There might be a time where you find a great deal on something you want to buy but you don’t want the hassle of going to the store to try and fight for it. Or maybe you just want it shipped to your house so you’d rather buy it online. Whatever the case may be your best option might be trying to get Amazon to price match the item.
I’ve had success with this a few different times, but it isn’t always successful. Sometimes the item will be on a special promotion of some sort and the Amazon rep will deny you. But sometimes it will work and you’ll save tons of money without having to leave your couch.
Recently Walmart put a bunch of different HDTV’s on sale and I wanted to get one of them.
Here is my experience:
I was price matching one of the tvs and I had the walmart link and the Amazon link for the same item. the amazon TV link should be a tv sold by amazon and not a different vendor otherwise this may not work. It’s still possible that it could work, but it is less likely.
the walmart needs to shows in stock for the tv and it actually has to be in the store if it’s a local deal (which it was for me). The tv deal I found was the lowest price at one of the local walmart stores, but when you checked walmart.com it was selling for a higher price there.
What the amazon rep will have to do is call into walmart to check if the tv is available and check on the price. So, this is basically like you calling in to check on the tv and price. If you go this route just be aware of that and that this may get your tv swiped after they see the price (yes I’ve heard rumors of TVs going out of stock once the employees know of the great deal. I can verify that after I did this the TV showed out of stock less than an hour after I did this).
So if you’d rather try to go to the walmart to get it from there you’ll have to decide to maybe drive there and check that way first if you don’t want to alert the walmart employees of the price if you’re worried about a walmart scan and grab. It’s kinda funny but that seems like a common thing that happens according to some forums talking about these deals.
so I went to the amazon site and put the same tv in my cart. Then I went and contacted Amazon chat once I had the tv in my cart and I had the 2 links I needed (the walmart link showin ghte low price and the Amazon link showing what I was buying). the first chat person i connected to passed me along to the pricing department (the 2nd chat person) if this 2nd chat person tries to send you to a 3rd person (which they did to me the first time) then just end the chat and start again because in my experience you will be more successful with this pricing department chat rep. When they tried sending me to another chat department that didn’t sound right to me I ended it and restarted the chat process. A little bit of chat rep roulette if you will. The 2nd chat person I spoke with was someone in the pricing department (according to the 1st chat person that sent me there) and off we went with the process.
Obviously, be polite and tell them about the tv you’d like to price match. Tell them you have it in your cart and you want help purchasing it and price matching it to your local stores lower price. Then they will do their thing and call walmart to verify availability and price.
This could prove to be tricky (Have you ever tried calling walmart for info?). The Amazon rep I got was hung up on a few times, but I kept talking to him and thanking him for his help. I got a good rep that was telling me what was going on on his end so that was good and lucky. He said they would hang up on him when they heard he was with amazon so he then had to call in pretending to be a customer looking for the tv.
I told him I hope you get someone competent. good luck and thank you! Eventually he finally got through to someone that was helpful that went and checked that the tv was in stock and for the right price. Once this happened the rep let me know that he verified the price and availability at the Walmart and that we can now proceed.
The next step is buying the item on Amazon and then getting the price adjustment
What you have to do next might seem a bit strange because you won’t get the lower price immediately. What you’ll have to do is buy the TV from Amazon at the regular price and then the Amazon rep will put in a price adjustment request. This request may or may not be approved immediately. This is what the Amazon rep told me. He said that he would be in touch with me within 48 hours to let me know what happens.
It won’t be the same each time as each approval is checked on individually by a manager. I have had deals approved immediately and I have had deals that get approved 2 days later. I have also have deals that get denied completely.
Don’t worry if you get denied though. You won’t have to pay the full price on the TV. The Amazon rep will assure you that if that’s the case then they would just cancel the order and stop delivery of the TV. If you’re worried about the item being shipped before you get the price adjustment then just set your shipping date further out into the future when you buy your tv so that it gives you time to get the price adjustment.
The downside to this method is if you don’t get approved for the price match adjustment then you’ll may miss out on the deal because it might be out of stock by that point. So choose wisely when you decide on which route you want to go.
Another good thing about Amazon is that they will do the price adjustment after you have already purchased an item and not before it. So really it’s more of a price guarantee and not a “price match”. That’s why they ask you to make the purchase before they can adjust the price for you. Once they make the price adjustment they’ll reimburse you the same way that you paid for the item.
Good luck in your deal hunts!