Things like Christmas gifts or holiday décor have to be bought on a schedule— and the retailers know it. Sometimes prices stay high until they’re sure everyone’s bought their wreaths, hot gifts, and dog sweaters… and then they drop. All this price moving can give a girl anxiety— is it the right time to buy? Should I wait? If there was an app that took all the risk out of it— that kept tabs on refunds and price drops for you, and helped you pounce and get money back— that would be super-cool.
Here are two that do just that— worth keeping on your phone as you shop this holiday season.
Slice
Between packages coming in from clients (we get a lot of products to test) and myriad online purchases (from groceries to bulk toilet paper to clothes and shoes… I buy it all online), I use Slice every day to track packages, so I know what’s being delivered when. But it’s money-saving feature is the one that comes in especially handy at the holidays: Slice will send you an alert if the price suddenly gets reduced or the item you bought gets recalled.
To set up, link it to your email provider and it will scan your Inbox for all those online receipts. Then it keeps track of what you paid, and compares against falling prices, letting you know the instant you’re entitled to cash back.
Worth keeping in mind: With Slice, price monitoring only lasts a couple of weeks, but if it turns out you overpaid in that time frame, the app will not just let you know, they’ll draft an email to the vendor requesting a price adjustment so all you have to do is click send.
Earny
Earny is another app that puts cash back in your pocket, but this one takes a slightly different approach. Give this bot access to your inbox, and it won’t simply alert you to price drops… it will go get the money back for you.
How? All the work is done behind-the-scenes. As soon as a purchase is made, Earny’s bot feature combs your inbox for electronic receipts (just like Slice), then takes advantage of 90-day credit card price protection policies while monitoring retailer price protection policies at the same time. If Earny spots savings—or a better deal offered somewhere else—it’s personal assistant bot actually reaches out to customer service departments on your behalf to claim your refunds. In fact, you only get notified when you get cash back. (Never a bad notification to receive, IMHO.)
Currently, Earny works with a whole slew of major retailers from Amazon, J.Crew, Target, Walmart, Zappos and more with new ones being added by the day.
So, what do you think? Would you activate either of these apps to keep tabs on holiday savings this year? Seems like a no-brainer. Let me know in the comments!
