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Friday, March 21, 2008

Price Matching Does Work

If you do virtually any shopping on-line, you've probably noticed that many sites have some sort of price guarantee. This isn't only limited to shopping on-line, either, since many larger retailers do the same thing in stores. It does pay to be aware of these offers, because they offer you opportunities to be creative with your shopping. You can end up with a nice savings that's below what was originally being offered in the first place. You can also have a local merchant match a price that can save you the time (and gas) to drive to a competitor much further away -- nowadays you have to factor in the cost of the trip to the store, it's getting to be that expensive to drive!

Sometimes the guarantees are just a general "we'll meet or beat any advertised price." Other stores offer a more specific "110% price guarantee" where they will drop the price by the difference between their and the competitor's and then tack on another 10% of the difference. In that case you've gotten an even better price than where you started.

My most recent case of price matching involves purchasing a high-quality juicer, which I had seen at a health seminar for $500. I noted the model number and did some on-line price-checking, and found prices ranging from $419 to $459. But I also noted some sites saying they couldn't mention anything below $419 since that was the "minimum advertised price." Those sites asked you to send in your e-mail address and they'd give you their special offers.

I wrote to a couple of them and they were returning prices in the $380-$390 ranges. I also noted that one of the sites had a note on the website that they would beat any competitor's quote by $15. So I sent them the quote with the special unadvertised price. Sure enough, they lived up to their pledge and offered to beat that by $15. So I was able to purchase this juicer for $365 (the regular price at their website without any price-matching offer was $439, so they were giving me $74 off their normal price).

Price matching works best when you are dealing with items that have specific model numbers which are sold by a variety of retailers. When a GPS system was on sale at Circuit City a while ago, I knew that Staples sold the same model, and they did the 110% price match, giving me a better price than if I had driven further and gone to Circuit City (and I also got Staples Rewards points for making my purchase there).

If you have some stores that are favorites, it's probably worth a bit of time to check their websites and see what their price-match policies are. Some sites make them very easy to see (shoebuy.com has their 110% price guarantee near the top of their webpage), and for others you have to check out their customer service links for information. But once you know they're there, you can use them as part of a shopping strategy. Just one more tool in the battle to keep more bucks in your own pocket.

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