Borders rewards and my impulse buy

April 27th, 2006 | by mbhunter |

This is a free program that Borders offers. You earn 5% on most purchases from Borders, redeemable after a $10 minimum in rewards is reached, spendable around the holiday season. Plus you can earn 10% off on “personal shopping days” that are awarded if you spend more than $50 during the previous month.

As an extra bonus for signing up, we had the option of receiving 30% off one regularly priced item, a free 12-ounce beverage from the café, or $5 in bonus applied to our rewards. We took the $5 in rewards because it brought us halfway toward being able to redeem the bonus for Christmas. This means we’re only on the hook to buy $100 in merchandise instead of $200 to redeem the bonus.

We don’t buy books in the store very often, because most of the time they’re the most expensive way to buy them (except maybe ordering them from across the ocean). There are a couple of good reasons to buy something in the store that normally would be considered an impulse buy, though:

  • You want to make a life-changing commitment before you change your mind. I seemed to have the urge to buy The Abs Diet when I was far away from a computer. I almost never had the urge to buy it while I was at the computer. Buying the book (which did good things for a very good friend of mine) was a first step to starting up on the plan outlined in the book. (I can stand to lose about 70 pounds.) So I went into the store and (finally!) bought the book.
  • The item always seems to be out of stock. There are enough bargain hunters out there that they will seek out the lowest price for a popular item (like a book on Amazon) and will buy out what they have.  So you may have to wait weeks to get a popular item at a 30% discount to list price.

How else do you justify paying retail?

Questions tagged credit-card at Cash Commons:

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  1. One Response to “Borders rewards and my impulse buy”

  2. By Terri W. on Apr 27, 2006 | Reply

    I very, very rarely pay retail in a bookstore … unless it’s specifically and consciously for an author that I want to give a boost to, like when Joanne Jacobs’ [an edublogger] “Our School” came out. I went and bought that full price in hardcover.

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