I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want to save money. That said, when I shop at a store that price matches I check around online before making the purchase. I’m not really talking about five cents here and there, although that adds up – I’m talking about saving on things where one may save dollars instead of cents.

For example, this week I saved $10 on ONE item.

Wal-Mart advertises that it matches advertised prices of other stores – ‘other stores’ (and I think ‘advertised’ as well) are the operative wording here. I saw an item I wanted from their online store – and it said it was available for pick-up in my local store that day. Great! I would just go to the store, show them on my smartphone that they sold it online for $10 less and get it for the lesser price, right? Wrong. It seems they do not honor their OWN online prices and if I read correctly on their website neither do they honor ONLINE prices from other stores as they don’t consider them competition to their retail stores….

No problem. I really wanted the item right then so Instead of ordering it online for store pickup and then having to linger around until it was ready, or make another trip to the store, I just drove a mile down the road to Best Buy. Best Buy was happy to honor Wal-Marts online price.

So, when this morning I realized I needed to make another purchase of the same item, I went to the Wal-Mart website, made sure it was available for pickup tody, ordered and paid for it. I got a text and an email when it was ready, then went to the store and picked it up, again saving $10. That’s $20 saved in two days.

The item sold in the physical Wal-Mart store for $39.97. It listed at walmart.com, not on sale, just the regular pricing, at $29.97.

Certainly stores have to have some guidelines and checks in place or price matching could easily get out of hand. If you read some store policies you may see that they have a list of compeditors they will price match. Some things are common sense. Nobody should expect any store to match something like a fire or water damage sale price.

Although Wal-Mart was the example used for this article, please don’t think I am complaining or fussing about my experience because that is not the case at all. I’m simply saying to read the fine print and save yourself a little time and inconvenience. If you come across something in store and online says it’s available that day for store pickup, order it. You can always pick it up later that day or even several days later! Policies vary from merchant to merchant!

In my opinion, I think it would make more sense, at least from a customer standpoint, for individual Wal-Marts to go ahead and honor online prices for an in stock items if they are going to pull it off the shelf upon receiving the order via online anyway.

That said, since I did mention Best Buy in this article (I love Best Buy, btw), awhile back we bought two cell phone cases that listed several dollars cheaper on their website than in store and they DID honor their own website prices.

Hope this information helps someone save a little money!