A little while back I wrote a review of Walmart’s Grocery Pickup service and online ordering process. The website had improved quite a bit from when I first used it and the online shopping and checkout experience were now much easier.
Even better, for those of us who love to save money and get great deals, Walmart also offered their Ad Match program online. After placing your order, you could price match items individually using an simple form.
All you have to do is enter the competitor’s name, a link to their flyer or product showing the lower price, and Walmart would send you a refund on your order for the difference. It does take a little time and effort, but that seemed to be a good trade off to deter absolutely everyone from using it.
Automated tools to do this sort of thing are usually what end these programs by getting to the point they end up costing the retailers too much money.
It’s True! Ad Match is Being Cancelled
To my surprise and what has now turned into a bit of a money-savers sadness, I just found out that Walmart will be discontinuing their Ad Match service as of October 15, 2020. I first saw rumours of this on social media, and then logged onto Walmart.ca to try and verify if it was actually true. As you can see from the screenshot below on their Ad Match page – it is in fact true!
So the only good news is, you can still price match for approximately another month. The bad news is obviously that it looks like the program will be history after that.
Price matching was a wonderful service to offer and was extremely helpful to people utilizing it during the coronavirus pandemic. I’m sure families just scraping by appreciated the extra savings.
Even with a pandemic, Walmart has actually seemed to do fairly well. In their latest earnings report a couple weeks ago, the company ($WMT) reported total revenue was up $7.4 billion in the last quarter, to $137.7 billion. An increase of 5.6%.
If Walmart is bringing in even more revenue, then what would cause them to cancel the Ad Match policy now? The reasons given, seem a little strange.
Why is Ad Match Cancelled?
My first thought was that Walmart has simply cancelled the program because it’s hurting their bottom line. Their official statements seem to say otherwise. Should we believe them?
On their website, Walmart states:
Over time, we have seen minimal usage of our Ad Match program, while at the same time the program has been causing delays at the checkout. As a result, we are discontinuing our Ad Match program effective October 15th, 2020. We are more committed than ever to our promise to save Canadians money so they can live better, while at the same time making Walmart a simpler and faster store to shop at.
Let’s unwrap this statement a little.
- I can completely understand price matching causing delays and slowing down the checkout line. However, how has this just become an issue now? Particularly if they say there is “minimal usage” of the program. The only thing I can think of is that COVID-19 has also affected the speed an ability to process ad match requests in-store.
- If Walmart is more committed than ever as they say, to help save you money – then why wouldn’t they look at ways to streamline their price matching at checkout (eg. better trained employees)? How is taking away potential savings, being more committed than ever to helping Canadians save money?
- If there is minimal use and slow checkout is a problem, why cancel the online version of this? The online price matching is done AFTER you submit your order, there’s no checkout line to slow down. The only thing reps need to do is verify matched prices. I can see this using up Walmart staff resources, but at the same time there seems to be no large backlog of price match emails. If you fill out the Ad Match form it says you’ll hear back within 3-4 days. I almost always hear back the very next day, or sometimes even same-day. It’s fast! It doesn’t seem like there’s a huge backlog of Ad Match requests.
I Hate Price-Matchers at the Checkout!!!
I love price-matching things when I can, but I would rarely (if ever) do it in-store anyway – only if nobody was in line behind me. The main reason being that I don’t want to be “that guy” who’s holding up the entire checkout line. Waiting… while the cashier fumbles around trying to remember their rarely used price matching process or having to verify flyer details on the spot.
If this was me standing in line and having to wait an extra two minutes so someone can save $0.50 cents, I’d be annoyed too. It becomes an even bigger problem when people decide to price-match multiple items, or decide they don’t want items that can’t be matched. Essentially picking through half their order on the spot.
Yes, I understand some people are not as well off, and if that’s the store policy you have every right to do this – but at the same time, at some point social awareness needs to come into play. This is why I just can’t do the in-store thing and can sympathize with people who hate it. I’d feel guilty holding other people up from going about their day, just to save a few dollars.
My Own Savings
For the people who think, “Who cares! I don’t price match anyway.” …it’s not worth my time or the hassle. That’s perfectly fine, but I think they’re missing out on some good savings, our family has actually saved a lot just doing it online.
I tend to make notes as I shop, so I can quickly fill out my ad match forms and see what I can save. I also usually have the emails from Walmart showing me how much I saved too. I dug through some of these from my most recent orders and put together a quick graph of how much we’ve saved using price matching in the past five weeks alone. For those who say it’s a waste of time… maybe not?
The chart below is broken down into Trip 1 – Trip 5, my last month’s worth of online grocery orders. Typically each bill would be about $100 – $120 dollars, so that should give you a sense of what percentage off the bill we are saving. Included below are Walmart Ad Match Savings in Green and Walmart Coupon Savings in Blue.
You can see it all adds up! The blue coupons were a “Come back and we’ll give you $20 off each of your next 3 orders”. There are other good coupons such as “$10 off your first order” (and more) that land in your email inbox from time to time, so you can definitely take advantage and apply coupon savings to Walmart online grocery orders on top of the ad match.
If we add up the data as one month worth of groceries, the savings is quite significant:
Total Monthly Savings: $145.89
Total Ad Match Savings: $85.89
Annual Ad Match Savings: $1030.68
Over the course of a month and buying around $600 in groceries, we could save almost $100 each month. That’s a utility bill out of the equation, a nice dinner out for free, or even a week of free groceries!
There’s no denying the savings are there, the only question is – why is Walmart really removing the program? Is it really underutilized – or is it just costing them too much money?
If you’re someone who uses the Walmart Ad Match tool, I’d encourage you to email Walmart or message them on their social channels, letting them know you’re disappointed about the recent changes.
Here are the full details below to the information on Walmart’s website:
Details Regarding the Changes
It looks like Walmart has just recently removed the link to their Ad Match form page from the website. Previously it appeared in the footer of the Grocery section. You can still find the page via a direct link here:
https://www.walmart.ca/en/help/admatch
You can find the full details about the discontinuation of Ad Match in the Walmart FAQ section here:
https://www.walmart.ca/en/help/Ad-Match-Discontinued
It was Good while it Lasted!
Hopefully Walmart Canada will roll back their initiative to cancel Ad Match – but I’m not holding my breath. If the program ends up being cancelled, it will make it a little more challenging to save money on groceries and a little less convenient price-shopping.
Walmart will continue to accept coupons, so keep that in mind. They will also continue to price-match items in-store, that are found cheaper on Walmart.ca (online).
The date is set for October 15, 2020 – No more Price Matching at Walmart!
An Update
Walmart Canada responded to me on Twitter when I asked why this program was being cancelled in a time of need for many during the pandemic. I received a canned response that did not address the real question — how does removing a money saving program further their commitment to helping Canadians save money on groceries?
Here is what will likely be one of my last opportunities to use their price matching service online! These are meaningful savings to many!
Haha, I would hate to be ‘that guy’ too! I don’t price match, but I do point out the SCOP sometimes. I haven’t done it since the pandemic started though because I don’t want to hold up the line.
I had to look up SCOP. I know the routine, but didn’t not the acronym – I’ve used it too!
The online version of price matching made Walmart’s service great since you didn’t have to hold up a checkout line and could avoid COVID exposure by not having to go into multiple grocery stores. I’m not doing multiple stores at this point, so I guess it’s tough luck.
You seemed to do really well with this program, so it must be a huge bummer for you! I’m also puzzled about why they would do this, at a time when many families could use the extra savings. Seems like a jerk move on Walmart’s part. ☹
I started using Walmart pickup to avoid going into the grocery store with COVID. Plus with the Ad Match I didn’t have to visit multiple stores for deals. Luckily this is just a savings for us and not a necessity. I feel bad for the people who use this and really need the price match savings. I’ll likely do most shopping at Superstore/Loblaws now that the price matching is cancelled.