Did you know that if the price on something you buy drops, within 30 days of your purchase date, Amazon.com will credit you the difference if you ask for it? It’s a not-advertised price drop policy that most people don’t know about and it’s saved me tons of money over the last few years. I didn’t know it was “secret” until I brought up recently and no one knew what I was talking about, so I thought I’d write a post all about how to take advantage of it. One of the great things about the drop policy is that it still works for orders where a coupon is involved or a “Buy Both and Save” deal is utilized. They only consider the individual item prices (based on the invoice) and not the final price after discounts!
The first step is to investigate which of your purchases may be eligible for a refund. Simply go into “Your Account” and look at all orders in the last 30 days. The items in your invoices are links so you can click on it and see if the prices match. If the price has dropped, you have a great candidate. Copy the order number because you’ll need it when you request the refund.
Then, go here: Return & Refunds Contact Form. You should see a contact form where you can now request your refund.
Change the Subject dropdown to “Refund Inquiry” and look to see if that order is one of the ones listed, check the boxes if they are. If they aren’t, you’ll have to paste in that order number in the “Other” box.
In the last year they’ve really streamlined this process, I believe all you have to do now in comments is write that the price of your item has dropped within the last thirty days and that you’d like a refund. The presence of the dropdown box probably means you can select multiple orders and just write a generic comment and it should get taken care of. In the past, I specifically called out item names, old and new prices.
Where this because beautiful, and I hope they haven’t changed, is when coupons are taken into account. If let’s say you purchase two Le Creuset pots that were $125 as a Buy Both and Save deal. Technically each pot costs a certain price if they were purchased individually (say, each are $99.99 which is not uncommon). You purchase them for a combined special price of $125, apply a $25 Kitchen and Houseware’s coupon, and have three hundred pounds of pot (ha, that sounds funny) shipped to you for $100 even. Now you find out each of the pots have dropped in price to $79.99 - simply request a refund and it will be granted, without any consideration to the Buy Both and Save Deal or the coupon!
You can request refunds on something repeatedly as long as it keeps dropping in price and no price drop sum is too small. When all it takes is an email, a mere fifty cents warrants an email to Amazon.
Want more Amazon tips? You can check Amazon Prices via your cell phone.
I’m soon going to be a homeowner less than 6 hours if all goes according to plan. There have been a few hiccups along the way including the roofing certification (not good enough), some fees (title insurance is 30% higher than the good faith estimate), and some minor mistakes all around. The only show-stopper is the roofing certification so I’m hopeful all can be resolved for the close at 4pm. On a semi-unrelated note, my girlfriend’s car overheated and was leaking “green and red” fluid which I took to mean coolant and perhaps transmission fluid. You might see a “buying a used car in under a week” article in the near future…
