Price adjustments are a wonderful thing. You buy an item, it goes on sale within the next week/10 days/whatever the store policy is, and the store refunds the difference between what you paid and what the sale price is. This is ESPECIALLY good for me and my husband. We seem to have an unerring knack for buying something IMMEDIATELY before the price drops. This may or may not tie in with our unerring knack for picking a grocery checkout line that will end up taking the longest to go through out of all the checkout lines. We’re good - really good. But that’s a whole other story.
Back to price adjustments. I’m beginning to think that if we buy anything from an electronics store, we may as well just figure on making a trip back there within the next week (or day) along with our receipt, because the price of that item WILL drop. Hmmm…wonder if there is any way to get paid for this skill…”I really like this camera.” “Oh, thank you, we will buy it next week.” Probably not (but if there was, I could also hire out for picking the non-winning slot machines “Look, she likes this one; avoid it like the plague.” Or “hey, wanna know which grocery line is quickest?”)
It happened again this past weekend. My husband had been saving up for a new digital camera. We have a perfectly good one, but it’s four years old and it is HUGE, by today’s standards. Not the kind of camera I could carry in my purse (well, I could if I carried nothing else.) And it wouldn’t fit in a pocket unless you’re a kangaroo. Our son had bought his girlfriend a teeny-tiny digital camera last year, and my husband has been jonesing for one ever since (his theory seems to be “the smaller, the better” when it comes to electronics.)
So we went to our favorite electronics store. The clerk asked my husband if he knew what he wanted in a digital camera, and my husband rattles off a laundry list of everything it must have. Lo and behold, one camera fills the bill - the same make as our big digital camera - heck, basically the same model name. Just updated, tiny, and more megapixels. Now I know what he was researching online all those nights…The price seems to match the amount of money burning a hole in my husband’s pocket, and the camera goes home with us.
Next day…Sunday….I take the paper in and, out of morbid curiousity, grab the sales flyer for that store. Guess what just dropped by $50? Yep, our camera.
Thanks in part to the computer age, it’s really, really easy to get a price adjustment. Easier than in the past (and as I said, I have a lot of experience in this area.) All we do is bring in our receipt, and go to the service desk. I didn’t even have time to check out the stuff I wanted to look at when my husband was back, $50+ richer.
I know what you’re thinking - maybe we just rush to buy things, and if we’d wait, we wouldn’t have to do the price adjust two-step. I swear, it doesn’t matter how long we wait. The price will drop after we buy it. It’s a gift, I tell you!
Moral of this story is, it does pay to watch the prices after making a purchase. Even if you don’t have our track record, a price adjustment here or there can be a nice money saver!