Best Buy blocks the sale of GeForce RTX cards to Totaltech members only

The current shortage of video cards has led some retailers to take actions to prevent malicious users from using bots or exploiting other tricks to grab the largest number of products and then sell them on the market at inflated prices. Apparently, the well-known American chain Best Buy has also decided to take this path, even if the chosen method has caused some discontent.

In fact, Best Buy has recently launched the Totaltech program, a membership that allows to its members to have certain benefits, including dedicated technical support always available, free delivery and installation, some savings on repairs, returns in 60 days, access to exclusive special offers and more. Apparently, one of these advantages was precisely that related to the sale of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 video cards. For a few hours, only TotalTech subscribers (which, remember, has a cost of $ 199.99 per year) were able to purchase the entire series of cards, including the top of the range RTX 3090, running out of stocks in a blink of an eye. 'eye.

Photo Credit: Best Buy if (jQuery ("# ​​crm_srl-th_hardware_d_mh2_1"). is (": visible")) {console.log ("Edinet ADV adding zone: tag crm_srl-th_hardware_d_mh2_1 slot id: th_hardware_d_mh2 "); } Many users who are not subscribers to the service and who did not intend to spend nearly $ 200 more to have the option to buy a video card, as a result, were quite angry about this situation, but, moreover, Best Buy did nothing but incentivize the purchase of TotalTech membership. Another large US chain, NewEgg, also launched the Newegg Shuffle promotion to give only a few users the opportunity to purchase GPUs and DDR5 memory. However, BestBuy's move has created a real (rather expensive) paywall to allow users to get hold of a brand new video card, something consumers won't forget very easily.