While this holiday season has been met with record online shopping, remember that many retailers (even the online ones) don’t necessarily offer their best prices leading up to Christmas. I personally did much of my Christmas shopping via Amazon. And today being the day after Christmas, I thought I’d check the current prices on all those presents I bought and shipped. Here’s what I found:
Out of approximately a dozen items ordered, four had significant price drops. For example, I purchased this Logitech Harmony 550 Universal Remote for $88.55 in the first part of December. Day after Christmas price? $79.99. And let’s not forget this Toshiba HD DVD player with 7 HD Movies deal that I have been following for some time as part of the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray battle. The price had been closer to $250 for the two weeks before Christmas but has now dropped back down to $179.
Of course, I shop with Amazon for many reasons. And one of those reasons is the company’s 30-day price guarantee. It’s a simple process: call Amazon customer service (1-800-201-7575 ext. 7 to get a human right away) and give them your order number(s) or email address. Any price drops on items you purchased within the past 30 days will be credited back to you. I went through this process on my four items while writing this article, and it took me less than ten minutes to get back a credit of an average of 10% of the original price.
So if you’re an Amazon holiday shopper, be sure to check your orders for the month of December. Let us know in the comments if you find any price drops.
*Update* TechCrunch has an interesting piece that has some stats showing just how successful this holiday season was for Amazon. For those who like stats even more, Comscore has more numbers about this season’s online shopping.
*Update 2* Amazon press release: Amazon.com Wraps Up Its 13th Holiday With Best Season Ever
Great article Bob. I have always wondered if Amazon did price matching. I just bought some Audio Technica noise canceling headphones on Amazon. I was bummed to see they had gone up $10 to $125, but I bought them anyway. Here’s hoping they drop again. Thanks for including contact info as well.
Thanks for the reminder! Scored a $10 credit (on the Rocky DVD Boxed Set) this morning using the web form on the site.
Got a prompt email response saying I get my money back, but see if you can decipher this part, which came after a couple paragraphs about my $10 credit being awarded:
“Further, I’ve verified that the $ price you are referring to is actually offered by another seller, . Because Amazon.com does not have a price matching policy, we cannot match the price offered by another seller on our website.”
Looks like an orphan of some sloppy copy/paste action, along with an empty form field. 🙂
Interesting, Kevin. Out of curiosity, how long did it take you to find and fill out the web form? It’s likely a faster process than my old school phone call way of handling things. But I didn’t get any bonus copy/paste action in my follow up emails. 🙂
It was a snap. Took a couple seconds to find the link (I’d used the customer service stuff before so I knew how to get there), and another couple seconds to type a sentence about the price drop. Hit send, and boom.
Payment was processed this morning, btw.
We provide free Amazon Price Watch service here:
http://www.nukeprice.com