Best Buy Canada Open Box & Clearance Guide

Best Buy Canada Open Box is discounted off today's price, clearance is marked down on its own. A worked example of when each one wins, and why only stock varies by store.

Best Buy Canada clears stock two ways, Open Box and regular clearance, and the two are priced against different things. Neither one is automatically the better deal. Best Buy does make the comparison easier than most chains, though, because its prices are the same at every store.

Open Box is a discount off today's price

Open Box covers returned, ex-display, and lightly used units. The discount comes off Best Buy's current listed price, not off the lowest price the item has sold for. If the regular price crept up recently, a healthy-looking Open Box percentage can still leave you above what the same model cost new during an earlier sale.

Read the condition notes on the listing as well. An opened-and-returned box and an ex-display unit can both be sold as Open Box.

Clearance is new stock, marked down on its own

Clearance is sealed stock Best Buy wants gone: prior-generation laptops, phones, and TVs once a newer model lands, plus discontinued headphones, small appliances, and accessories. It's marked down separately from Open Box, and on the same model it can land below the Open Box price.

An example of how the math goes wrong

Say a laptop lists at $1,000 today. Two months ago it sold new for $850 during a sale. An Open Box unit shows up at 10% off, so $900, and the tag says you're saving $100. The price history says you're paying $50 more than a new one cost recently. And if a sealed clearance unit of the same model is sitting at $880, the Open Box one costs more and has already been out of the box.

None of those numbers are unusual on their own. The problem is that each tag only compares itself to the current list price, so you have to line them up yourself.

Same price everywhere, so only stock matters

Best Buy runs one national markdown catalogue, so a clearance price is the same at every store. What differs is whether a store has one. Best Buy reports a quantity on hand for pickup at each location, and ShelfAware checks every store near you in a single request. Go to the closest store with stock, since one further away won't be any cheaper.

Best Buy clearance is refreshed daily. Search the model to see its price history before choosing between Open Box and clearance, or see the Best Buy page for everything else ShelfAware tracks there.