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How to Use Walmart’s Savings Catcher Program

Walmart is back again with a new savings program that will hopefully lower the prices for thousands of families.

Well, sort of. It’s not that they are lowering their prices through the Saving’s Catcher Program, but rather they are willing to pay you the difference between their price and a lower competitor’s price in the form of a gift card.

Ready to learn more?

Savings Catcher: A Little Background

Several years ago they rolled out the Walmart Price Match Program [1]. The whole idea was that you could price match any products found at a Walmart to any of their competitors without actually bringing in the competitors’ advertisement. This opened up huge potential, especially for shoppers who make it part of their job to shop at several stores each week for their groceries based on items that were on sale. Suddenly, they could just go to one stop for all of their grocery needs!

And even though the program had its snags, such as lack of proper training that led to many people getting price matches denied nationwide [2], I was still able to snag some savings when I tried it out.

But now, Walmart’s come out with a much more convenient program addressing several weaknesses of the first one.

Enter the Savings Catcher Program

Basically, all of the price comparison work is now going to be done for you!

If a price for an item is lower at a local competitor’s store than what is offered at Walmart, Walmart will give you the difference in price. You won’t get a refund, but instead, you’ll get money credited to an eGift card in your Walmart account.

How to Claim Your Walmart eGift Card

First of all, you must have an account at Walmart.com (it’s free to sign up for one). Then, you want to do the following:

  • Within 7 Days of Your Purchase, enter your receipt number (the TC number) into the Savings Catcher program [3] (or you can use the Walmart App [4]; click the “Savings Catcher” button, then scan the receipt barcode).
  • Walmart’s program will automatically scan the local competitor’s sales ads – both paper, and online – for that week and determine if an item you purchased was more expensive at their store. The lower price must have been valid during the time that you made the original purchase.
  • If there are items that were more expensive at Walmart from a local competitor, you will be given the difference between the two prices in your account (this generally takes 72 hours).
  • Choose to either fund an eGift card now with the money refunded from your most recent purchase, or choose to accumulate more money before you use it to make a purchase (bonus: it could be fun to do this for an entire year and then fund an eGift card to use for Christmas shopping!).

Other Savings Catcher Program Rules

Here are a few more rules to help you with this new tool:

  • Submission Limit: You may only submit 7 receipts each week to the Savings Catcher program.
  • Florida Buy One Get One Free Rule: Specifically for Florida, Walmart will match Buy One Get One free deals. However, they will use the amount specified as “save up to” in the ad (for example, an ad may say that if you buy one can of tuna, you get a second can of tuna for free with a savings value up to $1.29; in this case Walmart would refund you the difference between their price for a can of tuna and $1.29).
  • Certain Deals will Not Apply: This includes where you have to purchase one item to get another item at a discount, closeout/going out of business prices, percentage off ads (such as 30% off cans of tuna), items that require a purchase to get a gift card, etc. In other words, the competitor’s ad must have specific information on the sale with an actual dollar amount.
  • In-Store Purchases Only: Unfortunately, this program does not count for online purchases (could you imagine the refund you could get from Cyber Monday deals if it did?).
  • Automatic Funding of eGift Card after One Year: While you are allowed to fund an eGift card at any time, Walmart will automatically fund one for you if you haven’t redeemed your Reward Dollars by the end of the calendar year.
  • You Can Use Coupons: You can still use coupons [5] for products. What will happen is Walmart will compare the pre-coupon price of an item to competitor’s prices and credit you accordingly as if you had not used a coupon (could be a great way to score even better deals!).

Have you tried the Savings Catcher program out yet? Will you give it a whirl?

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