Staples 110% Price Match Guarantee & Maximizing the Apple Pay Promotion
Earlier this year Staples launched a 110% price match guarantee as part of their back to school promotion. Now it seems they are bringing it back through 3/26/15. Here is how it works:
If you find a currently available lower price on a new, identical item, show us the lower price when you buy the item at Staples and we will match it plus will discount it by 10% of the difference.
Terms
- Valid 12/27/15–3/26/16.
- Covers items sold by retailers operating both retail stores and online under the same brand, or sold and shipped directly by Amazon.com.
- If you buy an item from Staples and within 14 days you find it at a currently available lower price at Staples or staples.com®, show us the lower price and we will refund the difference.
- Excludes Staples® EasyTechSM services; Copy & Print products produced by third-party vendors; custom print and promotional products; postage; gift and phone cards; and the staples.com® App Center.
You can find the full terms of the promotion here.
Real World Example
As an example, the iPad Mini 4 16GB Gold is selling right now on Bestbuy.com for $299 and Staples is selling it for $379. Theoretically you should be able to get Staples to match the $299 price and discount it by 10% of the difference. In this case the difference is $80, so you should get an additional $8 discount bringing the price down to $291.
Keep in mind with price matches done online, they will check to make sure your local stores have inventory, whereas in-store I find that price matches are much more lax. In the case of this iPad, there isn’t any stock in my local Best Buy stores, so I would probably expect the price match to be denied online, whereas it would be much easier in-store.
20% Off In-Store Coupon
In addition to the price match, Staples has a coupon giving 20% off full priced items in-store through tomorrow. Yes this coupon does exclude a lot, but sometimes there is opportunity if you look hard enough. I have also been able to combine coupons like this along with price matches in the past, but of course that isn’t guaranteed. The employee may not allow you to do it and/or the system may have been coded properly to prevent it.
Discover Apply Pay Promotion
The combination of this new price match policy and the 20% off coupon should provide a decent amount of opportunity for those people looking to top off their Discover Apple Pay promotion. I know I still have a little bandwidth left under that promo, so I’ll be heading over to Staples to see if I can find anything worth purchasing.
Conclusion
While this policy should help in the short term, it is also good to keep in mind during future sales from other retailers. If Staples has a much higher price than a competitor, using the 110% price match guarantee can be a way to save a few dollars over the best possible price and even earn 5X rewards with your favorite credit card. Whether you are reselling or simply purchasing items for yourself, it may come in handy and is definitely a welcome deal.
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[…] Price match guarantees are definitely not good for the "sell high" portion of "buy low and sell high" aspect of the hobby. […]
And they told me that they don’t price match ipads at all because Best Buy is having a “special Apple event.” A bunch of BS — why pretend to have a price match policy at all?
Yeah they’re policy does have a lot of wiggle room. I have found if you are pricematching in-store it is much easier. Online if they receive a lot of requests for the same product, they tend to weasel their way out of it.
Confirming your experience, Shawn. A local store had no problem price-matching. The manager barely even glanced at my phone showing the Best Buy site.
staples told me they dont price match iPads with cellular, only the strictly wifi ones. strange.
They love to make up rules. Was this in-store or online? I have never been turned down on an iPad price match in-store.
I called the store who then called the online people
Perfect timing. Bought printer from Staples advertised as $120. Using 110% price match only paid $76. Of course, used Apple Pay! Saved $44 plus the $15 from Apple Pay. Not bad, about 50% discount using a couple easy methods.
Awesome!
I bought a stereo boombox tonight with a price match to Walmart.com and I only got a 100% price comp not 110%. I will call staples tomorrow to find out why.
[…] Staples 110% Price Match Guarantee Returns: Full Analysis & How to Use it for the Apple Pay Pro… […]
Looks like this is a straight up 110% price match, which is good. Last time, when I price matched a CPU to Microcenter, they insisted that the 110% was for school related items, so I was “only” able to get a 100% price match. Still good, since I had Staples gift cards (but no Microcenter gift cards).