Protect Against After-Purchase Price Drops with PriceProtectr

Filed in archive Buying Stuff on December 18, 2007

Learned about this from Flexo at Consumerism Commentary. It's PriceProtectr, which puts a watch on items you've purchased and lets you know if the price drops within the store's Price Protection period. This of course only works with retailers who have a policy of refunding the difference if the price drops after you make a purchase, but there are a lot of those-at least 74 by PriceProtectr's count, including Amazon, Best Buy, Circuit City, Costco, Sears, Staples and more.

To use the service, you copy and paste the URL of the product's online page and give them your e-mail address. If the price goes down, they e-mail you to let you know that you have some money coming back.

Simple service that can be a money saver, provided you actually go to PriceProtectr after you make purchases. This is where I usually fall down-I think it's a good servce, but I'm too lazy to put the tiny bit of work in to get the protection.

I will try to remember to do this for bigger purchases, where a $10 or more price drop may occur. I can't see worrying about a $1.50 price drop, though. Life's too short to hope for a $1.50 price drop and then have to go to the trouble of contacting the retailer to get your money. I'm different than many other people, though-you may have a mile-wide frugal streak and want to put every eligible purchase through PriceProtectr. And, to paraphrase jerry seinfeld, there's nothing wrong with that.