Best Buy To Offer Try-Before-You-Buy Program For Some Products

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Customers who purchase expensive electronics only to return them days later has long been a bane of Best Buy and other retailers. But now the store is embracing this try-before-you-buy approach for certain products.

Best Buy is teaming up with an online rental startup to launch an official program allowing customers to rent items before actually purchasing them.

Recode reports that Best Buy will debut a program later this month with San Francisco-bases startup Lumoid, offering customers the chance to try everything from cameras, drones, wearables, and other gadgets.

Here’s how it works: Customers visit BestBuy.com and click on the try-before-you-buy section. From there, when customers click on a product, they are sent to the Lumoid website to finish the transaction.

It’s unclear how long the rental period is or if customers are charged daily or weekly.

In examples provided by Recode, a customer can rent a $999 DJI Phantom 4 drone for $50/day, while an Apple Watch can be tested for $50/week.

Customers renting products will receive 20% of the rental price in Lumoid credits, which can then be used toward purchasing the item, Recode reports.

Additionally, customers can received a discount when purchasing the items they’ve tested, Recode reports, noting that the products being used for the system are open box, meaning they were purchased from the retailer but returned.

 

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