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why would you buy at a wal mart where the price is higher and return at one that is lower?
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Credit card matching programs seem much easier and is complying with the terms rather than trying to trick them into fraudulent price matches.
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Actually misrepresenting is a grey area (you said you clearly don’t qualify for the local competitor price match radius so generate a fake order and then change location after the price match at best buy), I’m not sure why it wouldn’t be treated like coupon fraud. IMO it’s not much different than using a coupon on the wrong item. Sure, nothing wrong at all with the rest. The fake order to get around the rules is the only shady part.
I still contend that a credit card match will usually be easier.
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yes, I agree return/rebuy there’s not an issue. Although it does go against their price match policy (which it’s technically not price matching) and they generally have individual store policies to not allow a return/rebuy on the same item that was brought in, so it seems like often not worth the time/effort of possibly getting shot down. At a walmart, nonetheless, which I personally try to avoid…
Anything that involves a return is not scale-able.
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Maybe I’m not explaining things very clearly. With one return with receipt you can potentially make 1000’s. Maybe this isn’t the best forum for these kind of deals.
I get your point and appreciate it.
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It’s a good idea. It makes sense. However is probably not as straightforward as it seems. I’ve done limited return rebuys at Target in the distant past myself, usually with regular sales vs clearance. If you’re “making $1000s” in one return or pricematch though, it seems like it would be too sketchy a situation for me - store managers have called the cops on people for less (simply buying GCs, etc). And the penalties for being treated as a $1000s scam are high, even if you would ultimately prove innocent. Just an opinion though. I also think that the average judge OR jury would have the impression it’s a scam, before considering whether it’s actually illegal or not.
Alternatively, if it’s dealing with smaller amounts it would not be worth my time given odds of the individual store randomly shooting down with inconsistent policies, just based on my own limited experiences.
Returns are also often approved based on ID and/or payment method history now, often shared between many retailers, which also works against scalability. Larger returns I can only assume also receive more scrutiny than small ones.
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The deal has two components to make it very special it has the positives of both components and no negatives of each component by itself. I agree the return rebuy is a hassle if you’re only making 50 bucks or less. But this only involves returning with no rebuy and then going to a separate entity to price match. The two entities are unrelated and have no interest in what the other is doing. This is more game of chess than checkers, except it’s not that complicated.
I did leave out one resource that you need for this if you don’t have a script to scrape items at Walmart by zip and price. Brickseek premium does an ok job with approximation.
They should not be sharing. If there are unrelated stores which are sharing return information, would love to know about it.
I think many of the concerns have to do with return without receipt and massive quantities of returns. This does not involve that.
It’s not exactly new. Technically they share with a third party and then go to that third party to decide whether to approve a return. I think Retail Equation is the biggest one.
The old article I linked says they hold separate profiles for each store and don’t share, though.
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Right, but that third party is only supposed to use data related to that retailer when making the determination of whether to allow or disallow a refund. Yes, I’m very familiar with TRE.
Sorry OP - didn’t mean to derail the thread.
To me their wording is purposefully specific. It says they don’t share"consumer data" between retailers. They do not define"consumer data" or say that they don’t use consumer data from other retailer transactions to consider whether or not to approve the return at different retailers. It could just mean they aren’t giving individual transaction information from one retailer to another, which no retailers would want to allow in the first place. I may be reading too much from “what they don’t say”, though.
They also say some retailers also use them to approve/deny/detect potential fraud in pricematches.
I would critique your plan as foolish with specifics, but since you deleted the first post, I can’t do that any more. So I will just call your plan foolish without specifics.
I fail to see how you make anything? You are still buying an item, just getting it somewhat cheaper by moving the inventory to a store with a lower selling price. But its still an expense, not profit.
The only way to profit is to buy clearance items at one store, then return them, without a receipt, to another store still selling those items at full price.
Then you go to best buy with that receipt and buy 50 of them. Like the spiderman Sphero.
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