Amazon’s Price Drop Policy

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.

05/26/05, Read more in Shopping | 8,715 views

48 responses to “Amazon’s Price Drop Policy”

nickel responds:
Posted: May 26th, 2005 at 9:14 am

Great tip. Thanks!
fivecentnickel.com

FMF responds:
Posted: May 26th, 2005 at 12:46 pm

Wow! I didn’t know this! Thanks for finding it and pointing it out.

Boringest :| » Get Amazon refund if price drops! responds:
Posted: August 14th, 2005 at 8:17 am

[...] | Interesting tip from another blog which found out that you can actually get a refund for the price difference when the price of an item you bought drops within 30 days! It’s a secret though since it’s not listed in their Help section. [...]

Boringest :| responds:
Posted: August 26th, 2005 at 1:09 pm

[...] | Interesting tip from another blog which found out that you can actually get a refund for the price difference when the price of an item you bought drops within 30 days! It’s a secret though since it’s not listed in their Help section. [...]

fivecentnickel.com responds:
Posted: September 7th, 2005 at 7:45 am

Amazon’s Price Drop Policy

As a followup to my previous entry about the Amazon.com discount for searching with a9.com, I thought I’d point out another nice feature of shopping at Amazon. Not many people know this, but Amazon has a price drop policy. If they lower the pric…

nickel responds:
Posted: September 7th, 2005 at 7:47 am

Weird, any idea why my trackback shows up a single, continuous line of text? At least that’s how it looks on my end, but the others look fine.

jim says in reply:
Posted: September 7th, 2005 at 11:53 am

I have no idea… you’d think that Wordpress would be able to play nice with itself… I edited the trackback so it looks “normal.”

renpatel.com » Amazonâ��s Price Drop Policy responds:
Posted: December 28th, 2005 at 12:46 am

[...] read more | digg story [...]

Slaughter responds:
Posted: December 28th, 2005 at 8:33 am

I used to work for Amazon.com, this is totally legit and you would be surprised at the number of people that will call on the last possible day to get a refund and its usually for the same products that they all purchased at the same time.

It seems sort of fishy from a Customer Support side, but we were told that there is a 30 day price drop policy that we would honor it with no questions asked, so I would suggest that you set up a reminder or something to check the prices before the 30 day window.

Also during that time the discounts on the products may go up or down, then back up, so make sure that you contact them when the price is the lowest, but say you buy a camera for $400, 2 weeks later its $380, you call/email, they give you $20 back, but what if the price still falls to say $360 another week later, well call back and you’ll get another $20, but it has to be within 30 days, because if they don’t honor that price you can request a RML (Return Merchandise Label) and return it then reorder it, then you start costing them money to restock items, etc, so its cheaper for them to just honor the price.

iPCG Blog » Blog Archive » Amazon Price Match responds:
Posted: December 28th, 2005 at 8:34 am

[...] Apparently, if you buy something from Amazon and the price of that item drops within 30 days, you can request a refund of the difference. Take a look at this page to learn how. [...]

KD responds:
Posted: December 28th, 2005 at 9:30 am

It works.

I requested price adjustments on two of my holiday purchases last night (on one, I had used a coupon and had paid less than the current listed price). I was credited the difference between the list price at my time of purchase and the list price today. Fantastic!

Roomba responds:
Posted: December 28th, 2005 at 9:47 am

I would think that this would be an up front thing, kinda like circuit city, best buy or fry’s sales deals. Talk about buy now and feel good about. I know if it will be on sale next week I still will get a god deal.

Nico’s petit blog » Amazonâ��s Price Drop Policy responds:
Posted: December 28th, 2005 at 10:24 am

[...] read more | digg story [...]

movl.net » Blog Archive » Amazon’s 30-day Price Drop Policy responds:
Posted: December 28th, 2005 at 10:52 am

[...] Amazon has an unadvertised 30-day price drop policy. In other words, if the price drops on an item you’ve purchased from Amazon within 30 days, they’ll refund the difference. Of course you have to ask for it. The above link tells how to take advantage of it. [...]

Jason responds:
Posted: December 28th, 2005 at 12:35 pm

This rocks dude, I’m checking my last month with Amazon!

[edited to remove a partypoker promo]

Amazon’s Price Drop Policy at TADSpot responds:
Posted: December 28th, 2005 at 12:49 pm

[...] This is really cool! I guess now that this story has been dugg, and if tons of people start using this “feature” it may go away. Or, it might just bring more customers to Amazon. I’m a huge Amazon fan and have been shopping with them since at least 1995. Any excuse to do more online shopping is a good excuse for me. Now, I just need some money!read more | digg story Published by TAD December 27th, 2005 in Interesting Links. [...]

Thomas Valen responds:
Posted: December 28th, 2005 at 2:42 pm

Does anyone know if this holds true outside the US as well, say with amazon.de for example?

KK responds:
Posted: December 28th, 2005 at 4:57 pm

This Site will check your purchases everyday and send you an email if the price has dropped. In the email will be a link right to the place where you claim your credit.

hxxp://www.amazoncreditsyou.com/index.html

Edit: URL no longer exists

Fame responds:
Posted: December 28th, 2005 at 5:47 pm

i once pre-ordered a book and my credit card was charged before the book had even been published so a couple of months later when it finally shipped, the price had already dropped… i just dropped customer services a note and they refunded the difference….
on another note… i just checked out the prices of items i’ve purchased over 05 and all the prices have gone up… cynical me is thinking, the amazon xmas sale isn’t actually a sale?!!

Sonic Nonsense » Blog Archive » Amazon is great responds:
Posted: December 28th, 2005 at 11:28 pm

[...] Yes it is…and now it’s even better because they have a new price drop policy. So if you bought something in the past 30 days, and the price has dropped since you paid for it, they’ll refund the difference. How cool is that? (Via lifehacker) [...]

Creation Robot » Amazon’s Price Drop Policy responds:
Posted: December 29th, 2005 at 6:30 am

[...] » Amazon’s Price Drop Policy by Blueprint for Financial Prosperity [...]

lifehack.org responds:
Posted: December 29th, 2005 at 8:02 am

Trick on Amazon’s Price Drop Policy
Jim at Blueprint shared his tips on Amazon’s price drop policy - If you have bought something and found out the price drops, you can ask for a credit of the difference within 30 days of your purchase. The little Amazon hack behind that is that y…

meneame.net responds:
Posted: December 29th, 2005 at 10:22 am

Amazon’s Price Drop Policy

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…

Bret responds:
Posted: January 1st, 2006 at 10:47 pm

Previous post, I had an incorrect link.

I have a similar but more generic website that also tracks Amazon prices. It sends out a single email when the price drops. It will only send out one email per day per person. The email will contain all the new lower prices. It is a very useful service that is free.

Price Watching Service

venture responds:
Posted: January 4th, 2006 at 12:37 pm

Thanks…I’m $5+ already!!!

*********

The discounts we offer for items on our web site do vary from time to
time. I’ve checked your order, and found that we now offer a greater
discount on “[...]” than at the time you placed your
order.

Since this item was shipped so recently, I have requested a refund of
$5.45 to your credit card. [...]

[edited for length]

FreeCashSpace responds:
Posted: January 16th, 2006 at 2:43 am

Does Amazon.com Owe You Money?

Most Amazon.com customers don’t know it (I had no idea!), but if they buy an item and then the price drops within 30 days, they can ask Amazon to refund the difference. So any time you make purchase at Amazon, it’s a good idea to create a reminder fo…

theLaggard Jive » responds:
Posted: January 18th, 2006 at 5:51 pm

[...] Source: Bargaineering [...]

hypotheken responds:
Posted: February 6th, 2006 at 4:12 am

Hi, I think you are totally right. Great! - :) Susan.

FMF responds:
Posted: February 6th, 2006 at 8:17 am

Great tip, Jim! How in the world do you find these things out anyway???? ;-)

Ascription is an Anathema to any Enthusiasm » Blog Archive » Amazon price drop policy; let the games begin. responds:
Posted: March 10th, 2006 at 2:48 am

[...] I read this posting about Amazon’s price drop policy and squirrel’d it away in del.icio.us for the next time I bought something pricy at Amazon. [...]

Interesting News Posts responds:
Posted: March 10th, 2006 at 8:09 am

[...] [...]

NCN responds:
Posted: March 22nd, 2006 at 1:54 pm

Hey! I cannot believe that I did not know about this! You rock! Thanks for posting this information. I was able to use this for my eBay experiment! Everything worked perfectly with Amazon, and I received a response from them in less than 2 HOURS! Yay.
I even did a blog post about this…
http://ncnblog.blogspot.com/2006/03/great-ebay-experiment-update-1.html

Thanks again, NCN

Administrator responds:
Posted: April 2nd, 2006 at 7:33 pm

[...] [...]

Ben Pharr’s Blog » Blog Archive » Amazon’s 30-day Price Drop Policy responds:
Posted: April 7th, 2006 at 12:52 am

[...] Amazon has an unadvertised 30-day price drop policy. In other words, if the price drops on an item you’ve purchased from Amazon within 30 days, they’ll refund the difference. Of course you have to ask for it. The above link tells how to take advantage of it. [...]

Financial Freedumb responds:
Posted: September 7th, 2006 at 1:51 am

Great tip Jim!

Amazon Refund Blog » Blog Archive » Amazon Price Drop Policy Mentions responds:
Posted: November 12th, 2006 at 9:48 pm

[...] Amazon’s price drop policy has been widely reported in the blogosphere. Blueprint for Financial Prosperity’s article in May 2005 was made popular through Digg. A flood of blog writeups followed including on Businesspundit, Fivecentnickle, lifehacker, and lifehack. [...]

Blaine Moore (First Time Home Owner) responds:
Posted: November 27th, 2006 at 9:38 pm

I finally had an occasion to use this advice!

Simple Financial Advice - WallerBlog.com » My Favorite Articles for the Week of December 18th responds:
Posted: December 22nd, 2006 at 12:24 pm

[...] Shop at Amazon.com? Well Barganeering shows how Amazon’s Price Drop Policy could save you a ton of money [...]

Rey’s A Point » Links N’ Junk 20 responds:
Posted: January 9th, 2007 at 6:07 pm

[...] tipsN’trix. You did your Christmas shopping at Amazon and you discover that there was a serious price drop on one of the things you bought. Well, Amazon will give you a refund for the difference. But no one wants to sit there refreshing all their purchases that’s why Refund Please stepped into the void and does it for you. (HT: LifeHacker) [...]

Microblogger » First Focus on Content responds:
Posted: February 8th, 2007 at 10:54 pm

[...] the once a quarter payment of $326.99 (For 4th Quarter of 2005 in which a post I wrote about Amazon’s Price Drop Policy was Dugg, so it was atypical). So, that $72 represented almost 10% of the otherwise $787.76 I [...]

ToolCrib.com Blog» Blog Archive » The ToolCrib.com 30 Day Price Drop Refund Guarantee responds:
Posted: February 12th, 2007 at 2:27 pm

[...] Amazon feature via bargaineering) By toolcrib | RSS | permalink | [...]

I Am Teh Bagder » Blog Archive » Deals: Amazon Price Drop Policy responds:
Posted: May 16th, 2007 at 8:52 pm

[...] more information can be found at Bargaineering.com, but essentially it boils down to filling in a form while logged into Amazon. Can’t get [...]

A Note on Referrals and Affiliates « Seminarian responds:
Posted: October 11th, 2007 at 2:17 pm

[...] sweeter, they have a post-order price policy, so if it drops within 30 days of purchase you can email them for a refund.  Simple.  And now there are programs and services that will track prices and alert [...]

» Amazon Price Drop Policy on Blueprint for Financial Prosperity responds:
Posted: December 14th, 2007 at 12:00 pm

[...] written about this in the past but I wanted to once again remind everyone about Amazon.com’s ridiculously awesome price drop policy. The rule is that if you buy the item from Amazon (not one of their third party sellers) and the [...]


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