Amazon is the go to place to shop online for many people these days. It would definitely make sense for you to at least check them out the next time you’re looking to buy something. If you’re familiar with the way pricing works at Amazon then you know that the prices for items they have for sale will go up and down seemingly at random on the site. So what happens if you buy something one day and then you see the price has dropped the next day? Is there a way to get your money back from Amazon post purchase for a price drop? That’s what I’m going to talk about here.
Just last week I bought a new vacuum cleaner from Amazon. The one I had was on its last legs, making all sorts of weird noises, so it was time to find something new. I came across a vacuum that looked nice with some good reviews, and that was advertised for a discount from the list price. I went with it and made the purchase.
The next morning I was checking my Amazon account to see how the shipment was going (I selected free shipping) and I noticed that the price on the vacuum had dropped $10 overnight. The vacuum hadn’t even shipped yet so I figured it would be easy to get a refund for the difference. As it turns out, that isn’t something that is “easy” to do at Amazon. Actually, I was told it’s not something they can do at all, however I was able to get it done nonetheless. This is what I did.
What I did to get the price drop difference from Amazon
I knew I had to get to customer service somehow, and time was critical because prices fluctuate, so I first took a screenshot of the item from sale at the lower price. I never ended up using this, but I had it just in case the price changed again.
Then I went and contacted Amazon’s chat help. To get there you have to scroll to the bottom of the page and click on “help” in the footer. Once there you need to scroll down and look under “Browse help topics” Then hover over “need more help?”. Then you can click on “contact us” on the right. (Yes, they don’t make it easy to find). They made me sign in, and I was finally in.
The Contact us page had an option at the top to choose “What can we help you with?” So I selected “an order I placed”. There it had info about my recent order and options to “Change payment method”, “cancel items”, “change shipping speed”, or “change delivery address”. I didn’t want to have to cancel my order and then rebuy it, although that may have solved my problem at this point because the item hadn’t shipped yet, but instead I thought there should be an easier way. So I scrolled to the bottom where it asks “Tell us more about your issue”.
I looked at the options in the drop down and I selected “more order issues” because none of the other ones seemed right for my problem. Then in the next drop down options they gave me I selected “other order question or issue”. Next I entered “price dropped on item I purchased” in the “enter short summary of issue” field.
I found that you don’t really need to put anything into this last field because once it pops up you can already see the contact us options at the bottom. I had the options email, phone or chat. I clicked on chat.
The chat box window pops up where it asks you “how can we help you today” so I just put in “help with order” and then clicked on start chat.
What happens next may be different for you, but the important thing is not to give up. I was not given a good option to “price match” the first couple go arounds, but I was able to get around that. This is what happened to me.
My first chat rep showed up quickly and asked me how they can help me. I told them that I had purchased a vacuum cleaner yesterday and that I was shopping today and noticed the price had dropped, and could they please refund me the difference. The rep asked for the order number and the item in question, and then I had to wait for a minute. Suddenly I was transferred over to their “price adjustments team” or it might have been called the “price match” team. All that matters is that you understand that I was transferred over to another department.
Once this happened I was completely blocked from anything. I asked them what I could have done, and they told me there was nothing they could do. Their policy is “with the exception of TVs, we don’t offer post-purchase adjustments.” I told them that I could still cancel my purchase and rebuy it today and it would accomplish the same thing I wanted to do (saving money) so why was there no way they could do that for me in an easier way? They had no answer, and just said they couldn’t do anything and that it was policy.
I wasn’t convinced, so I decided to play a little customer service roulette to see if I get a different answer the second time around. I didn’t. I got transferred over to the same department and a different rep also told me they couldn’t do anything.
Cancel your Amazon order and things suddenly change
At this point I was a little annoyed that they couldn’t do anything for me. I decided that I would just cancel my order and rebuy it myself for the lower price. Even though I could do that myself I wanted to see if there was an easier way to do it where I wouldn’t actually have to cancel my order. I went to chat support one last time.
This time I went in and my first question was this, “I’d like help cancelling my order for my vacuum that I made yesterday so that I can rebuy it today at the lower price ($10 less) can you please help me with the easiest way to do that or any other way I can get the price difference?” The rep asked for my order number and the item and I gave it to him.
I was not transferred over to a different department this time. It took the rep about 10 seconds to suggest something to me. He said, “I understand that you want to cancel a purchase in order to buy it at the lower price. How about if we give you the difference as a promotional credit to your account?” I told him that would great, go ahead. He immediately told me it was done and I finally got the solution to my problem.
I didn’t mind getting back “promotional credit” because I’ll be back for more from Amazon sometime in the future anyways, so no big deal. I should note that promotional credit is only good on stuff that is “shipped from and sold by Amazon”. That’s still a whole lot of stuff you can use it on.
Why the other department couldn’t figure out this solution is silly, but I assume it’s to keep from losing sales. Once I got into cancel return mode they were doing their best to keep my business. That’s just how it works sometimes.