Best Buy will give HD DVD buyers $50 gift card

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Best Buy joins Circuit City (and a Japanese retailer) in giving customers who fell for that whole HD DVD scam a little something for their troubles. The electronics retailer will send a $50 gift card to everyone who purchased an HD DVD player (by February 23) from it. The cards, which won’t expire, can be spent on anything in the store.

Spending the gift card, of course, implies that you’re cool with keeping the all but useless (not really, especially if you’ve amassed a collection of HD DVD—it’s not like they’ve suddenly stopped working) player. If that isn’t the case, you can swing by www.bestbuytradein.com and try to get a couple dollars for the player.

We should probably applaud Best Buy for going out of its way to appease its burnt customers, but, really, what choice did it have—let Circuit City get all the positive column inches for its trade-in policy while it does nothing? And for the cynics, Best Buy’s president and COO, when asked if the gift card program resembles Apple’s $100 iPhone rebate program, said, “I would be disingenuous if I did not tell you we constantly survey what the industry is doing.”

Yikes.

HD DVD Owners, Some Stores Want to Make Amends [Bits New York Times Blog]

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