Best Buy Lets People Dump Their Windows Surface Tablets For Up To $350

Steve Kovach/Business Insider

People who bought one of Microsoft's first-generation Surface tablets and want to move on to something else now have a friend in Best Buy. Best Buy is currently running a trade-in program where it will pay between $200 and $350 for Surface tablets.

The trade-in period kicked off on Oct. 6, first spotted this week by Chris Welch at The Verge, and it ends Oct. 21, the day before Microsoft's new Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 arrive. But the money comes in the form of an in-store credit, so it doesn't have to be used on a new Surface.

It's not a particularly good deal for a first-generation Surface Pro, which originally cost about $1,000. It's a better deal for the Surface RT version. Prices for RT originally started at $500. This summer Microsoft dropped prices for that to $350.

Interestingly, Best Buy is doing a buy-back program while Microsoft has so far ignored requests for one, reports Computerworlds' Gregg Keizer. Microsoft does have iPhone and iPad buyback programs.

The original Surface devices haven't been all that popular so far compared to the iPad. Microsoft was forced to take a $900 million writedown on the Surface RT due to unsold inventory. It said that Microsoft's entire Surface business only generated $853 million in revenue for the company between October of last year and June of this year. In that same period, Apple brought in $25 billion in revenue from the iPad.