We are a family of 5 and I love to save money. Who doesn’t? Walmart is the place we shop for our major grocery shopping. It may not be the cheapest place for everyone but for us it is. I always scanned and brought in store ads because of Walmart’s price matching – including grocery items. I always found it to sometimes be a lot of work because I would bring these ads in and have everything circled and everything I planned to buy all listed out before we went to the store. For the most part I only buy items that I have on my grocery list. Snacks or stuff for packed lunches never make it on my list though because I tend to buy whatever is cheapest.
When I first heard about Walmart Savings Catcher, I immediately started using it. I don’t know if there is an app specifically for the Savings Catcher for your phone but I already had the regular Walmart app on my phone. In the Walmart app, the Savings Catcher is listed there and you can use it right from your Walmart app. To use Savings Catcher, you do not NEED a smartphone to use it. You can actually go online and enter your receipt numbers by using your computer. Click here —> Walmart Savings Catcher to use the website version on your computer. If you want to use the app on your smartphone, search your app store for the Walmart app (it’s a free app). You will have to have a Walmart account so you will need to sign up or sign in whether you are using your phone or computer.
It’s simple to do. All you have to do is scan your receipt into the Savings Catcher. Choose the Savings Catcher from the list in the Walmart app and select the option to scan your receipt. The receipt you are scanning or entering by using the website must be less that 7 days old. If you are scanning a receipt that is more than 7 days old, it will be invalid. Immediately you will see the catcher saying it is scanning all the local ads and comparing to all the surrounding stores. We normally have anywhere from 40 to 70 ads and stores it finds. You will receive an email after a successful receipt scan to the email address that is connected with your account. It will take 2 or 3 days for the results. Once it has the results, you will get another email stating whether or not the catcher found savings for you. If it did, it will show you the amount you will get back.
The image above isn’t the first receipt I tried. This is actually the third receipt I tried. The first couple times it didn’t find any savings and I was actually skeptical that it would even work. After I got my results of this one I about fell out of my seat seeing that I got back $11.30 on just one receipt! The first couple I had used that I didn’t get anything back on were pretty small transactions though. Actually one was pretty small and the other I noticed I had purchased a lot more store brand items. This receipt and the one below are receipts from our larger transactions from two of our major grocery shopping trips.
The next one was even better! After seeing another receipt with $12.54 savings, I decided to take a look at the first couple receipts I scanned to see what the major difference was. One of them was only a 5 or 6 item transaction so there weren’t many items to compare. The other one was actually a decent size transaction so it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me what the big difference was. This is another thing about the Savings Catcher – it saves your receipts. This is nice because you can always look back. And it lists everything you bought and also lists the price you paid for each item. If there is an item that you got savings on, it lists the actual price you paid for, the lesser price from the other store, and the difference so you know what you got back for that particular item. It also lists the store that the cheaper price was found. Anyway, back to what I was talking about before I got sidetracked. As I was looking back, I noticed that I had a lot of store brand items on one of those receipts. Then it hit me. Well of course it’s not going to find cheaper prices on the Great Value items because that’s Walmart’s brand – no other store is going to carry those. Also keep in mind when using the Savings Catcher, it depends on how many ads and stores are in your area. At least I imagine so.
The difference with the receipts I got money back on was because I didn’t have hardly any store brand items for those transactions. I normally have coupons. I actually got away from buying store brand as often because of coupons. (I must not have had many coupons and there must not have been many sale prices that day I bought tons of store brand). With coupons I actually save more on name brand than I do with store brand. And with the Savings Catcher now, I can save on name brand items without having to shop around because I used to actually go to another store sometimes if there were certain items on sale there and not at Walmart.
I was curious about how accurate it was. Since it saves receipts and lists everything you bought from each receipt, I decided to compare the ads with what the catcher found. I only had the ads from the last two receipt dates hanging around so I couldn’t check the accuracy of the first couple receipts. But from the receipts I checked over, I found that it is pretty accurate. I couldn’t find anything I bought that didn’t earn me any savings in any of the ads. All the items that did earn me savings, I did find in one of the ads I had. There were actually a couple I saved on that I couldn’t find though. So from what I can tell, it is pretty accurate. It took a bit of time too figure that out too!
What I love about the savings you get back, you can immediately transfer it to a Walmart eGift card or save it and let your total savings build up to transfer a larger amount at a later time. You can use the eGift card on Walmat.com, print it out and take it to the store, or they can even scan it from your phone. I have done that with Site to Store pickups. Sent my pick up email to my phone’s email address and they scanned right from my phone. And yes, I have an email set up just for my phone for these types of things.
One last thing that I noticed when I was checking the accuracy, it didn’t consider the coupons I used. It compared the prices of the actual store price, not the price I actually paid after a coupon was used (I did make sure my coupons were honored and they were). So now using coupons can actually save even more money if that particular item was found cheaper elsewhere! My opinion – I think it’s awesome! Even if I only save a dollar or two on my next transaction, the savings can be saved and added up at a later time!
DOUBLE YOUR SAVINGS and turn the into WalmartBucks!
I also saw that from now through 2/28/15 if you have a Bluebird Card, you can transfer your savings to that for DOUBLE the savings. So for example, if your total savings you are transferring is $20 and you transfer to your Bluebird Card, you will have $40 instead of $20! If you transfer your saving catcher savings, you will double. I just transferred by savings of $85.40 that I had been saving to my Bluebird Card. That amount just turned into $170.80. These aren’t regular funds that you would typically add if you want to that you can use anywhere American Express is accepted. Walmart savings turn into WalmartBucks that can only be used at Walmart. You can sign up for a Bluebird card <—- here. It’s absolutely free and there are no fees whatsoever. You can add funds if you want, even set up a direct deposit, pay bills, etc. Basically a free card with no fees that you can use as a credit/debit card from the funds that you put on it. You do not need to keep a balance. I like to keep $5 to $10 of regular funds just in case because this can come in handy for freebies that may require a credit card. You can pick these up at Walmart but I suggest just getting started online. If you pick one up at Walmart, it’s just a temporary card anyway and you will need to set up online anyway. They will send you a permanent one within 7-10 days. Any funds you added to your temporary card will automatically be moved to your permanent one when you get it. The reason I suggest just signing up online and skip picking up the temporary one at Walmart is because we were going to do that but the cashier said we had to put at least $20 on it even though the signage said you didn’t have to put anything on it. You don’t have to do that when you just go sign up online and I figured I would just skip the aggravation.
Disclaimer: This is not a paid or sponsored post.
So far I am liking it. I have saved over $14. I am letting it rack up and plan to redeem it a few weeks before Christmas. Every little bit helps!