{"id":13025,"date":"2022-02-14T12:41:50","date_gmt":"2022-02-14T12:41:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/02\/14\/best-buy-now-requires-200-membership-fee-for-all-nvidia-gpu-purchases\/"},"modified":"2022-02-14T12:41:50","modified_gmt":"2022-02-14T12:41:50","slug":"best-buy-now-requires-200-membership-fee-for-all-nvidia-gpu-purchases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/02\/14\/best-buy-now-requires-200-membership-fee-for-all-nvidia-gpu-purchases\/","title":{"rendered":"Best Buy Now Requires $200 Membership Fee for all Nvidia GPU Purchases"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Despite how hard it\u2019s become to purchase a GPU at anywhere near MSRP over the past two years, there was still one beacon of hope. Best Buy has been the sole distributor of Nvidia\u2019s extremely reasonably priced Founder\u2019s Edition cards, so if you got lucky and were able to add one to your cart, you could actually get an RTX 3080 for $699, for example. That\u2019s a smokin\u2019 deal, as those rare cards sell for around $2,000 on eBay. However, as of yesterday that beacon has been extinguished. Best Buy has seemingly locked all<\/em>\u00a0Nvidia GPUs behind an \u201cexclusive\u201d membership program called Totaltech, which costs $200 per year. Even worse, the new requirement applies to all Nvidia GPUs, including ones from its Add-in Board (AIB) partners, not just the Founder\u2019s Edition cards.<\/p>\n

Best Buy\u2019s new \u201cstrategy\u201d was revealed to gamers on Thursday of this week, which is the usual day of the week when the company has \u201cdrops\u201d for GPUs. Hopeful gamers polished their F5 keys and headed to the company\u2019s website, only to find that all of the its GPU listings were now labeled as an Exclusive Access Event. Even worse, the only way to gain access to this exclusive event was to enroll as a member of the company\u2019s Totaltech program.<\/p>\n

But being a Totaltech member doesn\u2019t guarantee you the right to buy a GPU. It\u00a0 just offers you extended warranty, free Geek Squad, free shipping, better support, and so forth. Totaltech is the price of admission BB is charging if you want to buy a graphics card from the company. It seems more like a scalper tax than anything else, since people buying multiple cards wouldn\u2019t scoff at an extra $199, but that\u2019s a bit steep for someone who just wants to buy a single gaming GPU for themselves.<\/p>\n

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It now costs $199 just to have the chance to buy a GPU at Best Buy. (Image: Reddit)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

And of course, that\u2019s exactly what happened according to online reports: scalpers signed up in droves and bought every single card they could get their hands on. Although Best Buy limits the sale of cards to one model per person, that doesn\u2019t prevent someone from buying an RTX 3080, 3070, 3060, and so forth, in one transaction, which is precisely what Videocardz<\/a> reports happened. Also, someone on Reddit linked to an Imgur gallery<\/a> showing receipts for multiple people who were busy stockpiling GPUs on Thursday.<\/p>\n

It seems as if this new restriction just locked out all the gamers, and let the scalpers and their bots run wild in the Best Buy store for once. One Reddit user who uses bots posted a comment in the thread<\/a> about it, noting that with this \u201cpaywall\u201d in place, scoring a GPU has never been easier, writing<\/a> \u201cBotting was the easiest it\u2019s been yet, all you needed was a decent bot and a few tt accounts to cook a bakers dozen ;).\u201d Said user defended his or her actions by pointing out they use the cards for mining, which unsurprisingly didn\u2019t stop the avalanche of hateful comments.<\/p>\n

All in all, this seems to officially be the end of the line for those who were still holding out hope they would score an Nvidia Founder\u2019s Edition GPU for themselves. Best Buy was the last place to get one at MSRP. Of course, there\u2019s still the EVGA queue<\/a>, which to its credit hasn\u2019t been price gouging either, but the wait time could be months. Your humble author signed up for an original RTX 3080 when the queue first opened after the Ampere launch, and had yet to receive a notification about it a year later.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s always the Newegg Shuffle too, which allows you to enter a random drawing for the chance to buy a GPU, but Newegg has heavily inflated prices, and usually bundles them with power supplies, monitors, and other accessories, so you could end up paying a ridiculous premium for a package of parts, when all wanted was a GPU. Newegg was also found to be forcing people to buy faulty power supplies<\/a> as part of its bundling program previously. The Newegg Shuffle isn\u2019t exactly a great option either.<\/p>\n

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