Walmart Closes Now-Infamous Online Price-Matching Loophole

(Patrick)

It was fabulous news for bargain-hunters when Walmart announced a change to its price-matching policy, allowing shoppers to bring in listings from popular online retailers as long as the items are identical. When some shoppers formulated an evil-genius plan to use fake third-party seller Amazon listings to buy PlayStation 4s for less than 25% of the sticker price, the wording of the original policy technically allowed this to happen. Walmart has responded by changing their policy.

(Kotaku)

Anyone who read the original policy probably could have predicted that this change would need to be made, and it was a glorious few days while it lasted for the tricksters who managed to talk a Walmart store into accepting the fake listings. It probably wasn’t such a great idea for them to boast on social media about their new toys. In a statement to the media about the console-buying scheme, Walmart said that “we can’t tolerate fraud or attempts to trick our cashiers.”

In future, if you want to get a price match at Walmart, it will have to be on items sold by Amazon, not just items sold on Amazon.

Here’s the full statement from a Walmart spokesman.

We launched online price matching because it’s the right thing for our customers. It’s making a meaningful difference for people who want to feel confident they’re getting the best price, and we’re committed to matching online prices going forward.

At the same time, we can’t tolerate fraud or attempts to trick our cashiers. This kind of activity is unfair to the millions of customers who count on us every day for honest value. With this in mind, we’ve updated our policy to clarify that we will match prices from Walmart.com and 30 major online retailers, but we won’t honor prices from marketplace vendors, third-party sellers, auction sites or sites requiring memberships.

We will continue to listen to feedback from our customers and our cashiers to make sure our online price match policy is working. Customers with questions can read the updated policy by searching ‘online price match’ at Walmart.com.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist