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student discount honored at best buy?

kymac

kymac

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 4, 2006
677
0
portland
hi everyone,
i have a $1oo gift card to best buy, (i can't stand best buy, but whatev) and i was wondering when leopard comes out if i would be able to purchase it at the student discount price? i mean.. they do have 'apple stores' in them, wouldn't they have the same policies?
 
Sorry, but the edu discount is only honored at the brick and mortar stores. You could sell the best buy gift card (I might even want it) or use it for something else.
 
i've done this before...best buy will price match any other lower price as long as you have proof that your a student. They'll take the difference and give you 10% of the difference off your total price. Then u can use that 100 dollar gift certificate

Remember...Best Buy wants your business!
 
cujoca said:
i've done this before...best buy will price match any other lower price as long as you have proof that your a student. They'll take the difference and give you 10% of the difference off your total price. Then u can use that 100 dollar gift certificate
Click to expand...
Really? If this is true, that is great news for me!
 
cujoca said:
i've done this before...best buy will price match any other lower price as long as you have proof that your a student. They'll take the difference and give you 10% of the difference off your total price. Then u can use that 100 dollar gift certificate
Click to expand...

I'm really surprised at this. Margins on Macs are awfully slim as it is, so it's really hard for them to make money if they buy the machine at the regular vendor price and then sell it to you at the EDU price. Apple can get away with it since they build the machines and thus have a larger profit margin that they're willing to eat into to make the sale.

Yes, Best Buy wants your business, but not if they lose money in the process.
 
It could be true because they will price match brick and mortar stores. So technically this should remain true since the price a student receives at an Apple retail store is through an actual outlet and not online. Though this is probably up to an individual managers discretion.
 
cujoca said:
i've done this before...best buy will price match any other lower price as long as you have proof that your a student. They'll take the difference and give you 10% of the difference off your total price. Then u can use that 100 dollar gift certificate

Remember...Best Buy wants your business!
Click to expand...

Okay it won't hurt to try.. but how do i show them what price apple is offering students? bring up the website? print something off?
 
While the official Apple edu discount won't be upheld by BestBuy (or other stores), that might be willing to drop their price for you if you tell them you have it, and it will be honored elsewhere.

I've done that at CompUSA...they couldn't honor the Apple discount, but they dropped the price and threw in some extra stuff for me. If the thing is $1500...they'd still rather sell it for $1400 than not at all.

(Plus, they don't take your Apple discount away from you, so you can still use that on something else, too :D)
 
Last I heard, you couldn't get the educational discount on software at the stores, only online. They'll do it for hardware, and AppleCare, but not software. I doubt Best Buy would do it anyway, but it can't hurt to ask.
 
akonradi said:
Sorry, but the edu discount is only honored at the brick and mortar stores. You could sell the best buy gift card (I might even want it) or use it for something else.
Click to expand...


Did you just say that the apple edu. discount is only honored at Apple brick and mortar stores?

Anyway, if that's the case, you're wrong. Go to Apple's online educational store to use your student discount online. Obviously you need to select your school and what not, and in some cases your uni has a special Apple Edu Store, but in most cases it's kind of like the regular Apple store but with student-friendly prices :D
 
cujoca is dead-on-right.

I worked at Future Shop (sister company of best buy), and we would match prices always, and beat the price by 10% of the difference. All you will have to do is go on the computer and show the salesman, and prove that the software is "available".This is because sometimes people bring random flyers from these family owned computer stores so we call the stores up to see if they have in stock...because anyone can put any price on anything...it actually has to be readily available for the lowest price guarantee to work.

Often you would call one of these places and they wouldn't even answer or anything...so normally we wouldn't match tiny, personally-owned stores, but big places like apple of course.

Essentially, if the price difference is 50$, they will have to give it to you for the price apple is offering MINUS 10% of the difference (=5$, woohoo!).

If you go on the BB site you can read more about their "Lowest Price guarantee".
 
so it sounds like i might have a good chance to be able to do this.. but everyone keeps talking about computers.. but again.. i was asking about leopard. so maybe the rules dont apply to software? hmmm heres to hoping. thanks everyone!
 
queshy said:
cujoca is dead-on-right.

I worked at Future Shop (sister company of best buy), and we would match prices always, and beat the price by 10% of the difference. All you will have to do is go on the computer and show the salesman, and prove that the computer is "available".This is because sometimes people bring random flyers from these family owned computer stores so we call the stores up to see if they have in stock...because anyone can put any price on anything...it actually has to be readily available for the lowest price guarantee to work.

Often you would call one of these places and they wouldn't even answer or anything...so normally we wouldn't match tiny, personally-owned stores, but big places like apple of course.

Essentially, if the price difference is 150$, they will have to give it to you for the price apple is offering MINUS 10% of the difference (=15$, woohoo!).

If you go on the BB site you can read more about their "Lowest Price guarantee".
Click to expand...
I'll have to look into this myself now.

What would be the best proof though? Would I need to go to a store that has an Apple Store nearby so they can confirm it?

It might be a good idea for Black Friday. :D
 
kymac said:
... i was wondering when leopard comes out if i would be able to purchase it at the student discount price?
Click to expand...
It seems only one poster actually read the OP. ;)

solvs said:
Last I heard, you couldn't get the educational discount on software at the stores, only online. They'll do it for hardware, and AppleCare, but not software. I doubt Best Buy would do it anyway, but it can't hurt to ask.
Click to expand...
That is Apple's stance-- even in B&M Apple stores, you are not allowed to purchase software with the educational discount. It must be purchased online.

Maybe, if you're lucky, the BB manager will let it slide-- but even Apple doesn't allow for it in-store.
 
kymac said:
so it sounds like i might have a good chance to be able to do this.. but everyone keeps talking about computers.. but again.. i was asking about leopard. so maybe the rules dont apply to software? hmmm heres to hoping. thanks everyone!
Click to expand...

Haha, I read your question then I read the other posts so I completely forgot you asked about leopard lol...sorry. I edited my post.

They should do it for software, too. It's funny though because if you go to an apple retail store they dont do edu. discounts for software...that's only online (at least my local apple store doesn't).

The only problem you may potentially have is that BB won't get leopard anywhere close to launch...it'll take them a few weeks to get it most likely. so be prepared to wait...
 
queshy said:
The only problem you may potentially have is that BB won't get leopard anywhere close to launch...it'll take them a few weeks to get it most likely. so be prepared to wait...
Click to expand...

Such little truth to this ... :D

Kevin :apple:
 
Instead of buying software like OS X from Apple's edu web store or trying to get a retail store like Best Buy to match, a good tip of advice is consider visiting or calling your school's IT dept. Some schools will sell certain products below Apple's edu pricing as they have different price agreements, I paid $59 USD for a new box of Tiger recently(I'm sure the price will be the same for Leopard) :cool:

As far as other replies of CompUSA caving, they're like Microcenter if you shop near the end of the month or quarterly reporting period. Some stores have sales quotas and will try several reasonable solutions to make a sale.
 
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