Discover Price Protection Thread - Program Ends 10/31/2018

For any of you not keeping up, Discover ends Price Protection on October 31st. For the ones looking to stock up discounted tech gear, you've got a couple of months to cash in. I figured I'd drop this nugget on the board, especially for those that are not familiar with it. To sum it up, Discover card users have 'free' money at their disposal to stock up on items they might not normally buy or have been budgeting for to buy at a later date.

A little background if you are not familiar, Discover will price match up to $2,500 in eligible purchases if you find a lower price on an item that you have purchased in the last 90 days using your Discover card. There are some exclusions, but for buying tech, it is not a big hurdle outside of buying LEDs, drones, and items where the claim exceeds $500 (cap is $500 per day).

I share this because I've had some big wins this year such as price matching z-wave motion sensors, WiFi mesh router, smart TVs, computer monitors, and Nest products including Protect and Thermostats. An example would be taking a $250 Nest thermostat and price matching it to $59 clearance listing of the item at a random Walmart in the U.S.

The secret sauce to this recipe is Walmart and their clearance process. You're almost guaranteed to find a Walmart store with an item of interest listed at a lower price than what is local to you. Take the Nest Thermostat (Stainless Steel) as an example. The product lists at $250, but there's a Walmart store, Walmart #6576, 1041 Edgefield Rd, North Augusta SC, 29860, that lists the item at $59. That's an opportunity.

Spend a few minutes taking an inventory of items that you're interested in. If you have some coding skills, search Github for price searching tools that lookup inventory information across stores such as Walmart & Lowes. Locate the lowest price for an item by doing a search against a list of walmart store numbers, and voila you have a quick answer on locating the lowest price across the U.S. After that it is a matter of filing a claim and submitting the necessary documentation to Discover, which takes roughly 5 minutes after getting the hang of the process (first couple of tries take a bit longer).