Unfortunately, I forgot to mention PriceProtectr during my recent Wall Street Journal interview, but I can’t praise this free service enough. This website keeps a private database of your purchases, in store or online, and monitors the price of the items. Many stores offer a price match policy, in which the customer would be entitled to a credit if the price of a purchased item drops within 30 days of purchase. While I normally check the price of large purchases on my own, PriceProtectr has the benefit of constant monitoring and alert.
A few weeks ago, my girlfriend A. purchased a gift for me—a somewhat pricey gift—from Best Buy. The gift is currently wrapped, so technically I shouldn’t know about it. But I do. This morning, I received notification that the price for the item, a Blu-Ray Disc player, dropped from $399 to $299. That’s a significant decrease, and the money saved could certainly be spent towards other things or deposited into savings.
Originally, my plan was to wait until I could find a lower-cost refurbished Blu-Ray player at a Sony outlet store, but receiving the player as a gift works as well. The price drop is just icing on the cake.
So when we get a chance, probably next weekend, we will visit the store with the receipt and take advantage of the Best Buy price drop policy.
Using PriceProtectr is easy, even if your purchase took place in person. Just find the URL listing the product and enter that address and your email address on the home page. PriceProtectr will do the rest, checking the price of your items each day. You’ll receive an email if the price drops and when the protection expires after 30 days from the purchase date.
photo: downbeat
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This reminds me of refund please (dot com), a service that tracks your amazon purchases for price drops and e-mails you instructions on how to take advantage of them (with a handy link too).
Just out of curiosity…why Blu-Ray?
I am admittedly anti-BR for a few reasons:
1) The main reason is that it just doesn’t make sense to me that the next-gen DVD standard would be called Blu-Ray instead of HD-DVD. It really annoys me as a consumer and tech lover that they could not come together and make one standard.
2) I also do not like that Sony is always trying to make its own proprietary formats and shove it down consumers throats. It is very arrogant of them and I am happy that most of them end up failing (UMD, memory-sticks, Betamax).
3) It also smacks of arrogance that they are keeping BR so expensive while HD-DVD is getting cheaper.
On a side-note, it also annoys me that both formats are charging so much for their movies. Most start out at around $30…are they kidding? I used to hate paying $20 for a DVD and would only get them if they were cheaper than that. Now they are charging $30 for the same movies. Total BS.
OK, that is the end of my rant.
-RS
RS: Good question. First, the Blu-Ray format allows for higher bitrates, which means better quality, less compression artifacts, etc. But that’s not the main reason. I already have an HD DVD player, so I didn’t need another one. The cost of a player that handles both formats is higher than getting individual players, so that was out of the question, too.
HD DVD is just as proprietary as Blu-Ray. Actually, Blu-Ray software uses Java, which one could argue is more “open” than the Microsoft scripting language required by HD DVD.
Prices for high-def (both Blu-Ray and HD DVD) on Amazon are generally around $20, some more, some less. They’re more expensive in other stores like Best Buy or Circuit City. Recently, Amazon had buy-one-get-one-free deals with both HD DVD and Blu-Ray disks and sale prices continually fluctuate.
Girlfriend A is very kind to you. What did Girlfriend B get you? ;)
OK, I hope she won’t read that!
I just spent a couple hundred dollars on Amazon and put all my purchases into PriceProtectr (all my family is in another state, so it is easier and cheaper to do everything via Amazon). Hopefully I’ll get a similar notification soon. :)