When it comes to price matching you may think it’s a lot of work. But we have you covered with some simple tips and tricks to help you get the most out of your weekly grocery budget.
Price matching used to be a lot of work. Going through paper flyers to find the best prices. Then circling the items and writing a list of all the price matches you wanted to do that week.
And when you finally go to the cash, you had to find each item to show the cashier and sometimes you had 4-5 different flyers. You really had to be organized and sometimes that took quite some time to get it together.
But with new technology these days all it takes is an app on your phone to see all the deals and make your price matching list.
What Stores Price Match?
In Canada, there are a handful of stores that offer price matching. Each store handles price matching differently.
- No Frills. Their list of competitors varies from store to store.
- Real Canadian Superstore. Each location has their own competitor list for price matching.
- Giant Tiger. At this Canadian retailer, ad match policy is to match the price of local area stores.
- Save-on Foods. They will price match advertised prices in their geographical area.
- Fresh Co. According to their website, they have a lowest price guarantee. If you find a lower price in their geographical area, they will sell that product to you for 1 cent less.
What App Works Best To Get Flyers?
There are a few different apps to use for seeing the flyers in your area. One of those stands out for us as being the easiest to use. That is the Flipp app. You can download it in the app stores.
Flipp lets you find all the flyers for your area and sort by groceries, A-Z, latest, and more. You can even add stores to your favourites.
Build Your List
Building your list in the Flipp app is easy. Simply open a flyer and click the products that you want to price match.
You can find all your items you clicked in your shopping list. On Android phones that list is usually in the bottom right corner of the app.
What Items May Not Be Price Matched
There is one rule that is pretty standard across the board at all stores. They don’t price match store brand items. Usually.
This means if Selection cheese is on sale at Metro, you cannot price match it at No Frills for No name. This is in the fine print of all store policies.
But you can price match President’s Choice and No Name products at No Frills and Real Canadian Superstore because they fall under the same corporate umbrella.
Price Matching Needs Organization
Even though the Flipp app is easy to use and shows the cashier the flyer price you are matching, a little organization goes a long way.
Before going shopping, know what it is you are price matching. We use a post it note or paper to write down the items we are ad matching. And we usually write them in by department so we know what produce we are grabbing, what meat, dairy, etc.
Then as we put the items in our cart, we keep all price matching items together in one corner of the cart. These items are last to go on the belt at the cash. We have found it easier to price match everything at the end.
We also make sure to tell the cashier that we have price match items at the end and leave a space before adding the items to the belt.
It also helps to have your app open and ready to go when it is time to price match. This gets easier the more you do it.
Double Up On Savings and Special Offers
There are ways to get even more out of price matching. We do all of our price matching at No Frills or Real Canadian Superstore. This means we can also get the bonus PC Optimum points for many items.
For example, if there is a product in our PC app that offers 100 points for every dollar spent, and that item is on sale at another store, we can price match at No Frills and get the bonus points on the item.
We have also been able to take advantage of 50% off items like bread and price match as well. This can lower costs even more. But this is not always honoured. It is up to the cashier and we don’t bother calling for a manager, we just take the 50% off because it is usually less than the ad price.
Are There Limits on Items That You Price Match?
The short answer is yes. Every store has the right to limit the quantity of items you purchase. And that is the case even when you are buying from their flyer or items that are not on sale.
It is entirely up to the store and the policies they have in place.
How Much Can You Save With Price Matching
How much you can save depends solely on the items that are on sale and whether they are on your list.
We don’t actively search for items we don’t use just to get a deal. We stick to our usual weekly grocery list and meal plan around what is on sale and what we can price match.
There are other savings as well when it comes to price matching. Those are time and gas money.
If you are driving from store to store to only buy what’s on sale, then you are losing time and burning gas to shop at different stores, when you can do a one stop shop at a store that price matches.
Check out how we plan our meals.
It is only a good deal if you are actually going to use the products before they go bad.
What is your favourite store to price match at in Canada? Let us know in the comments below.
Price Matching really has come a long way. I remember when Walmart price matched and I would go in with 5-6 paper flyers to match the prices. It is so much easier now.