I recently found a great deal on a new HDTV. It was for sale at Walmart but I got Amazon to price match the deal so that it could be shipped to my house. (It was for a 75 inch Samsung HDTV and it wouldn’t fit it in my car)
I’ve done some more research and investigating about this process which might be able to help you if you decide to try this route. It seems that not everyone will get the price match approved, and not only that but if you do get it approved the process can be different for you than it was for someone else. Let me explain.
First, let me say that Amazon does have a policy on their website about price matching that states “Amazon.com consistently works toward maintaining competitive prices on everything we carry and will match the price of other retailers for some items.” Then it goes on to say “Amazon.com will price match eligible purchases of televisions with select other retailers. For all other items, Amazon.com doesn’t offer price matching.”
So what does that mean?
Does Amazon price match any product or just TVs?
Well, in reality it means that it’s up to Amazon’s discretion whether or not they will price match something. No matter what the item is though you can always give it a go. I have had success with TVs, printers, a pressure washer, and bed linens to name a few. The process for each of these has been different for me, and the reason for it remains a bit of a mystery.
In my opinion it can really be the luck of the draw with your selected Amazon rep. The rep that ends up helping you can make or break the deal so be nice when you’re trying to do this. It really goes without saying, but sometimes it’s best to just let something go and move on to the next deal. Let me try and explain a few of my success stories to give you an idea of what’s happening with the Amazon price match deals.
So for my 75 inch TV that I found discounted at Walmart I was able to chat with an Amazon rep and get them to price match it before I made the purchase. They then told me to make the purchase and that they would adjust the price. They didn’t adjust the price for me immediately though. (in previous attempts at items that were of lesser value I was able to get a price adjusted immediately). Instead the TV remained at the original price while I waited for it to be approved.
So a couple days went by and my TV sent from processing to shipped and “on the way”. Once an item ships this is when Amazon charges your credit card so I was charged the full amount. In hindsight it might have been smarter to set my delivery date an extra week or 2 out into the future so that it would give me some extra time for the price match to get approved. I was told that since the price match was for such a large amount of money (The Amazon price was $2,097.99 and Walmart had the price for $549) that it needed to be approved by a manager and it would take 2 or 3 days. They also told me not to worry if the item was shipped because they could just cancel the shipment or I could refuse delivery and get a refund. So I went aheah and made the purchase.
I wasn’t sure if this was going to work or not because it seemed like one of those too good to be true deals, but sure enough a couple days later I got a call that I was approved and that I was going to get the refund. This is where it got strange. Instead of just refunding me the correct difference I was short changed some tax because for some reason they were not able to do the full refund on the TV alone. Instead they had to use older orders of mine and use them to send out extra refunds on top of my TV refund. I know this sounds weird, and it is, but let me try and explain.
So the TV was for $2,097.99 from Amazon and I was also charged my locations 8.5% Tax for a total of $2,276.32 . The price I should have matched was $549 and if you add 8.5% tax to that you will get $595.67 total for a difference of $1,680.65. That’s what I technically should have been refunded, but Amazon shorted me $42.50. I tried to explain it to the Amazon rep and he was very polite and understood my point of view but he told me it was completely out of his hands and that he’s done the best he could do. He put me on hold for a good 20 minutes and discussed it with his manager and this Amazon rep was a star so I know he was doing his best.
So how did I get refunded this amount and how was I shorted? First they said that they were only able to refund half the price on the TV purchase which was a total $1,048.99 plus this one automatically refunded me the $89.16 in tax (that’s my 8.5% tax on the $1,048.99) for a total of $1,138.15 for this “part” of the refund. I was told that they then had to use older transaction with them to issue some of the other refunds.
The next problem was that these other purchases that I have made with Amazon had to be with the same form of payment I used on this TV (Which was a new credit card I just got). Since my credit card was new I only had 1 other purchase that they could attach a “refund” to. So they attached a refund to this other purchase for a total of $150 even though it was a pressure washer I had purchased a couple months ago. Then they gave me $350 to go on a promotional certificate that I can use at Amazon. So if you don’t want to be out of cash be conscious of this and that this might happen to you if you don’t have enough individual transactions from the past with amazon using the same form of payment as for this tv you are trying to price match. Wow that’s kinda hard to explain. I hope I haven’t confused you.
Heres what Amazon emailed me:
“Hi Stock, your price match got approved, But in your case since on your account you don’t have enough order to complete the full refund ( we use old orders to issue refunds) you will be refunded $1288.15 plus $350 as a promotional certificate for a total of $1638.15”
Do you see what’s missing from this refund? It’s $42.50 (difference between $1638.15 and $1680.64) in tax that I am not getting because they can’t issue refunds on the tax according to the rep. Even though I was refunded for part of the tax they could only do that part because it was an automatic refund for when they refunded for the tv. Since they could only refund for half of the3 tv and then they had to use other transactions to add it up to the whole refund I lost out on the tax for those transactions because I guess that’s what they can do according to the rep.
Oddly enough, if I would have had the delivery date further out into the future it hypothetically would not have shipped until after they approved the price match. In that case they would have adjusted the price down to $549 before my tv was shipped and I would have never had to deal with this mess. I would have saved $42.50 in tax and I wouldn’t have had to deal with $350 in Amazon promotional certificate money.
In the end there’s really not too much I can complain about. I mean I just got about 70% off a $2000 plus HDTV monster. However this information could be useful to you depending on what you’re strategy is. If you want to save the most money and have the least amount of hassle then you should probably put the delivery date well out into the future. If you were smarter than me then you would have done that and then once the price match was approved and you can see it adjusted in Amazon you can always try to move the delivery date up if you want the TV sooner.