Back in the day when Gina, a BBY Employee worked for Best Buy she and her team did everything to make sure there were active promotion of these forums at a store level and also on other mediums as well.

Today, I see that the forums are only mentioned at the bottom of the BestBuy.com  page and I feel like more promotion of these forums can benefit end user for technical and self help plus the stores can also brush up on how useful our forums can be for product questions, etc.

It's time to revisit this idea once more and see how better a community can benefit everyone.

The combination of product shortages and scalping has made it nearly impossible for the average customer to purchase Graphics Cards and Next Gen Consoles from BestBuy. These items come in stock every so often but seem to be sold out within minutes (if not seconds). I have a few ideas that I believe can help reduce frustration for your customers and prevent scalpers from buying up all of the product that drops.

1. Pre-order options:

This would reduce customer frustration as they won't have to constantly monitor the product only do be disappointed when they aren't quick enough to snag their desired GPU/Console.

2. Link GPU/Console purchases to some form of photo ID (driver’s license):

This would more effectively allow BestBuy to limit the number of these high demand products that a person can purchase in a certain time frame. It prevents people from using multiple accounts and names to make these purchases. It would also make it much harder for bots to buy the stock within seconds.

3.  Make high demand items like these only available for purchase/preorder in store or on the phone:

As stores are now open for in person purchases, this would make it impossible for bots to buy all the stock. It would still provide people who cannot come into the store a way to purchase.

These are my suggestions, hope it can help.

*I am an employee. I know that BestBuy wants to be "customer obsessed" and help their customers in every way possible. I feel like these ideas can help BestBuy to assist our customers who are trying to obtain these hard-to-find items. 

I would like to see Best Buy copy the program they have up in Canada at FutureShop for video game steelbooks. It would be great to get more exclusive video game steelbooks as pre-order bonuses. Best Buy here in the USA does offer steelbooks for video games but it is only on rare occassions.

FutureShop's Video Game Steelbook Program

Upcoming Steelbooks from FutureShop

Lightning Returns Final Fantasy Xiii

Thief

Titanfall

This sounds simple and you may have done it already but i did not see it.  Can you make an exclusive PS5 buying option for BB Credit Card holders?  With the madness of getting these it would combat the bots and get you more card holders.  Other companies have done similar things.  I.E. Gamefly, PS Direct, Costco, Sams, etc.  I myself would use mine. Have been a card holder for 10yrs. Thanks. 

To whom it may concern,

I think I speak for thousands of Best Buy employees and customers across the United States/Canada who depend upon Best Buy for our gaming necessities. As a best buy employee I even found enthusiasm in offering Gamers Club Unlocked to my customers. We as a community of enthusiasts implore Best Buy to re-institute Gamers Club Unlocked or an updated membership with similar benefits. Without this membership to unite gamers to Best Buy, I see no link to keep gaming customers purchasing from Best Buy. Thank you.

Scalping has been a big issue so I'm happy that Best Buy has been taking action so that more legitimate customers instead of bot farms have been able to purchase hardware. I think the current system may not be adequate for how advanced software has become. The random nature of release times for hardware means that places like nowinstock.com are the only hope for regular customers.

Lottery System

In Japan they use a pre-order lottery system to sell high demand items. How this works is that customers can opt-in to a pre-order lottery. From that lottery, emails are sent out to winning tickets that allow them to make the purchase. 

How this can help combat scalping and be a better buying experience

• Purchases will be distributed randomly instead of concentrated within a release window.
• Even though some bots will get through, bot/scalper purchases will be limited naturally by random selection.
• Right to purchase is determined randomly rather than speed of clicking or noticing when a button lights up, which bots are now able to do. 
• Prevents massive server stock requests from bot farms scraping inventory. 
• One ticket per account/per item/ per household limits physical scalping
• Winning accounts will be flagged for purchasing, and customer will be emailed
• Customers can then be allowed a wide window (24 hours) to purchase the item. Otherwise a new lottery winner will be chosen and that stock can go back into the general pool.
• Reduces stress and stock tracking for customers and is more convenient based on their schedule.
• By having a large lottery opt-in window (about an hour) more people can at least have a chance to purchase the items.
• Lottery numbers are not chosen on the day the tickets are available, but rather later. This allows accounts to be flagged for botting or scalping.
• The buffer for purchases created by a lottery will let Best Buy announce when new stock is received/email notifications to customers that won't be made false by rapid purchases minutes later. 

Let me know what you think. I've been trying to get a 3070 and 5600x for a while. I think a lot of people are frustrated by the current situation and would like more to be done about the situation. I wonder if something like a lottery could be tested out. 

Would you please consider allowing Elite Plus members exclusive access to the purchase of the PS5?

Either hold an event that allows confirmed Elite Plus members only to make their purchase or allow Elite Plus Members to pre-order, while you vet that we are not bots, you can release the units in order that they were placed.

I don't have time to monitor twitter for drop notifications and then come to the BB site and fight with bots, I'd simply like to have a personal link for me as a confirmed Elite Plus member that I can use to place my order.

Please consider this to calm some of the madness for your most loyal customers.

Its been a very hard for the avrager perosn to get there hands on a Nivdia 30 series GPU. Giving My Best Buy Elite/Elite Plus memberse a timed window, lets say 5~8 hours to buy the stock before the general public could when new stock becomes avalible when be a novel way to: fend of scaplers, given more of an avrage working joe time to get a card, grab some postive prasie from the from the online communtiy.and help encorage shopping @ BBY to keep youre level up.

Can definitly say, Evga implamernting there queuing system has bought a lot of good sentiment to the company during this crazy release. 

Feels bad to miss the drop for the cards by 30 min~ and then turing around and see them imidelty relisted on eBay agian.... 

Would assuyme also there would be some limit 1 30 series card per houshold / account during this timned window and if you hand already oreded 1 you would no longer be eligable for hte timed window during hte next stock drop.

The XBOX Series X and PS5 pre-orders were a total disaster. The pre-order was plagued with bots ordering multiple systems, and prevented consumers from making the purchase. The item status would go from add to cart, to sold out, to coming soon, and eventually, all sold out.

Launch day was a total debocal too. I was insanely angry because I stayed up late, the timer expired, status of coming soon did not change until at least 5 minutes after the countdown expired, then immediately goes to sold out.. WHAT? how does something sell out in 1 second? Either the bots won, or there was absolutely no stock, and we all waited for nothing.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE... put in place captcha and 2 factor for launch days, limited items, major holidays when actually making the purchase. Make people not only sign into their My Best Buy, but also captcha, and 2-factor when actually checking out.

If not for special events, holidays, etc...Then make it for any purchase exceeding a certain dolar amount like say, $199 and above require captcha and 2-factor at checkout

• At least 1 exclusive video game related deal of the day per week.
• Exclusive preview of upcoming sales/promotions/deals per week or month.
• Special coupon on your birthday.

I think these are reasonable things to add to the current unlocked membership program. Shouldn't cost Best Buy much to implement and gives a little bit more reason to join. 

Is there a way that Elite and Elite Plus could have a "product notification" option? So far, being Elite or Elite Plus hasn't really had much benefit.

Of course I'm talking about popular and (usually) "out of stock" items (current hot PS5, XBX, RTX 30xx).

It just seems to be a pretty basic option that all customers should enjoy, Elite or not. BB can certainly "Beta" test on Elite customers, I'm OK with that. XD

Why has Best Buy taken away points earned for special financing?  I made a purchase for $249.99 and never recevied points due to selecting 6-month financing.  Why is Best Buy taking away points from its customers and not making the store employees aware of such a policy?  This policy is not posted anywhere on the store fronts or by the registers.  How is this ethical?  Til this policy is made known in the store and online, points should be given to customers accordingly.  This now makes me want to cancel everything I have with Best Buy move to buying straight from the manufacturers.  Please fix this Best Buy, or show your customers the policy!

So here are the only remaining titles available for this promotion.  

2013 Titles:

• Grand Theft Auto V
• The Last of Us
• South Park: The Stick of Truth
• Splinter Cell: Blacklist

I will be getting GTA V (midnight release I hope) and Splinter Cell: Blacklist.

Victory Can Be Pre-Ordered is the best new release incentive hands down, no competitors even come close.

This can't really be the end of this promotion?

It's the main reason why I choose Best Buy to get all my new releases.

Not when there's still so many great upcoming titles to be released!

How about continuing the promotion for the following titles.

New Suggested Titles:

•  Battlefield 4

•  Saints Row IV: Commander in Chief Edition

•  Resident Evil: Revelations

•  Destiny

•  Metro: Last Light Limited Edition

•  LEGO Marvel Super Heroes

•  Ride To Hell Retribution

•  Fast & Furious: Showdown 

•  Dark

•  Batman: Arkham Origins

•  Final Fantasy XIII: Lighting Returns

•  Watch Dogs

•  Remember Me

•  Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

•  Dark Souls II

•  Deadpool

•  FUSE

•  GRID 2

•  Lost Planet 3

•  Brothers in Arms: Furious 4

•  Tom Clancy's Rainbow 6: Patriots

•  The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

Sorry for missing some PlayStation exclusives but I'm an Xbox man.

So feel free to suggest any titles I may have missed.

We did it once HERE, can it be done again?

My wallet sure hopes so!!!  lol

Currently, Best Buy Gamer's Club Unlocked members save 20% off new games. This is a great feature, and that's why I don't mind paying for the new (much more expensive) service. However, the exclusion of digital games makes me less likely to purchase more titles.

Since we're now paying $120 for a 2 year subscription, it seems logical to include digital console titles seeing as how digital is the future. Many of us gamers want to move away from having physical copies, and instead have digital copies.

Going with this, the amount of digital games for systems like Xbox One and Playstation 4 are extremely lacking. I'd love to see more games available, similar to how Amazon has done, so I may purchase more!

There are quite a few games that could be added to this promotion. These are just some ideas. Granted, not all of them are going to come out this year but at least five are going to for sure.

The Order 1886

Bloodborne

Uncharted 4

Kingdom Hearts 3

Metal Gear Solid 5

Borderlands The Handsome Collection

Just Cause 3

The Division

Scalebound

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Forza Motorsport 6

Crackdown

Quantum Break

This obviously is not a new idea, BUT ... I really would like to see BB allow reviews to be edited.

I recently reviewed a Google Pixel 4a, and I since have learned that my one very minor complaint about the phone is something that easily is resolved by going to Settings. I sure wish I could add that to my review.

Finding items from BestBuy can be a pain when the item get de-listed from BB.com since you can no longer use the site to search local stores. This has been a consistant problem with video games & it happens alot on titles that are specifically part of @gamer coupon promos and/or Gamer's club exclusive coupons.

Yes, you can still call the store but since you have de-listed the item a non-BB savvy customer may not know how to get a hold of the SKU # or the rep who answers the call may have little to no knowledge of the item that is being requested. There's a big difference in the vanilla version and GOTY version but non gamers won't have a clue as to what GOTY means.

I see there's a way to research de-listed items being customer reviews but that only gets you the SKU # not the ability to look it up in stores. As a customer who drops into 7-10 different BestBuy's a month I see how big this issue is and too mahy times some stores have 2-3 stacks of items that are de-listed. Since it makes sense for you to sell them I'd assume allowing a cusomer to find the item would need to be made a priority.

I thinks it's been suggested before but a system update in general is probably past due.

i have an item in my wish list that is currently backordered 4 to 7 weeks.  it would be great to see a "notify me" when the item is in stock and ready for purchase, maybe even a notification sent your phone from the best buy application saying that, "this item is available for purchase!"

i don't know if anyone else has brought up this idea or not, but would be great to see this feature implemented on the website as well as on the smart phone application(s) across iPhone and Android.

hope other customers agree and make this happen! especially around the holiday season.