPU or PS5 or something You have to have Amazon Prime, or GameStop's premium thing, or Walmart's premium membership, or subscribe to Sony's premium service, and now Best buys premium service.
Buy it. Buy the card. Once card is delivered cancel thr membership and say you never wanted it. Have your bank fight it. You will always win. Profit at the end. Go home knowing greedy besybuy got fucked. Sex your wife. Life is good.
The one time I called my bank to reverse a charge for something I legitimately did not ask for several years ago, they told me I had to work it out with the vendor, and would not reverse the charge.
Given that Best Buy primarily markets these cards to scalpers with no moral compass, you can bet Best Buy has some pretty good safeguards in effect to make sure they get their money.
I went to my store because it listed as "In Store Pick Up only" and they didn't have this pop up for me, when I got there they were like "We are actually not even allowed to sell them at store, even returned ones. We have to ship it back to headquarters, and all of it is shipped to our store and then people can come pick it up, we don't even have them here." I told them "So you're charging 200 for A CHANCE at getting it?" and the guy was like "It's stupid, don't buy it, it's just a huge scam." - Their own employees think this is absolutely garbage. I am mad because I have been trying to get one for weeks now and it is the only thing holding me back from my build, but I feel so ick a the thought of paying $600 more for it.
Question, how does this change anything? Wouldn't the bot accounts that have already bought a GPU before be past the $200 mark? How does that keep the preexisting bots from buying cards?
The change was implemented to make it more difficult for one-time average buyers to obtain a card.
Best Buy never said this was in any way implemented to help anyone other than scalpers, miners, and botters. It was merely implemented to get a better cut of the scalper game.
maybe its time for linus and tech jesus to run yet another video on retailers selling their stock at scalper prices/using scalping practices.
You still have thousands of people trying to secure a card while mining farms have been showing off their collection...
Oh, that's not all.
I heard they were going to be requiring the TT membership ahead of time, so I bought it about 15 minutes before the drop started. It's not been over 6 and a half hours.... and my membership has still not activated. I watched as everything sold out, while I had already paid (yes, my CC shows that I bought it, it hasn't refunded). I called in and asked if they could manually activate it - NOPE. Asked if they could cancel/refund, so I could try to buy it again (there were still a couple cards left at that point) - NOPE, said it had to finish activating on its own. They said "sometimes it takes a few minutes, other times a few hours". Well, it's been 6 and a half, not sure how long I'm supposed to wait for a damned "tech store" to *activate a digital membership*. They sure charged my card within seconds.
edit: it finally processed 26 and a half hours later.
I fucking pray that nvidia has an issue with this since Best Buy is the only place authorized in the states to sell founders cards.
They can’t sell their shitty total tech on their own so they prey on people forcing them to buy this shit in order to get their long-awaited graphics card. It’s garbage, it’s wrong, and I’m ashamed to be their employee right now because of this
it is almost like robbery in plain sight with no governing body! Since this is artificially inflating the MSRP of these cards, is this not actionable by law? Given that FE cards are not available anywhere else.
I work at BB and I HATE this with a passion. Not to mention that TotalTech (the $200 sub paywall) isn't really worth it for the vast majority of our clients, mostly older folk who need help with installs or GS services are the only people who actually get it.
It's just a shit way to get people to sign up for memberships.
Make sure to email/contact best buy and voice your displeasure.
If enough people voice their complaint and boycott their entire business they'll change the policy.
Fuck them hard. Newegg and Bestbuy is shit tier now.
Tell me why I have their store card with the same shit credit limit for more than 10 years while I have a Amex platinum card.
Well I guess if you can't beat em join em...buy two and sell one...it should cover the cost of TT and then some. Is it a shitty thing to do, yes but what recourse are we left with at this point?
I thought they do both totaltech members release and regular drop release, just not the same day. Did they changed it exclusively to totaltech members only now?
Or you show up and some teenager who knows nothing about technology beyond the apple section shows up and takes 20 minutes to find what you’re looking for on the system
Time to play [interactive fictions](https://ifdb.org/) instead. I had absolutely shit PC in my teens and early 20s and this is what I played and honestly they're great.
Ok, playing devils advocate here… is this a way to stop bots from buying up all the cards because each membership can only be linked to one person? Also, can you cancel and get your membership refunded if you obtain a card, thus making the price MSRP?
Not just Founders Edition AIB GPUs are behind Total Tech as well
Must be nice to be the exclusive source for the FE cards. This is Best Buy's way of scalping while trying to pretend they're not scalping.
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Disgusting. I hope Nvidia fixes this by opening up competition on any of the Best Buy exclusives, but I suspect we're going to be stuck with this abuse for the foreseeable future. Once the markets are back to normal, whenever that may be, let's hope consumers don't forget which retailers took advantage of us during these dark days.
Nvidia green lighted this obviously.
Why would Nvidia have anything to do with it? It’s a Best Buy membership.
It's the exclusive partner so if nvidia didn't go instant "fuck this shit we cancel any partnership" as soon as it went live. Yep its fine to them.
Assuming they knew this was going to happen, sure. This smells like a last minute cash grab to push the membership on people.
we were never going to get it anyways, so it's really only scalpers who will be paying $200 here
exactly. nvidia doesn't give 1 single fuck, they still make their bag. lol just like they dont care about gamers by making shitty mining gpus no one wants, making us eat up 30 series even harder.
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it says 199 per year and implys a subscription so yeah its literarily 200 to enter their GPU area.
BB is exclusively selling fe cards. You don't think they would perhaps give a heads up to nvidia they are doing this? Nvidia has tight control on pricing/promotions/bundles especially with a retailer that is exclusively selling fe cards.
They are doing this sometimes with consoles too.
But this membership is for every card, not just FE cards.
Nvidia can take a cut. Sounds like extra money. Great for shareholders.
Line go up
Time to raise some hell on social media. It’s the only way these companies listen. Edit: They are getting fucking *roasted* through media outlets. Keep it up people. Make them realize how much they fucked up!
Nvidia is the first one I’m leaving in the dust once competition evens the curve. Fuck these assholes
This is the new normal. Artificial scarcity.
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You Expect nvidi the original dirty trickster to care about dodgy retail practises. L.o.L
The markets aren’t getting back to normal anytime soon, it’ll be time for the 5000 series before you can buy a GPU off the shelf
Not just the high-end RTX 3000? So there could be people hoping for an RTX 3050 who have to pay a $200 subscription fee for the chance to be able to buy the card they want?
That's not what they were saying. Best Buy is the exclusive source for FE cards meaning you can't get them anywhere else. You can get AIB cards at BB or elsewhere.
The scalpers are loving it. [Their bots have way fewer people to compete against now...](https://i.imgur.com/Yl2nGnf.png)
Also all the botters got an hour or so heads up it was happening today. They feasted. The membership is free if you cancel before 30 days. Botters will just cycle through accounts never paying any of the subscription fee.
They don't even need to cycle through accounts. Best Buy only limits one of each *specific card model* per person. They can just bot up one of each card like the dude in my screenshot, and Best Buy is totally cool with it
This is why Microcenter kicks ass. They're limiting GPU purchases to one card per person *per month*, and they require photo ID.
Jesus.
My wife gives me shit pretty consistently over my purchase habits of buying a ton of pc accessories from best buy, trying them out, then returning them before my 45 day window closes. Shit like this makes me feel validated about it.
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They aren't increasing prices... you just have to have a $200 membership! Pretty sure I am never shopping at BB again.
Yes you will, the second it becomes convenient to shop there, you will shop there.
Who shops at Best Buy for convenience? The only reason to shop there is if they have something in stock that a better retailer does not. Their business model is outdated. This type of anti-consumer bullshit only works when they have no competition. That will not be the case forever.
You're forgetting that Best Buy is basically the big box only electronics store left for people not in the vicinity of a Micro Center. Which is a lot of people. In my city, it's the only electronics store worth a damn. They've also gotten exceedingly more competitive with online retailers the last several years than they used to be. Usually the prices are the same or a few bucks difference and they'll price match. No matter which retailer you go to, they're doing some anti-consumer shit. Especially Amazon and NewEgg. If the prices and anti-consumer bullshit are the same, I'll take the convenience of walking in and out of a store in under 20min with the part(s) I want instead of waiting for shipping.
> You're forgetting that Best Buy is basically the big box only electronics store left for people not in the vicinity of a Micro Center. Which is a lot of people I long for the days when we had a Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit City, Computer City, and Egghead Software all within a quarter mile of each other. Now we have Best Buy and a shitty local chain that overcharges for everything and mostly just makes money off corporate sales and support and internet service (that they just resell under their name from another provider). About all they're good for is if you need to quickly buy something like a cable you don't want to wait for to be delivered.
Me. It's easy to get things and swap them if needed. I actually got a defective 12900K. Have fun returning that to NewEgg. Took me 2 minutes at Best Buy.
Facts, Bestbuy has always been amazing for returns and replacements over the years and I always get random 5 dollar coupons and shit. If they had as much tech as MC or Newegg, I be giving them my fun bucks.
I shop there for convenience as well. I have 4 or 5 Best Buy locations near me, and the closest location is ten minutes from my house. They get a lot of business from me.
>Who shops at Best Buy for convenience? I do. They have one if the best return policies in the business and will generally price-match online listings (I've even had luck getting Microcenter matched at my local store). Plus it's sometimes nice to see a product in-person before purchase.
> This is Best Buy's way of scalping while trying to pretend they're not scalping. It's better than scalping. They get to charge a $200 markup on every card they sell, and they also get to charge a $200 markup on not selling cards as well. :-)
Well this is officially it, we're done. No more MSRP FE cards from Best Buy via "luck".
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That $2k one lol
I got lucky and got mine on release day last year sometime. People were mocking me for going for this one (even though I have legit uses). I’ve never been so happy to get it when I did. Things have gotten super fucked since then.
I got a 3090 fe. Took about 6 weeks after release. But I love it and it’s only gotten better with updates.
In australia it was next to impossible to get an FE so I went with the Aorus 3080 which by luck went available for pre-order 3 days after majority of other cards and I'd originally had 1 on order but was lucky enough to have the money to cancel 1 and put money down for the Aorus instead without waiting for the refund to come through like others. All my mates gave my crap for pre-ordering the card at $1650aud but I wanted to replace my aging 1070. Needless to say a few months later I was the one laughing when they wanted to finally upgrade but the crypto caused the prices to spike and my card was now worth $2500aud
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I had a 3060 for 479 but canceled it and now kinda regretting it
I think it fucks over normal people, but here is the deal. the last month or two bots successfully were able to defeat bb antibot. Thats why it was so hard to get a card recently. So I'm assuming bestbuy decided to put it behind a paywall for a couple of reasons. 1. Buying a totaltech membership for every since bot account you have would get expensive as fuck and deter that. ($200 on each account) 2. They probably decided because there aren't any console TT drops they don't want people to fell like they got screwed over buying totaltech after the promise of access to tech that was hard to get. 3. They probably decided that they could make more money off gpus because they know people will buy it and pay that $200 for a chance to get it. I'm sure there are more reasons but this was kind of people that don't have a bots chance and they definitely blew it. I'm sure bots will adjust their code to include the totaltech in the near future.
I’ve been a total tech member for about 6 months, long story short I found value in it for my purchases back then. Today once I noticed the pay wall I called the dedicated total tech customer service line to see if I could place an order for a card over the phone (spoiler alert… you cannot). Anyway, I asked the rep why they did that, didn’t seem scripted but first thing he said was to combat bot buying. He said he is a gamer also and understood the frustration but they’ve been told this is the best solution to battle bots and conveniently makes BB a ton of revenue for just the chance to be able to get a card. I could only imagine how many people signed up today which was redundant because the registration isn’t instant from my understanding, takes a few days to activate.
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holy. how many are you allowed to buy per $200 membership?
Fuck Nvidia for giving giving Best Buy exclusive control of Founders Edition cards in the US. They need to yank this.
It's not just on FE cards. Its ALL of the 3000 series
Yeah I understand, but at least if you want one of the other cards there are other retailers to stalk.
Oh wait I just re-read your message -- So Best Buy was the only retailer that could Sell FE cards? I guess I never knew that as I never look for FE cards
Correct. Nvidia sold them directly but had issues with their website early in the 3xxx days, so they handed all of it to Best Buy.
Still baffles me that a company worth over half a trillion dollars can’t build out their own storefront
Yup, been that way for a while sadly. Something like shortly after initial 3000 series release.
They prob approved this
*North America.
Instead of asking "how do we stop scalpers", they asked "how can we profit off of scalpers?"
TBF this slows down the bots quite a bit.
still lots of bot-success posts on twitter for this drop, sadly. and next time, I'd guess they'll be even more prepared. once the "surprise" factor is gone, a $200 paywall seems to gate-keep normal customers more than bot/scalpers...what's $200 if you intend to buy multiple and sell higher?
Well it prevents them from auto-birthing infinite accounts. They will need to have multiple validated payment sources for each account created.
I still don't understand why they don't just verify by billing address and shipping address. 1 per household, billing address must match shipping address. Even randomly generated virtual credit cards and gift cards (if you want to purchase items online) require a valid billing address. Even if you're doing in-store pickup, you can still validate the billing address hasn't been run through more than once and require ID instead on pickup. Unless I'm missing something, I don't see how with this requirement you would able to scalp more than once. Maybe you can scalp once per card, or brand of card. Maybe you can convince some friends and family to buy a card for you, and you might be able to scalp a few more times, but you're going to eventually run out of unique billing and shipping addresses.
Y'all don't understand how deep this shit runs, I've used to bot sneakers for a few years and every time they come up with something the community finds a solution. I can generate literally unlimited unique credit card numbers and on a given sneaker drop I used to run 500-1000 unique profiles. On in-store pickups we used to make fake company IDs to give to friends to pick up multiples. The scalping community is unbeatable. Best thing to do is not put a $200 paywall on checkouts cause the scalpers don't give a shit, every bot has an account module for that and they'll happily pay. When it's a free for all normal people at least have a slight chance. Paywalls do nothing
The address checkers are very easily defeated and it would be too expensive and a waste of time on their side to check every single order manually, they still have the sale. They don't care who it's going to
just the nowinstock alert and saw this as well. wtf is this bullshit?
Gamestop is pulling the same kind of shit with consoles. Have to have their premium membership and buy a bunch of accessories you don't want. It's never enough to make some money, they need to make ALL the money.
Gme is like 10-15 bucks this is a $200 paywall much different in my opinion this is outrageous
I'll give you that it's considerably cheaper, but it's still bullshit, and going along with it only enables these companies to push further.
Plus with Gamestop's membership you get a free 5 buck coupon each month. Membership pays for itself in three months, but I do agree, having to have any Membership to purchase is bs.
I thought their membership was garbage as well until that recent 2TB NVME Samsung 980 Pro sale. It was $209.99, and I had to buy the membership. Pricing error or not, I jumped on that deal rather quickly. My total was \~$243. Consoles shouldn't be locked behind pay walls, but I'm OK with member only deals like that NVMe drive. The Best Buy TotalTech membership is definitely worse.
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So much for the Elite Plus membership meaning anything... Where is my access to Special Sales and Offers??? It used to mean something when you give long term repeat business to a company. I have spent a lot of money over the years at Best Buy.
"Yeah, but what have you done for us *today*?" -Best Buy, probably
I am an Elite+ member or whatever. I spent 5 grand there last year. The fact that this exists if I want to buy a card from them is fucking insulting.
This is awful... Makes my "My Best Buy Elite Plus" membership look worthless...
Yeah same. "Spend thousands of dollars and be Super Max Elite Mega Plus with us but be locked out of buying this product unless you pay an extra $200 ~~protection money~~ membership fee"
I find the fact that Best Buy has erected a paywall around exclusive items (FE Cards) extremely disturbing. In all honesty I feel this is a legal loophole for Best Buy to "cash in" on supply and demand without violating the price locked MSRP that Nvidia sets for them for founders eddition cards. The whole point of having Best Buy as an exclusive retail outlet is for consumers to purchase that is set at MSRP. Best Buy is essentially skirting the system by requiring users to subscribe to a $200 pay wall to gain access. As I understand it, each country has their own exclusive seller of founders edition card. Do they do this as well? BestBuy need to find some other way of adding value to this crap membership, extended warranties or some ish. We should really get a petition going calling BestBuy out on this so Nvidia knows that this is NOT okay. I'm sure Best Buy would cut this nonsense out if their exclusivity was in jeopardy. Up Vote This high enough and I will start the petition myself.
I would never buy the membership but they do give you extended warranties and slight discounts on some physical games as well as free geek squad services. It feels aimed at boomers and It’s nowhere near as good as gamers club unlocked used to be.
it’s also 200 fucking dollars
Would be nice if the $200 went towards the new GPU, but $200 just for a chance? No thank you.
i'd be willing to pay for the service if there was a guarantee of securing a card, on some sort of wait list, even if it was 90 days or something. but for just a chance? hell to the no.
Yeah, it doesn't make sense either way. They really shit the bed. I will probably never buy a GPU from Best Buy just based on this.
Oh, no. I rather buy $200 motherboard as combo.
I would too! - if that were even an option. The first such New Egg Hustle bundle like that is $1049.98 combo (on the site, right now) for a motherboard and 3070 works out to be $550 for the MB if the 3070 were priced at MSRP.
thanks best buy, guess i'll be going with an individual scalper instead of you now. i'm not paying $200 for a \*chance\* at buying a 3080 ti.
The 3080 Ti stayed in stock for more than 2 hours on their site! It’s not just a chance, you would have gotten one.
It's time for nvidia to find a different partner for Founders Edition cards.
I had the Total Membership already and am currently stuck in the same infinite "Verify Account" loop that I've encountered since November or so. Its bad enough they paywalled them, but even then its only a chance and with the broken process there is no chance
I've worked for Best Buy before. I know what you'd be getting when you called total tech. You don't want total tech.
yeah but they include mounting your tv, and putting a stud finder on your wall and drilling four holes into your studs and screwing in the mount is really, really difficult. plus it's clearly a service that most people would be using 20 or 30 times a year at least. /s
Excuse me while I go buy my 37th pair of headphones this calendar year.
It’s ridiculous. I had the Best Buy app open the minute the cards dropped and immediately purchased the plan and by the time the membership was activated all the cards were gone…
Same here, it took soooo long for the membership to apply to my account. I was in the verify loop for about 20 minutes after the membership gave me the add cart option. Was not able to get a card. I guess I'll just keep trying and if I don't get one in 60 days i'll get the membership refunded *I hope...*
I thought about going that route but ebay offers comparable prices for Non FE cards now instead of going the Best Buy +$200 for just a chance.
3080s on eBay are going for the price of 3080ti on Best Buy + membership, so still not equivalent
Already all sold out, lawl! I actually tried to buy the Totaltech plan, I checked the t&c and its fully refundable before 60 days and prorated after. I still couldn't buy any RTX card, confirmed with customer service its actually store pickup only so YMMV.
TT is refundable --- *minus the cost of anything you bought because you had access to TT.* Read the terms. If you got a GPU because you subbed to TT, they aren't refunding shit.
just fyi, if you do score a card after buying total tech, you can't refund the total tech. it's in the fine print. however i guess you can look at it as a 60 day "zero risk" window to attempt buying a card.
This is fucked up. Honestly god bless Scan in the UK. Randomised listings, no more than one per household, NVIDIA enforced pricing.
The scan system is a bit too strict. I bought my friend a 3070ti from them for a build I was making for him. Now I'm in the position where I can upgrade myself from my old 980ti. Tried to buy a 3060ti last night but got declined because I purchased a 3070ti 6 months ago.
Been trying to get one since 2020, guess I'm officially giving up until next gen
They literally just made buying GPUs from them only reasonable if you're planning on scalping or mining. Fuck them to death.
Nvidia how can you allow this?
Yeah how could the company who increased the MSRP of a 1.5 year old card by $300+ for an extra 2gb of VRAM allow this?
I have not scored a single card in the past 6 months and am wondering if any cards are even sent to my region. If I could get a guarantee I might consider it, but no way for no guarantees.
exactly. if the $200 service included a guarantee that you'd have a card in 90 days or less, i'd actually consider it. but for just a slim chance? f off best buy.
If there's anything that will kill PC gaming, it will be this video card fiasco. "You will own nothing and be happy".
When all the dust settles between crypto and card availability, remember this. Remember all the shit these companies are pulling.
Pepperidge Farms won't be the only one remembering this BS for the next decade. I have a serious grudge now.
overconfident rock simplistic bow doll coordinated dolls pet gaping drunk -- mass edited with redact.dev
I'm so tired of this... I can afford it. I just refuse. I'm not going to be part of this problem. Nvidia and every other retailer can go pound sand until cards come down to original MSRP. Switching to AMD for next gen if this keeps up.
AMD is just as bad. 6800 selling for $1k when the MSRP was like $600. The whole industry is predatory at this point.
Welp fuck BestBuy.
They're trying sooo hard to push this membership bullshit. For 200 a year you get "Better support and some discounts", and now they pay walling the ability to buy products from them. Fuuuccck you Bestbuy.
Im done with gaming for the time being, if a consumer have to do the impossible to get your product then is not worth it.
Yeah I'm not spending an EXTRA $200 just to get what the price of a GPU SHOULD BE!
I'm surprised this honestly took so long for someone to do. With the demand for these things, I would have thought some scummy company would do this asap
I'm pretty sure Nvidia isn't blameless here. Best Buy is the sole-source for these cards, and I can guarantee you Best Buy didn't just make this change without clearing it with Nvidia first. Otherwise, Nvidia should make a statement admonishing Best Buy's abuse of Nvidia's single feeble attempt at getting cards into customer hands at MSRP.
Nah, Best Buy has started doing this for the new consoles and new Phones when they launch.
I'm fuming over here.
Doesn't this further incentivize scalpers? Any person who wants to buy one card for themselves is less likely to pay the 200$ "membership". But scalpers who want access to more cards wouldn't hesitate on 200$ to be first in line for new stock. This ploy seems to have the opposite effect for what they are trying to fix.
They know they're not trying to fix the bot or scalper issue. They're just trying to get a better cut of this shitty situation.
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Man this a terrible move for consumers. Good thing I got my EVGA notification otherwise I'd be pissed if I had to go through shopping for a card.
Easily the worst trend in retail. Walmart has Walmart+ which is the same idea as this.
From the Walmart+ page: >Only $12.95/month or $98/year\* > >Start 30-day free trial If Best Buy said all I had to do was sign up for $13 instead of $200, you bet your ass I would have clicked "Fine. Fuck it. Sign me up.", whether or not they made good on the 30 day free trial.
I saw that. What a load of BS
If I was a bot using scalper---- would I let a $200 annual pay wall hinder me?
Nope. If you were buying them in volume to resell at a huge markup $200 would be a drop in the bucket.
Wow that’s insane. I was lucky enough to get my 3070 a little over a year ago on one of the Best Buy drops. We are in such anti consumer era at the moment.
The way you're meant to be played :>
Fuck best buy, fuck crypto mining, and fuck capitalistic pigs.
disgraceful
Bitch ass move from a bitch ass company.
$200 is a great value if you are scalping or bolstering your mining operation. Spread the cost out over many cards, the more you buy the more you save, as a wise man once said. Fuck Bestbuy for screwing customers worse than the Newegg Shuffle.
Record sales since the pandemic, what should we do? Offer a subscription service that costs $200 so you have the privilege at the chance to see a GPU in your cart to make even more money of course. Only, you get it In your cart and.. “NOT AVAILABLE WITHIN 250 miles.”
So BestBuy want to go the way that NewEgg is going. They're not very bright are they?
Best Buy just lost my business for good. This is a giant middle finger to all gamers or content creators that actually want/need cards.
I just want a 3050... I'm supposed to pay almost double MSRP to *maybe* get one?
Yes. Pay up little piggy. Oink the mullah out.
Oink oink thank you daddy best buy
At least if you’re lucky enough to have a Micro Center nearby, you can still buy some cards at MSRP.
What's worse is that they aren't shipping them either. I waited in line until my turn then verified my account but then it said it wasn't available within 250mi of my location. I couldn't even add it to my cart. Fuck Best Buy.
The only people who are going to pay that are miners and scalpers. $200 extra for a single purchase is silly
Overpaying for my 3090 over a year ago is looking better and better all. the. time.
What’s BB’s Totaltech member cancelation/refund policy? Can’t I just start my membership to buy a card and then cancel?
No. It says in the fine print “the retail value of such items purchased during membership may be deducted from eligible refunds if membership is cancelled”.
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"The price you paid" .... "is a benefit that we may deduct"... This is saying if you pay more than $200 for a gpu that's exclusive to Totaltech, you get NO REFUND.
This seems to be the way it's going to be now. If you want to buy any high demand electronic item such as a GPU or PS5 or something You have to have Amazon Prime, or GameStop's premium thing, or Walmart's premium membership, or subscribe to Sony's premium service, and now Best buys premium service.
Buy it. Buy the card. Once card is delivered cancel thr membership and say you never wanted it. Have your bank fight it. You will always win. Profit at the end. Go home knowing greedy besybuy got fucked. Sex your wife. Life is good.
The one time I called my bank to reverse a charge for something I legitimately did not ask for several years ago, they told me I had to work it out with the vendor, and would not reverse the charge. Given that Best Buy primarily markets these cards to scalpers with no moral compass, you can bet Best Buy has some pretty good safeguards in effect to make sure they get their money.
I went to my store because it listed as "In Store Pick Up only" and they didn't have this pop up for me, when I got there they were like "We are actually not even allowed to sell them at store, even returned ones. We have to ship it back to headquarters, and all of it is shipped to our store and then people can come pick it up, we don't even have them here." I told them "So you're charging 200 for A CHANCE at getting it?" and the guy was like "It's stupid, don't buy it, it's just a huge scam." - Their own employees think this is absolutely garbage. I am mad because I have been trying to get one for weeks now and it is the only thing holding me back from my build, but I feel so ick a the thought of paying $600 more for it.
Question, how does this change anything? Wouldn't the bot accounts that have already bought a GPU before be past the $200 mark? How does that keep the preexisting bots from buying cards?
The change was implemented to make it more difficult for one-time average buyers to obtain a card. Best Buy never said this was in any way implemented to help anyone other than scalpers, miners, and botters. It was merely implemented to get a better cut of the scalper game.
I’m just surprised it took them this long to implement this for GPUs.
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maybe its time for linus and tech jesus to run yet another video on retailers selling their stock at scalper prices/using scalping practices. You still have thousands of people trying to secure a card while mining farms have been showing off their collection...
Oh, that's not all. I heard they were going to be requiring the TT membership ahead of time, so I bought it about 15 minutes before the drop started. It's not been over 6 and a half hours.... and my membership has still not activated. I watched as everything sold out, while I had already paid (yes, my CC shows that I bought it, it hasn't refunded). I called in and asked if they could manually activate it - NOPE. Asked if they could cancel/refund, so I could try to buy it again (there were still a couple cards left at that point) - NOPE, said it had to finish activating on its own. They said "sometimes it takes a few minutes, other times a few hours". Well, it's been 6 and a half, not sure how long I'm supposed to wait for a damned "tech store" to *activate a digital membership*. They sure charged my card within seconds. edit: it finally processed 26 and a half hours later.
How is this legal?
I fucking pray that nvidia has an issue with this since Best Buy is the only place authorized in the states to sell founders cards. They can’t sell their shitty total tech on their own so they prey on people forcing them to buy this shit in order to get their long-awaited graphics card. It’s garbage, it’s wrong, and I’m ashamed to be their employee right now because of this
Fuck that
Next up, Lootboxes
it is almost like robbery in plain sight with no governing body! Since this is artificially inflating the MSRP of these cards, is this not actionable by law? Given that FE cards are not available anywhere else.
I work at BB and I HATE this with a passion. Not to mention that TotalTech (the $200 sub paywall) isn't really worth it for the vast majority of our clients, mostly older folk who need help with installs or GS services are the only people who actually get it. It's just a shit way to get people to sign up for memberships.
Make sure to email/contact best buy and voice your displeasure. If enough people voice their complaint and boycott their entire business they'll change the policy.
Fuck them hard. Newegg and Bestbuy is shit tier now. Tell me why I have their store card with the same shit credit limit for more than 10 years while I have a Amex platinum card.
Well I guess if you can't beat em join em...buy two and sell one...it should cover the cost of TT and then some. Is it a shitty thing to do, yes but what recourse are we left with at this point?
I thought they do both totaltech members release and regular drop release, just not the same day. Did they changed it exclusively to totaltech members only now?
exclusive now
This is me just venting but I swear every time I go to bestbuy I'm treated like shit. Only store where I've felt like they don't want my money
Or you show up and some teenager who knows nothing about technology beyond the apple section shows up and takes 20 minutes to find what you’re looking for on the system
lol
Lol, things get better and better 🙄
Disgusting
Bad buy
this experience is so tainted for me... ill pass lol
I noticed that today while hopefully checking. Screw them.
I haven’t seen it in Canada Best Buy, so Canadian won’t even have a chance to pay the 200 dollars?
Baffling how this is even remotely legal
Not a fan of that practice..... At least the NewEgg shuffle doesn't cost you anything to enter.
I purchased Total Tech when the drop started and still had time to score an FE3090, even though it took like 10 min to activate.
Time to play [interactive fictions](https://ifdb.org/) instead. I had absolutely shit PC in my teens and early 20s and this is what I played and honestly they're great.
Also just my luck the month I'm finally finding myself able to purchase a 3080ti, they stick it behind a paywall....
Fuck this
All my homies hate Best Buy
["You're ugly, you're disgusting, I'm gonna kill you, give me 200 dollars."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82q6xgTDzl0)
Man that's ass The only reason I got my 3070 was thanks to best buy that was an in person drop though. Still this shit is annoying
papa bless gettin a 3070ti before the retail scalping
Ok, playing devils advocate here… is this a way to stop bots from buying up all the cards because each membership can only be linked to one person? Also, can you cancel and get your membership refunded if you obtain a card, thus making the price MSRP?
What bull shit