Free Chromecast and $100 gift card if you pre-order a Verizon Pixel from Best Buy

The new Pixel smartphones certainly aren’t the cheapest handsets on the market right now, but there’s a good pre-order deal set to appear over at Best Buy that might help to convince you of a purchase.

Best Buy is offering customers who pre-order and activate a new Pixel or Pixel XL on Verizon a free Chromecast and a $100 gift card. Google really seems to be pushing that Verizon carrier exclusivity deal in the US. That $100 freebie might be useful for picking up some new smartphone accessories, such as those pricey Pixel cases, or to put towards another big purchase that you’ve been planning to make.

Combined that’s $135 worth of free stuff up for grabs, so the base-line 32GB Pixel would sort-of only cost $514.99 (retail price starts at $649.99), which sounds much more palatable. As a trade-off, Best Buy isn’t throwing in the same $79 Daydream View VR headset that you’ll get for free if you buy a Pixel or Pixel XL from Verizon or the Google Store. But I’m sure that many will still prefer Best Buy’s offer.

The Best Buy pre-order page isn’t up and running yet, and there’s no way to register for an e-mail update either. So you’ll have to manually check in at the website from time to time to catch the start of the deal. We also can’t tell what financing or contract options, if any, will be available from the retailer just yet.

Any takers out there?