Wow, I'm honestly impressed.

I'll have to tell a friend of mine who got his at Circuit City.

so wat are they gonna do with all those hd-dvd players now? sell them off somewhere else for super cheap. ima wait until hd-dvd players are done to 20bucks a pop and then buy a ton of them and take the laser diodes out and make me some $500 laser pointers. haha. dont tell anyone about this tho. its between you and me ok?

If they can get you to buy a Monster HDMI cable with that trade-in, the profit from the cable will make up the difference between the HD-DVD and Blu Ray anyways ;)

I imagine they're resell the returned HD-DVD players as open box right? Not too much to lose for them if they play it right. The HD-DVD faithful are still buying them.

@sdsviet: isn't the 360's external player about $40 right now? Just a couple more weeks and it'll be paydirt.

Funny, someone from Engadget called me at Circuit City today asking if we accepted 3 month old HD DVD players, told them ive seen people do it at my store but dont know if other stores are doing it and i come home from work and i find this. Makes me laugh how much i miss when i dont read things at work but read about it at home.

Though its prolly up on the store's intranet which is where ive seen something similar to this posted before.

Couldn't you just have returned a HD DVD player for full value within 3 months under CC return policies? Doesn't sound like a deal to me.

yea they are pretty damn cheap right now. i know i need it to be cheaper because im new at the laser thing and i'll prolly burn thru a few b4 i get it right. i should just tell my friend i'll give him 10 bucks for his xbox 360 one he is trying to sell.

I'm happy with my HD DVD player. I've got a great collection of Universal and Paramount movies in hidef right now that aren't available on Blu-ray.

Having a great return policy engenders brand loyalty. I get that. I make use of good return policies all the time. It's one of the primary reasons that I spend so much at Amazon - I know that if I'm not happy with my purchase for any reason, I can return it without hassle. But a policy like this is just mollycoddling.

HD-DVD buyers were not undereducated consumers who were cajoled or duped into buying some technology that they didn't need. They were spendthrift early adopters who knew the risk of taking a side while there was a format war on. They made their choice and they should live with it, even if it means looking at their fancy $600 up-converting DVD player every day and bemoaning their poor decision-making. Anything else is as ridiculous as padded lampposts.

Geeze weatherman! Do you have money ties into Circuit City's old HD-DVD profits somehow or are you just incredibly sadistic about early adopters who support new formats when others can only dream of the day that the price drops??? It's a rhetorical question so don't start flaming or whatever the little bitch fights in discussion boards are called.

BTW. What stops someone from buying a "several month" old HD DVD player on e to the bay or the list of Craig's and then taking it back to C.C. with an unhappy customer face to then get a PS3 or Blu Ray player? Find one that was 400.00 6 months ago at C.C. and return it. Dealmodo!!!

@Ziggy13: what stops people? proof of purchase. CC gets your telephone number when you buy so they have a record.

I have a slight suspicion that the memo is fake. I'm not too familiar with what internal Circuit City memo's usually look like, but this doesn't seem authentic. Some of the wording sounds a little weird to me. "Don't forget the HDMI cable!" and "we don't want to upset our valued customers" seem a little odd to me. Maybe something more along the lines of "customer service is our highest priority" would be more believable. Maybe I'm totally wrong, but I just got a strange vibe from the letter.

Whether or not I'm right, it sounds like Circuit City is actually honoring return requests, which is nice to see from a big electronics retailer. I guess they're trying to set themselves apart from Best Buy with better service (which shouldn't be hard at all, but they still have a long way to go).

Incoming "internal forum" leak from Best Buy?

@tutelary: You actually give them your phone number when they ask? They don't need it. They only want to add you to a db. When they ask I start singing Amy Whineouse's "Rehab"... No, no, no!

@usaplanb: Logic tells me that you are right however; it wouldn't be the first time logic has been defied.

this is a nice surprise. Good going.

So has anyone completed this transaction? Is a receipt required? It seems an odd memo since its very devoid of details and official CC language. Any thoughts?

If anyone has done this, I will do this tomorrow: Trading the HD-DVD player I bought 2 weeks ago for a PS3.

I wonder if they'll take HD DVD movies?

Toshiba will take all the returned players, rebadge them as upconverters, and sell them on Overstock.com for $69.99.

Just called the Circuit City I bought my player from (Saugus, MA) and they said they'd take it w/o a box - just need remote, manual and player. I got it in November. I hope this helps!

I'd happily buy a cheap "upconverter", since I intend never to invest in an HD format until the SD format is dead and gone.

This memo is very true, I saw it, its out, go use it, have a great day.

All of the HDDVD players are being returned to Toshiba

Holy crap, count me bewildered. Why wouldn't they promote this more? Makes them actually look smart.

I'm actually thinking about buying an HD-DVD player today on the super-cheap. Good move?

usaplanb.... I also wondered if the memo was fake, to the point that I sent the link to one of the higherups here at corporate to check on it. This morning, a little surfing and I found that memo on the internal website. So, strange, hard to believe, but true anyway.

Do you think the fact that the box that my A-3 came in is missing the UPC (cut out for the free HD-DVD deal) will matter? I still have the receipt.

I do some work with Circuit City and have been told that the official policy is very close to what Gizmodo initially reported.

To sum it up: If you bought an HD DVD player from Circuit City in the last 90 days, you can return it for store credit. The important clarification here is that this policy applies to HD DVD players only - not HD DVD discs.

Where's the best buy smurf who was posting here the other day. I'd like to show him an example of good customer service and a way to gain repeat business.

Lowest price does not always equal loyalty.

All -

I just returned from my local (Orlando) CC and talked to two ee's - one at cs and another working by the players. Both confirmed the deal. The lady at CS actually said that her manager told them to allow trade ins on anything in the last 6 months. I asked her if late august would work and she said yes. I also asked if it would work towards a ps3 and she said that she didn't see why not.

Now the only confusion was around the trade in value. I paid 269 for my hd-a2. When I asked her what the trade in value would be, she said that she THINKS it would be the current sale price. Well the a2 was replaced by the a3 which is selling for 89.99. Not really worth it, but this memo mentions the ORIGINAL PURCHASE PRICE.

I'm going to try to bring to the store tomorrow and see if I can't apply towards a 399 ps3. That would be sweet.

What has amazed me up here in Vancouver is how fast / well the HD DVD players sell (especially the A30), there are literally flying off the shelves according to the local guys.

Software also hasn't gone on sale yet, but it IS flying off the shelves as well, the two local Futureshop are selling the Software like there is no tomorrow and talking with the guys there it always was that way. Blu-Ray in contrast is still not moving as much as it should considering the amount of players (with PS3) out there.

I also noticed that the prices for Blu-Ray has gone up quite a bit. Up until late January you could get a new BD release for ~$30 in stores here, now they are closer to $40, the prices on HD DVD haven't come down yet either, and really, why should they? They are selling anyways.

It's a joke really, from all my observations and talking to people in stores, the customer (at least in Vancouver) had chosen HD DVD not Blu-Ray and it looks like they are STILL chosing it.

Ah well, so much for "vote with your wallet".

As for Circuit City: If it's true, good for them I guess, though I am not quite sure why anybody would WANT to trade in his player, it still plays movies and still does good upconvertion (I think even slightly better than my PS3).

@Xavoc: You wouldn't happen to be talking about me would ya? I posted first.

@sdsviet: Why would they ever drop below say $80 the price of a good upconverter?

I work for Circuit City, and I can confirm that this is true, and that memo is NOT fake, and thats exactly how they had written it. Circuit City sends the product back to Toshiba if its opened or bad, and gets the full value back, like if it was a bad product.

Does the player have to be from CC? can i get it from another store and trade in?

Good for Circuit city. Overheard a telephone rant at work in which my co-worker was getting more and more worked up about her "now useless" HD-DVD player. Geez, she was shouting into the phone about loosing the format war. She didn't care that it could upscale. I will pass this along to her. Who knows Circuit may be saving lives as this may just prevent a few "postal" incidents.

The trade-in worked for me. I did it yesterday (3/6). I was given full credit of my original purchase price on the HD-DVD player I bought at Circuit City last October. I recommend that you print this article and bring it with you to lessen confusion because not everyone at the store knew about the offer.

Things you WILL NEED: your receipt of purchase, the player, the remote and the manual. The manager at CCity would not take my player in return without the manual so I had to run back home to get it. I used the refund to buy a shiny new Panasonic Blu-Ray BD30.

I am a current Circuit City employee who just happened to have my district and store managers standing next to me when I was reading this article. There was a communication sent to us that said to be generous with our return policy. I'm not sure if this particular memo is real or fake, I just know that there is some truth to it. Requirements are either the reciept or the phone number it was purchased under. Our system keeps records for years under the phone number it was purchased under. "Adding you to our database" as Ziggy13 said really is for the customers benefit. Everyone knows what happens to thermal paper over time...the writing disappears. Having your phone number on record with your product saves you a headache when trying to return or repair a product. Hope this helps.

Confirmed, Went in last night sans box and receipt. traded for PS3, no questions asked just paid the difference!! playing my new PS3 now!!!

I just got back from the CC where my wife bought a HD-DVD in late November. The manager told us that corporate policy is now 90 days from purchase. So, we're screwed. Again.

I just got back from my Orlando CC store where they took an August return on an HD-A2 for $269 towards a ps3! The key is finding the right person who will honor it. Evidently the head manager had told ee's that they would allow them up to about 6 months (mine was slightly over).

Circuit city is the best....