Future Shop and Best Buy are offering up an incentive for customers to come order the iPhone 5s at their retail locations. Locations we contacted said existing and new iPhone 5s pre-orders will receive a $50 store gift card if their model of choice is not in stock.

So for example if you go into today and order the gold iPhone 5s but it isn’t available–you’ll receive a $50 store gift card once you receive your phone.

Best Buy locations we spoke with said they are applying that $50 towards the price of the phone, instead of a gift card. So technically this means your $229 16GB iPhone 5s could cost $179 on a two year term. Not a bad deal. Both stores can activate phones on Rogers, TELUS and Bell (and Fido, Koodo and Virgin), but will not offer the TELUS T-UP! program.

During last year’s iPhone 5 launch, Future Shop and Best Buy also had a similar policy. Overwhelming iPhone 5s demand and limited supply has caused worldwide shortages, with Apple saying the response has been “incredible”.

Thanks @med86!