About 10 years ago, when e-commerce started to take off, all the price-match programs added disclaimers excluding internet prices. This made perfect sense, because internet stores didn’t have much overhead, and in many cases, didn’t have any inventory. But for some reason, Staples was slow to the party, and there was about a 2 year period where you could go out to pricewatch.com and find the craziest, shadiest website with a super-low price and some outrageous shipping fee (which Staples sometimes included, sometimes didn’t), print out the webpage, take it in to a Staples, and walk out with a ludicrous deal.
I was only able to take advantage of this 3 or 4 times before I moved to a city without a Staples, and shortly thereafter they closed the loophole. I had friends get stuffed by managers who were wise to the silliness, but I never had a problem.
I just bought a dishwasher and was shown a few models at Best Buy and in every case it was a standard model with the same exact part number that they had a several other places. I didn’t buy it at BB because a place down the street was having a 15% off sale which made it cheaper to buy there. No need to try the price match because I bought it locally anyway.
A couple of months ago I bought a blue tooth ear piece at BB. They wanted $99 for it. Using my iPhone, I found it on Amazon for $38, showed it to them, and they matched the price. I bought it from a manager who was with a trainee. I turned her down cold when she tired to get me to buy the warranty and to join the Best Buy Club or whatever. She was not pleased.
A few years ago you could go to fatwallet or slickdeals and find ways to get consumer electronics dirt cheap. You’d combine price matching, instant rebates, mail in rebates and coupons.
I got a laptop for $300 back in 2007 by doing that. It was supposed to come with a free printer, but they wouldn’t give me one. Back then people were getting free monitors, free printers, getting $100 items for $15, etc. because they’d just find a way to combine all the rebates and price matches.
Then the stores all wised up, and it stopped. Now great deals rarely happen. But it was fun.
The warranty is unneccessary but the “Best Buy” club is not so bad. I either pay $10 a year or it’s free, I can’t remember which (most likely free). And I just give them the card every time I buy something, which is fairly often, and I accumulate points. Eventually, I get a coupon back. So - yay.
In January, my DVD player broke while I was home running a fever. Well, that sucked. I wanted to run in to a store, get a new player and run out, so I shopped for prices on Best Buy’s website. I found the one I wanted, verified that it was in stock at the local BB, and drove there. They had a different price than the one I had found, so I mentioned the on-line price (hadn’t thought to take a printout). They looked it up for me, verified my price and made a printout for me to take to the register. I gave the printout to the cashier, and she overrode the price, citing that they were price matching their own website.
No complications whatsover, no arguing. Completely painless. I didn’t see anything fraudulent or shady, and I have no problems shopping there again, but (like all good consumers) you should do your homework before shopping.
I know at Wal-mart, you need to have an advertisement with you before they’ll price match. The whole ad, not a ripped out page, not something printed up from a web site. Must be a current ad (they check the dates), must be the same brand, flavor, size, etc. And that’s to match on a bottle of ketchup. There may be more restrictions on higher ticket items like televisions.