The Savings Catcher is a feature on the Walmart app. Basically, after you've shopped at Walmart, you scan the code at the bottom of your receipt into the app. They app claims it will check the current advertised deals of local competitors, and if they find that someone else has what you purchased at Walmart on sale for cheaper, they'll give you the difference in a gift card.
They make it sound like you don't have to worry about checking around town for the best deals, or even Price Matching, because they'll do it for you automatically. Unfortunately, this is a false sense of security. I have the savings catcher app as a "just because" on my phone, and I faithfully scan every Walmart receipt to see if they find me any savings. Here is what I have found:
The app usually tells me that they found no advertised deals that were lower than their prices. That is partially true because I already took the time to price match at the register (so the price they have listed on the receipt that I paid was already their competitors price), but it is also true because the savings catcher will only process deals that are advertised in exact amounts or exact products.
For example: If a store advertises a deal in any of the following formats, Savings Catcher won't register that the competitor has the item on sale:
3 for $5
$2.88 with in ad coupon
$1.96 with loyalty card
24 hour sales (such as Ridley's $5 Friday deals)
Pretty much anything that says "select varieties only"
All of these deals can be Price Matched at Walmart if you bring the advertisement with you to the register (even 1 day sales), but that requires you to do the work yourself. It's completely worth it to me, because I would rather pay less in the first place than have my money POSSIBLY returned to me, and only in the form of a gift card to Walmart.
Unfortunately, it get's even worse for those who think that Savings Catcher has their back. The Savings Catcher app only catches lower advertised deals that are already completely specific about 10% of the time. So even if you KNOW something is on sale at another store, you only have a 10% chance of the Savings Catcher recognizing that someone else has a better deal than they did. Most of the time they will only acknowledge the sales that were MORE expensive than their prices, or they will simply say "no deals found. Here is a screen shot of when I purchased peanut butter a few months ago. I got the Jiffy peanut butter for $1.29 because that was the Albertson's price and I price matched it. But Savings Catcher didn't recognize the sale at Albertson's, instead it recognized the price at Fred Meyer, which is more expensive than what I paid. They make it look like I saved $0.70/lb by shopping at Walmart. In reality, the Walmart shelf price of this peanut butter when I bought it was $2.49/lb, so Walmart was actually the WORST of the three.
Another example: In November I had a coupon for Betty Crocker baking mixes. Albertson's had the brownie mixes on sale for $0.99 a box. Walmart's price was $1.20 a box, but because Walmart is closer to my house than Albertson's, I just price matched at Walmart in order to get the sale price and use my coupon. The next day I decided it was a good enough deal that I went back and did it again. I bought the same items from the same Walmart in the same 24 hour period (one was at night, the other was the next morning). Even though I price matched both times, I still uploaded both receipts to the savings catcher, just to see if there was anything I might have missed. Here is what happened:
This is a screen shot of the savings catcher result from the first receipt. It didn't catch that there was any lower prices, even though it was on sale at Albertson's. They only mark that the Walmart price is $0.99 because I price matched the Albertson's ad at the register.
Now here is a screen shot of the result from the second shopping trip. Notice that Albertson's magically shows up on this one.
How can I trust an app that is so inconsistent? There is no reason that it should have caught the price for one receipt and not the other, especially if they were for the exact same items, and purchased within the same 24 hour period.
I've decided that the Savings Catcher is a tool that is only useful if you aren't checking other store's prices AT ALL. In that case, you're way over paying for most of what you purchase anyway, and only getting a few cents back about 10% of the time on "qualifying" sales.
I still have the saving's catcher on my phone because I actually do have $1.95 in gift card money from it. All of that was earned before I started couponing and matching sale prices though. I just can't bring myself to ask for a gift card in the amount of $1.95, so I keep the app on my phone in hopes that at some point they will catch something that I didn't and I'll have more in my account. But in the last 7 months, they haven't "caught" me any savings.
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