Update 12/27/21: I first published this post about Best Buy business accounts back in February 2021. Escot asked in the comments for an update on my experiences, so I’ve added that to the end of the post under ‘Update 2’.
When taking advantage of gift card deals at Best Buy, have you ever been annoyed at the limit they place which only allows you to buy between 1 and 3 gift cards for any given deal per account?
If so, it can be possible to increase the limit – sometimes to a pretty significant extent – by having a BestBuy.com business account. You can open a BestBuy.com business account here; they give you the option of converting an existing personal account or opening a business account which runs separately to your personal account.
I discovered this thanks to a reader reaching out a couple of times over the past week. A few days ago, Best Buy offered a 20% discount on Domino’s gift cards and I listed the limit as 5 per customer as that was what Best Buy listed the limit as. Sasha reached out to advise that they were able to buy 7, so I thought I’d perhaps not reached the purchase limit after all. When trying to buy more though, it said I’d already reached the limit of 5. I asked Sasha if they had a business account and they did, so that explained it.
Being able to buy an extra couple of gift cards is great, but isn’t necessarily a huge thing. What is potentially huge is that the limits can be significantly higher depending on the deal. Best Buy is offering a 15% discount on $50 and $100 DoorDash gift cards today, but there’s a limit of 1 per denomination.
Well, there’s a limit of 1 per denomination if you have a personal account. If you have a business account, Sasha gave me a heads up that the limit is 15 per denomination. That means that rather than being able to rack up $127.50 of spend (1x $100 card and 1x $50 card with the 15% discount), you can rack up $1,912.50 of spend.
I’ve no idea how common it is for limits to be so much higher on business accounts, but I’m certainly willing to find out. I’ve therefore opened a Best Buy business account so I have access to the higher limits for not only this deal but other deals going forward.
In hindsight, I probably should have always realized this was the case. When trying to add more gift cards to your cart than is allowed for a deal, you’ll see a message like this:
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen that message, but it shamefully never occurred to me that I should open a Best Buy business account to see what kind of limit would be provided. That’s thankfully been rectified.
h/t Sasha
Update
I’ve received a couple of questions since publishing this, so wanted to update the post as it’s stuff I should’ve mentioned originally.
First, when applying for a business account, it asks for your type of business. One of the options is ‘Reseller’, but it might be best to not select that option. My guess is that Best Buy regards reseller as a product reseller rather than a gift card reseller and they don’t seem keen on product resellers. I therefore selected ‘Other’ and wrote ‘Online Publishing’ in the subsequent field seeing as that actually is my main business. As for the business name, I entered my business name as my name as I’m sole proprietor, much in the same way that I enter that name when applying for business credit cards.
Second, it looks like you still earn Best Buy Rewards on business accounts, so you wouldn’t be forgoing those.
Finally, my anecdotal experience after one gift card order isn’t amazing. I added a credit card to my new business account and bought a $100 DoorDash gift card; despite the limit of 15, I figured slow and steady wins the race. Unfortunately slow and steady also appears to get promptly auto-cancelled. If you upgrade a personal account to a business account, that might be more successful but I’m not certain about that.
I might place a small order for a physical product using my business account to help season it in the hopes of being more successful with gift card orders in the future. Having said that, it might simply be that they don’t like a gift card order immediately after a new account is opened. I’ll therefore keep trying to buy gift cards before I get a chance to head to a Best Buy store to buy something on my business account in the hope that the orders go through without any issue.
Update 2
I’ve now had a Best Buy business account in addition to my personal account for the past 10 months. This turned out to be an excellent decision because it’s enable me to hit many gift card deals much harder than I would’ve been able to buy on a personal account.
There have been times where personal accounts have had a limit of one, whereas business accounts have had limits of three or even up to 15. Being able to buy three at a time, then another three, then another three is awesome. The ability to get subsequent orders for the same deal fulfilled isn’t guaranteed, but I’ve often been able to get more than one order of three gift cards fulfilled.
When it comes to Best Buy Rewards, a slight downside is that when setting up a brand new business account you have to start from scratch. However, thanks to the fact that you can buy many more gift cards per deal, it didn’t take too long to hit the top tier of elite status and thereby increased overall earnings. The rewards you earn on a business account are separate to those earned on a personal account; it might be possible to redeem rewards from one account on another in-store, but I’ve not wanted to risk that.
From what I can remember, I got my first few online gift card orders cancelled by Best Buy after setting up the new business account. I bought a physical item (i.e. non-gift card) in-store after a few times of that happening; that seemed to do the trick because after that I was able to get online gift card orders fulfilled.
When there have been some decent deals (rather than just break even offers), I’ve tried buying on my business account in one browser and my personal account in incognito mode. That’s rarely worked – I’ve usually gotten one or both of those orders cancelled. There might not be a connection with that, but now I just focus on my business account seeing as that has higher limits and I’d rather try to get multiple orders of three or 15 gift cards fulfilled rather than risking 3 + 1 (business + personal) orders both getting cancelled. Using a different browser and/or computer for the two accounts might have more success, but I’ve not tested that out yet.
There might be some kind of downside with Best Buy business accounts, but I’ve yet to encounter one and so would strongly recommend looking into this because there are some good upsides.
Do you still earn rewards on biz acct?
It looks like you do.
A “year later” update for this post would be most interesting, with more of your experiences and those of other readers too. Have been reminded of this each time your bestbuy deal alerts mention the greater buying power for biz members…. Inquiring minds will want to know how (or if) having a biz account affects personal accounts? The wisdom in “seasoning” a new biz (or personal) account is understood. Yet can you be “active” with both, without drawing scrutiny or higher order cancel issues on either? We already have “earned” two elite plus memberships in our household, use them routinely on the nice gc deals… and are hesitant to add a biz account, if it might cause problems for the former. If I’d open a formal bb biz account, do points earned there get combined with existing elite membership? (or are bb biz accounts distinctly separate?) Or is this a realm better not to ask?
Sorry, I’m not ignoring your request – I’ll republish and update this post with my experiences as soon as I have time 🙂 Quick answer though is that it’s definitely worth getting a separate business account IMO.