Amazon 30-day Price Guarantee: Check Your Holiday Shopping
by Bob CaswellIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
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
Note: This article is cross-posted at BobCaswell.com.
9 Comments 
Recent Price Drops
December 26th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
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.
December 26th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
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.
December 26th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
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.
December 27th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
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.
January 13th, 2008 at 1:20 am
[...] now $139. Amazon tends to play games with pricing; be sure to take advantage of the company’s 30-day price guarantee. Subscribe to TechConsumer: RSS / Email Sphere It 2 Comments Published on: [...]
January 13th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
[...] *Update* The price for the HD DVD player mentioned above was originally $147 when I first started writing this but is now $139. Amazon tends to play games with pricing; be sure to take advantage of the company’s 30-day price guarantee. [...]
January 30th, 2008 at 10:46 am
[...] bargain hunting itch of eBay. But then, I noticed Amazon had the following: competitive pricing, 30-day price guarantee, real customer service, and no shipping charges. Suddenly, it hit me. Wasting an entire day to save [...]
February 12th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
We provide free Amazon Price Watch service here:
http://www.nukeprice.com
July 15th, 2008 at 2:11 am
[...] *Update* The price for the HD DVD player mentioned above was originally $147 when I first started writing this but is now $129. Amazon tends to play games with pricing; be sure to take advantage of the company’s 30-day price guarantee. [...]