I know many of you already know this, but I wanted to remind you that the national office supply stores all price match! This means more savings on school supplies for you – with less driving from store to store.
Staples, Office Depot and Office Max all have price-match policies, meaning if you see and advertised price on a certain item, any of the three businesses will honor that figure (including instant rebates.)
Note that instant rebates are not the same as mail-in rebates. So if printer paper is $5 with a $4 mail-in-rebate, you will only be able to match the $5. In other words, don’t do mail-in-rebate price matches because you will lose out on a big portion of the savings.
Also note that you need to bring copies of the circulars in with you, so make sure you have a subscription to the Sunday paper.
As with most things deal-related, your mileage may vary at your individual store. Please confirm this policy before you spend an hour getting every single item in the competitor’s circular!
Also, please correct me if I am wrong (I’d be so grateful), but store brand are not price-matchable. ie if staples is selling staples brand school glue (last week) for one penny, then you can NOT get the same deal from office max with their brand.
Yes, unfortunately that is correct, Liba – only name brand items can be price-matched. 🙁
Not sure where to post this, but I thought of another school supply tip that I figured out a few years ago for the KC area anyway. I’m usually the first to jump ship on brand specified on the school list with one exception. I’ve had several in the education/childcare field tell me that Prang water colors really are better. But YIKES they cost a lot at the stores that sell them year round. Solution: The grocery stores (in KC anyway) sell them with the other school supplies and will have them in the ad at least once this summer. I’ve found this to be true at Price Chopper later in the summer. I noticed that SunFresh is taking a turn this week. Prang watercolors $1.49 in the ad. You won’t get a price much better than that. (That’s pretty good for water colors no matter what the brand.) Not near a SunFresh? Maybe you can print out the ad and take it to the office supply store. Their website is mysunfresh.com HTH
Yes! Such a good reminder. The grocery stores are definitely another good source of school supply deals! Thanks for sharing.