You really don’t believe vendors when they make promises about price protection, at least I don’t. My expectation is that the rules are drafted by lawyers and all the slick words mean that you really will never see any rebates.
A few weeks ago I decided to finally buy 2 new TV’s, I of course wanted the latest technology in LED LCD display, internet capabilities, plenty of HDMI ports and most important, a great price. Since I had good luck in the past with Vizio, it would again be my choice. I got a 55” and my wife chose a 47”. My strategy was to get the TV’s before Thanksgiving so I could enjoy all the football games, yet buy them close enough to “black Friday” to take advantage of price protection guarantees. After watching prices on- line for a few weeks, it became real clear that Amazon consistently had the very best prices, no sales tax and free shipping with in-house delivery. Almost sounded too good to be true, but I have a good relationship with Amazon.
The order was placed on their site, it allowed me to specify an exact delivery date and even a 2 hour time window, pretty cool. I received a few emails confirming the transaction and delivery date and sure enough, right on time the truck pulled up to my long, steep driveway and both TV’s were delivered, un-boxed and set exactly where we wanted them, all within 20 minutes … couldn’t have been smoother.
So, we are happy with our new TV’s and I marked my calendar to completely scour the web for lower prices within 14 days. It turned out to be pretty easy to find a lower price …. I of course again just went to Amazon and voila’ they had links to their partner sites with total prices that were $200 less than I paid. Expecting a lot of run-around, fine print (which I had read ahead of time) I started calling Amazon. My calls in the evening went to what appeared to be an “off-shore” call center and after a few challenges I found that the group that handles this is only available from 9AM to 5PM Mon-Fri, no problem, I’ll start all over again in the morning. Now the surprise, within 20 minutes of my phone call I had gotten to the right department, explained the situation, pointed out the web sites showing the same TV’s at lower prices and had my rebates finalized.
Amazon did exactly what they said they would do. If you are interested in the TV price protection, I would suggest you read over all the rules, they can be found here. Talk about an excellent buying experience and exceeding my expectations …. Amazon did it all.
