Best Buy follows Target's lead with built-in speaker gift cards, but misses the point

Posted by John Brownlee, November 12, 2008 1:04 AM | permalink

By no means is Best Buy's new gift card as cool as the Target digicam gift card of yesterday. While Target's built-in camera allowed for some amount of personalization in an otherwise impersonal and lazy gift, all Best Buy's card does is allow the recipient to use it as a speaker for their iPod.

On one hand, it's nice to see gift cards that do something. On the other, ideally, they'd allow you to do something creative with your gift card: a speaker only is really interesting if you could also record some sort of message on the device to play out of that speaker.

I'm interested in knowing who Target and Best Buy's supplier for these cards is? Sounds like there's a new gift card supplier in town.

Best Buy Gift Certificate Also A Speaker [Best Buy]

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Discussion

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#1 posted by claud9999 , November 12, 2008 6:06 AM

With Circuit City going Ch.11, and with Target having financial difficulty (dunno 'bout Best Buy, but they can't be much better off) I caution folks about buying gift cards. If you have a gift card, you get in line with creditors if the company goes belly-up. So spend it as absolutely fast as you can (and if you give one as a gift, why not buy something for the person with the card and give them the card as a bonus?)

That being said, how loud is said "speaker"? I'd find it useful to have if it's louder than my iPhone's speaker, but I suspect it's not.

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#2 posted by Anonymous , November 12, 2008 7:59 AM

Last Christmas, Best Buy was selling a much cooler gift card with a programmable scrolling LED screen, which met all your customizability requirements (and was great for hacking).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DALuzxObGX0

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#3 posted by Anonymous , November 12, 2008 10:14 AM

I think it might have been Americhip in Torrance, CA who created/produced those cards.

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#4 posted by AirPillo , November 12, 2008 7:47 PM

I don't know if I'd call gift cards a lazy or impersonal gift.

I prefer them, myself. I can use them to get exactly what I want. I don't presume to expect other people to know what I want most, at times it's hard enough for me to figure that out.

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#5 posted by The Lizardman