Do stores charge less online?
I was recently doing a little online Christmas shopping and I found a used version of what I was looking for at Gamestop.com. I thought the price of $15.99 was right so I added it my online shopping cart and selected the option to pick it up at the local Gamestop store so that I didn’t have to pay for shipping. As I was doing so, the thought occurred to me, “If they have it in stock why would I bother buying it online, I’ll just run by the store and buy it there.”
So, later that day I stopped into my local Gamestop to make my purchase and found the item I was looking for. The problem was the price was no longer $15.99, the price was 25% higher. While the fact that they charge that much more in their stores was a surprise, it was an even bigger surprise that Gamestop charges members of their club 11% more than their online customers.
Price Matching
When I pointed out the price difference to the Gamestop employee, he was very friendly. He immediately gave me the lower online price with no hassle. Here is a picture of the receipt to show how much lower the online price was than the in store price.
How to make sure you get the lowest price
A price difference of 25% is a lot, so it is important to make sure you check around to make sure you are getting the best possible price. When shopping online, you can use my guide to online shopping to get the lowest price, but even on stores it is easy to compare prices. When making a large purchase in a store I use the ShopSavvy app for my Android phone. There are several apps that are similar.
All I have to do is scan the bar code of the item I am buying and ShopSavvy does a search for me to see if I could get a better price some place else. The best part is that I usually don’t even have to go to another store, most stores are willing to match the best price you can find if you show them that another store has a better price.
Related articles
