Shopping tips from Dave & Buster's hero

Although the BestBuy coupon is a great idea, it is a VERY old idea and is well known.

I have worked at bestbuy, and MANY customers have done this. To be honest, when I see a customers plan like that, i dont even bother with the transaction of activating the damn giftcard. I just scan through the coupon. I never felt compelled enough to to waste my time, while watching the dumb customer feel smart about themselves when its a well known fact.

Just so you also know, the BestBuy I worked at, did not care about people "stealing" gift cards because it only costed the store a few cents. So if you felt compelled to just rip out the coupon and goto the cash register, so much the better.

Of course I was a lazy cashier and never bought into their propaganda to love BestBuy. So if you meet a zealous BestBuy cashier that stays to the books, that sure as hell sucks for you, because they are rare and you have terrible luck.

Voucher man strikes again, dont suppose you have heard of any good deals in the UK?

Haven't tried this myself but I'm guessing this would work as well for getting discounted microsoft points.

Xbox live diamond members supposedly get a 20% off xbox 360 accessories from circuit city. If anything it should also apply to the points.

Commenter 1 is the reason I despise retail. "Dumb customers". Commenter 1 can eat a candy bar out of my ass.

And a sidenote for the kids, even though Commenter 1 admits being a crap, lazy Best Buy employee, please realize that by ripping the coupon out of store product that you haven't purchased is considered shoplifting, regardless of the cost of the product.

PS - Lots of people have worked at Best Buy. You don't get a cookie just cause you had to time in and out everyday at some point in your life. I worked there too, but I don't condone committing misdemeanors out of laziness and being my blog postings with "I used to work at Best Buy and..." to try and evoke some sense of credibility. My guess is that if you were a lazy cashier that didn't care and allowed shoplifting, you were fired within a couple of months.

The real question is, how much did the guy spend to earn the 85,000 tickets from Dave and Busters? Unless he's a pro at one of those flashing light games where you have to stop it in the target area, I am sure he spent a pretty penny earning those tickets.

Yay, leak more information for us to sodomize Best Buy with legally. I worked there for about 2 months and it was the worst experience in my 4 years of retail.

In reply to #6.

Sure the guy wasted a lot of time and money on skee ball and the dumb light games. But lets look at this equation for a second. An XBOX360 at 85,000 tickets would not have a definitive dollar amount because the tickets themselves are worthless. So I ask the same thing. How much did this guy really spend?

Lets say he is an expert Skee Ball Champ and takes him only one token to hit the jackpot every time. Lets make the assertion that each time he played he waited until the jack pot reached the 140 ticket mark. Use some simple arithmetic. 85,000 / 140 = 607.14 ( lets just round this to 608 for good measure) so the guy had to play 608 games of skee ball for this example to reach this ticket amount. Not including the tickets the damn thing spits out on its own before you ever hit the jackpot. Again some simple math, lets proclaim that each token has a stated monetary value of 25 cents. Take the 608 games multiplied by .25, well if you been able to follow me thus far you should have $152.00 . All I got to say to that guy, not only did he stick to the man, he well, at 152 bucks for a 360 he stole it. What's the rub? He lost most of his childhood to skee ball.

I'm sure if the store manager was to read this he may rethink the ticket threshold and make it a bit higher, say 250,000 tickets putting the price range at about 447 dollars. It would be justified as competitive pricing.

Hey Chris, I was the guy who picked up the 360 for 85,000 tickets, and I spent approximately $460 over three months. I had started out saving for a second nano, but realized I could go for the 360 without spending much more than retail. It was a hell of a lot more fun that way and now they know me well and throw perks my way.

And please note the "hell of a lot more fun" applied to the first 60,000 tickets. The last 25,000 were like a freakin job. You are also right about being good at flashing lights. I've got mad skills on those timing games, hence I was able to get it for close to retail.

Since we are address the ticket thing... I worked the math ahead of time and pulled a 4GB iPod nano for less than $180. That's when I decided to step it up for the Xbox360, which does have a higher mark up as far as ticket price, so they are gouging you there. It would have been better for my money to keep cashing out at Nano's.

You have to find a game or games that you can hit CONSISTANTLY and one that has a good payoff. Figure the pay offs per credit spent, just like you were shopping slot machines in Vegas.

On my best machine, it cost me 3.3 credits, and I could pull 100 tickets out 99.5% of the time. I kept track of the statistic as I played for two hours on a stool, marking down if I would miss a play. I know that most people are going to spend a HUGE amount of money to win that kind of tickets, and spending $1000 on your $400 Xbox makes you a chump. The point was to get it cheaper or close to retail.

I didn't get it cheaper because being so hardcore on tickets was making the whole experience negative, so I relaxed and took it less seriously in the last twenty thousand tickets.

Just shop around when you play those games. Spending $10 to hit a 500 ticket jackpot, when I could go play my signature game and spend $10 to get 3000 tickets. It takes some math skills, discipline and patience, but it can be done. At my best ticket to credit ration, I was winning 30 tickets for every credit spent.

Hope this gives you D&B fans some direction. And for the record, I went back the following week and won Oblivion for 7950 tickets for $38, including my iced tea, tip and bus fare. ROFL

DCFC... i think you totally took what I said totally off to another tangent. I was simplying saying, your "tip" you gave us about the coupon is something BestBuy has already known for years. That coupon has been on the back of some gift cards for almost 5 years now.

Im not saying I want creditibility. Im just saying, alot of people already know about it, and you're just slow =P

I was looking at the diamond card web site and you can get $10 of gaming free when you purchase $20 of gaming at D&B. So Instead of spending $460 you could spend $307.

The only problem with this is that D&B is the gayest place in the world, and I will never give them a damn Dollar of my money! Last summer, my friend was about to go back to school in Virginia, so I suggested we go to the D&B in Philly to hang out with our girlfriends the night before he left. Well we got there and they wouldn't even let us in without someone over 25! We were 19! that's rediculous that a bunch of 19 year olds cannot play freaking video games! Then this old grandmom brings her 5 year old in with her and they don't say anything! Fuck D&B!!!! Seriously! I will Never GO there!

They do not allow you in because they serve alcohol and its a bar. If you are 19, you are 2 years too young.

So, I checked the Diamond card website, and it does list Circuit City as 10 percent off. Would this work in conjunction to the price match? Also, I can't find Wal-Mart's ad... can I just print off the page that lists the one year Live card for 35 bucks instead?