Have you ever purchased something that you thought was a great buy, only to find it on special or at a drastically reduced rate the next week?
It happens to the best of us, and guess what, now there is an application that monitors your online purchases, alerting you when there is a price reduction.
Now, that sounds all well and good, but once you have purchased something, what good is it to know about a sale on that item after the fact? Well, if you are an avid online shopper, you should know that you can often request a price adjustment refund once the item goes on sale (usually within a certain number of days – normally 7-10 days after the purchase). Of course, this takes a lot time and following up.
Well, Paribus does this all for you for purchases at online, eligible retailers/stores (*the service does not work with in-store purchases), and they’ve been getting featured on many sources for their innovative service.
*Update: Paribus has removed their 25% success fee on price drop refunds. That means Paribus is now 100% free to use.
Who Will Benefit From Using Paribus?
Paribus is for anyone that shops online often and is in the know with online apps. It does not require a genius to operate, but you need to understand the mechanics of it, so that you do not have any nasty surprises. We’ll go over some particularly important details.
If you are used to requesting refunds online when you see the purchase go on sale afterwards, then you will understand that this process can take up to 10 days, dependent on the retailer. Paribus does all of the monitoring so you can spend your time elsewhere. Their algorithm does all of the monitoring and price comparison in real time. You’ll then have the opportunity to move forward with a price adjustment refund on your purchase if it becomes available.
How Do You Sign Up?
The Paribus sign up is fairly simple, and it is absolutely free to become a member.
Register with the email address you use when purchasing online. This is important, as Paribus needs this email to do its searches. It will search within your email inbox for your online purchase history by detecting receipts from the merchants it monitors. *If you have any concerns with Paribus scanning through your emails for receipts, we suggest creating a new email account specifically for your shopping receipts.
How Does It Work Exactly?
Paribus uses your email address supplied to them to search for past orders you’ve made. It is, essentially, an online service that moves in and around your emails, silently.
Paribus will continually monitor to see if your purchase gets a price reduction and, if there is one, will ask you if you’d like them to notify the retailer on your behalf to start the process of getting the price adjustment refund. You’ll receive the refund back to your original form of payment, or you may receive a store credit depending on the merchant.
It is not Paribus that pays you back. It is the retailer, but it is Paribus that arranges all of this for you. If you have issues, you deal with Paribus and they will sort it out for you. Paribus monitors various major retailers, such as Target, Kohls, GAP, Old Navy, Walmart, Macy’s, Best Buy, Nordstrom, and many more. Stores change their policies often, and the list of eligible merchants changes from time to time.
In addition to price drops, Paribus also tracks the delivery status of online purchases at certain retailers like Amazon and Walmart. If a guaranteed order arrives later than the retailer promised, Paribus automatically contacts the merchant to request compensation.
Paribus now tracks your online hotel bookings. Once you book a hotel online, they’ll keep an eye out for a lower rate and help you rebook to get money back. They monitor hotel bookings made through Expedia, Priceline, Booking.com, Hilton, Marriott, and Hotels.com.
The Pros And Cons Of Paribus
Honestly, there aren’t really any negatives to bring up. Paribus does not do any searching for price reductions until you confirm the purchase receipts they’ve scanned for. They really are quite careful with all they do. They are dealing with your money after all.
It is a fast and efficient process, where you do very little, other than confirm the qualifying price adjustment refund, and approve it. This takes place all on the app, which is downloadable onto your smart phone.
In the past, users have complained about the 25% fee Paribus takes for successful price adjustments, but that is no longer the case and the service is now 100% free.
The owners and founders, Eric Glyman and Karim Atiyeh, both have backgrounds that merge wonderfully together. Eric has financial experience, so knows his stuff when it comes to saving money. Karim has the technical and product development savvy and is continuously looking to improve the application. They both have seen the benefits in helping out the community in saving on purchases and feel very passionate about it.
Some have worried that Paribus is a scam, but users have reported successfully getting adjustment refunds for a quite some time now.
Another vote of confidence is that Capital One, being the 8th largest commercial bank in the USA, have acquired Paribus, stating that they were very impressed with the talent levels and technological innovation of the owners. Paribus had over 700,000 users at the time of the acquisition and since has grown to staggering numbers, clearly showing that there is great benefit in using their application. Who does not like to save money, right?
We say Paribus is definitely worth checking out.
If you’re doing any online shopping, be sure you’re taking advantage of a cash back online shopping portal. We list all of the best cash back sites here.
READ MORE: SEE THE BEST BANK BONUSES HERE AND THE BEST INVESTING BONUSES HERE.
