I recently learned about Paribus, an app that helps you get the best price on a purchase after the transaction has been made. There are a number of stores out there that agree to price match, but in order to be sure you’re getting the best deals, you have to be doing a whole lot of monitoring and checking of prices and sales. And let’s be honest, who has time to do that, especially after you’ve made your purchase? I admit, I’m not even the best about making sure that I’m purchasing at the lowest price. I do a few searches, but I certainly don’t scan every store to make sure that yes, this price I’m paying is the best price available.
That’s where Paribus comes in – a price monitoring and savings app.
My Paribus Review
Paribus monitors your purchases and when you’re owed money back, boom! There it is! You don’t have to do anything. It’s a pretty great deal, and it is 100% free.
Clearly, I had to try it out.
How it Works
Paribus monitors your email account (and you can link it to your Amazon account too) and every time you shop at one of your sites, they pull that purchase information into the app. Then the wonders of the Paribus programming does its work and hunts down whether a better price is available and continues to monitor these prices. When a lower price is found and you are due a refund, Paribus does all the work for you! They contact the company and provide the necessary information to get you your refund, which is credited back to you, typically in the form of your original payment (so money back to your credit card or debit card in most cases).
Signing Up
Downloading and logging in was easy. Paribus is available for both iOS and Android, so I already like them. I linked my email account and I was up and running. As soon as I made a purchase, Paribus was there, monitoring for price drops.
Paribus isn’t yet working with every store out there, but they’ve got a solid list of very popular stores, and that list continues to grow. The list includes many major retailers. The company updates the list as more retailers become available.
How Much Do You Save With Paribus?
On the app, you can see recent payouts, and it looked like the day I wrote this, Walmart and Gap were the big winners. Some of the savings was small, some quite large. But as we all know, that money adds up.
As part of my Paribus review I did a bit of quick searching, and I found comments from people on social media indicating that people are definitely saving money with Paribus. Of course, how much you save all depends on how much you’re spending. If you buy a $20 item, you’re less likely to be getting a chunk of cash back. If you buy a $400 item, the odds are much higher for a good refund.
Drawbacks
If you want to use Paribus, you need to be aware that you are giving them a lot of information – email, credit card, and sometimes Amazon account access. Not everyone is going to be comfortable with this. The risks are likely quite low. Credit cards come with a lot of protections, and many different products use things like your Google Account to give you access to services. But this is a step that not everyone is going to be willing to take. Paribus is also aware of this and they answer a number of privacy questions on their website.
I think the risks with Paribus are relatively low, and if like me, you do a lot of online shopping, the potential rewards are high. Take a look at Paribus and give it a shot. Before I put together this Paribus review, it was the sort of app I wouldn’t have considered, but now that I’ve looked into it, I think it’s going to be worth using.
Before I put together this Paribus review, it was the sort of app I wouldn’t have considered, but now that I’ve looked into it, I think it’s going to be worth using.This Paribus review was sponsored, but all opinions are my own.
Megan is a 40-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
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