Earlier this fall Target and Best Buy announced that they were going to start matching prices from Amazon.com (with some restrictions) — at least for awhile.
Since that announcement, I’ve requested (and received) a price match at Best Buy on a couple of occasions. I haven’t tried Target yet, but I’d expect it to be equally smooth. It’ll be interesting to see how long this lasts.
Update1: Apparently Target has already dropped the idea, effective Dec 16th.
Update2: On Jan 8th Target got back in the game, agreeing to match prices from Target.com, Amazon.com, Walmart.com, BestBuy.com, ToysRUs.com, and BabiesRUs.com
While I doubt that this will be a sustainable practice in the long run, I thought I’d start accumulating the names of real-world (i.e., brick & mortar) stores that are willing to match Amazon’s prices.
So far I only have the two… Best Buy and Target.
Update3: As of mid-Feburary 2013, Best Buy has made their online price match policy permanent.
I’ll add others if/when I discover them, and I invite you to help out by sharing the names of other stores with online price match policies. Just post a comment and I’ll add it to the list once I verify it.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Target announced on Monday that they are no longer matching online retailer prices…very interesting change of tone.
As for Best Buy, I had a terrible experience trying to get a price match there a few weeks ago and wrote about it: http://thecollegeinvestor.com/5032/buy-fail-showroom/
Interesting. I hadn’t heard about Target changing their policy. Can’t say that I’m surprised, though.
It’s awfully hard to run a huge fleet of brick & mortar stores while offering online prices. They must by hoping that people will request a price match on one item will buying others at full price. But…
In the two times I’ve taken advantage of the policy, that hasn’t been the case.
The first time, I got a price match on both items that I bought. The second time I got a price match on the one item I bought. I would’ve bought something else at regular price but it was out of stock (Amazon was likewise out of stock so I couldn’t have price-matched it).