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Walmart Has a Generous Price-Matching Policy for eBooks

Walmart knows that the ebookstore it launched last week has the deck stacked against it.

Amazon has the indie ebook market sewed up, traditional publishers don’t want real competition on ebooks, Kobo is less capable on the tech side than Amazon is, and frankly, it’s going to be hard to convince people to not shop at Amazon but instead buy ebooks from the even larger evil retailer.

Walmart knows it has few cards to play, and that’s why it is doubling down on its pricing policies. Their support pages reveal that Walmart has an exceedingly customer-friendly policy on price matching.

Walmart is committed to providing low prices every day. To learn about Walmart’s Price Matching policy, click the link below:

If you see an eBook or audiobook that’s lower priced than the Walmart eBooks site, you can contact Walmart eBooks’s customer care team, and we’ll price match the item for you before you proceed with the checkout process on the Walmart eBooks site.

Price adjustments after you’ve purchased an eBook or audiobook

If you purchased an eBook or audiobook and find out within 30 days that the price has dropped, you can contact Walmart eBooks customer care to adjust the price.

In comparison, Kobo has a 7-day price match policy on ebooks, while Amazon doesn’t even have a policy of matching competitor prices (not on ebooks or anything). Amazon does use bots to match prices behind the scenes, however, and they will also sometimes grant exceptions to that policy.

And something tells me Amazon is going to change that policy faiely soon.

 

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Comments


Darryl August 26, 2018 um 10:18 pm

Full marks to Walmart on this one. A price matching policy is an essential in their situation. It may prevent them losing customers to Amazon. But I can’t see them gaining customers because of it. Most customers want convenience and value the sheer ease of buying with a click or two. Mucking around with customer service service ruins this. Kobo has had price-matching like this for some time, but apart from agency books it serves to mask the fact that Kobo is generally more expensive, or at least was the last time I checked.


DaveMich August 27, 2018 um 12:35 am

A price difference of a dollar or so isn’t worth me taking the time to "contact customer support" and go through some song and dance.


Mike Cane August 27, 2018 um 12:14 pm

Huh. I thought all along that if you alerted Amazon to an eBook at a lower price they’d immediately match it. Not so? Fake news?


Chris August 27, 2018 um 1:44 pm

Getting the price match before checkout is good, and the 30 day grace period is good too.

However Kobo’s 7 day period is fine, and they give you an extra 10% of the difference as well, so I think it is still the better price match deal.


Allen F August 28, 2018 um 4:22 pm

As the big 5 trad-pub are playing 'agency', how can their be a lower price on any of their ebooks?

As to Amazon, if you point out that any Amazon ebook is cheaper elsewhere Amazon will already drop their ebook to match.


Kate August 30, 2018 um 4:04 pm

What does 'sued up' mean?

Nate Hoffelder August 30, 2018 um 4:48 pm

I used the wrong verb.


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