Best Buy offering DTV converter box refunds for sales tax oversight

by Darren Murph, posted Jul 18th 2008 at 5:08PM

Chances are, you feel pretty strongly that you give enough of your hard-earned money to your state as it is, but if you're a resident of California, Connecticut, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Texas or Wisconsin who purchased a DTV converter box from Best Buy, you may have donated a little extra. Reportedly, some Best Buy locations accidentally overcharged for sales tax when deducting the $40 government voucher from the purchase price of DTV boxes, and now the retailer is looking to right the ship by doling out refunds. If you paid with a credit card, sit tight -- your check is in the mail; if you used greenbacks, don't even bother spending $5 per gallon to retrieve your $2.50.

[Thanks, Matthew]

Filed under: Misc, Tuners

Tags: 2009, best buy, BestBuy, converter box, ConverterBox, cutover, dtv, dtv converter box, DtvConverterBox, problem, retail, retailer, solution, switchover

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

Rob @ Jul 18th 2008 7:24PM

I received mine a couple of weeks ago.

Neutral

Justin @ Jul 19th 2008 10:03AM

Likewise--I got two refund checks of $3.30 each.

Neutral

EQC @ Jul 19th 2008 12:51PM

Can anybody verify if this applies in California?

I went down to my local best buy to get my $3.30 (8.25% tax in my city), but they had no idea what I was talking about. I brought a print-out of the linked story...they spent about an hour on the phone talking to various corporate offices and eventually told me that this doesn't apply in California, just a few other states.

Neutral

stiltskin @ Jul 20th 2008 2:21AM

Why did you go up there? Did you really expect someone to know anything?

C'mon at $4.00 bucks a gallon, or just to get 3 dollar? 3 dollars?

Neutral

EQC @ Jul 20th 2008 3:48PM

Yes, I expect businesses to be responsible enough to inform local stores when they've been overcharging consumers and a rebate policy is supposed to be in effect. That expectation is probably pretty hopeless, though, if most consumers don't care about being ripped off...

$3 isn't much money...but sometimes the principle of the issue is worth something too. Anyway, the 18-year old car we took gets 30+ mpg, and the store's only a couple miles away anyway -- the gas probably about 75 cents. Further, my wife was interested in a movie that was on sale, and I saw this as a way to save an additional $3 on it. (Of course, when their customer service failed to provide my money, we didn't reward them by making a purchase).

If I had just gone there to *spend* $15 though, would you question the profitability of that action? Is driving someplace to collect money somehow stupider than driving someplace to spend money?

Also, with gas being more expensive, shouldn't that be additional motivation to collect all the money that's rightfully mine? If I can spend 75 cents in gas to get $3.30 from Best Buy, they're giving me the money to travel 20 miles.

(I'll also note that I'm a frugally-living graduate student...$3 easily covers a day's worth of food for me, and as a student, my time isn't really worth much.)

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