Victor got an email from Best Buy telling him “up to 100” PC games were on sale for members of the company’s Gamers Club, so he took his son down to their local store to see what was available. Nothing, that’s what, because the store hadn’t been told about the sale, even though it’s been going on for nearly a week.

I got an advertisement via email announcing that Best Buy was having a great sale on “up to 100” PC games that would be marked down for the Gamer’s Club members to $9.99 in-store while supplies last. Not every store was guaranteed to have stock of every title, but that’s pretty normal, so it was no big deal. The email ad even said “All of these specially priced games are marked with a GREEN sticker for easy identification in the store” which was nice for figuring out which games qualified. My son was looking for some new PC games, so we went down within an hour of getting the email.

Unfortunately, upon arriving at the store, [there were] no green stickers on the PC games. After milling about for a while trying to figure out what was going on, I asked the manager, who said he knew nothing of the promotion and did not have a list of $9.99 sale games. I think he thought I was making it up, so I asked to use the store PC and showed him the promotion on the Best Buy Reward Zone website. Even after that he said there was nothing he could do.

The crazy thing is that the “promotion” had already been in force for almost a week before the emails were sent out and there was still no store communication about it!

I took the cause up with Best Buy Customer Care who confirmed that the store has no documentation for this promotion. They’re still trying to get a list so they can pass out green stickers in the PC game section. Checking around on some of the game deal message boards, it seems we’re not the only store that doesn’t have a clue what these games are. I must say that Best Buy Customer Care has been very responsive and seems to be trying to make this right, but it’s so weird to have a sale your stores don’t know about – why do they bother?

If you’re a Reward Zone Gamers Club member and you don’t see any green stickers at your local store, check with the manager first before leaving—you may be the first person to tell him about the promotion.

(Photo: J O I D)

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.