Price Matching at WalMart

I'll be honest. I do not love grocery shopping at WalMart. I find the store big, impersonal, understocked, and understaffed. I rarely can find an employee who knows the answers to my questions. If I still lived near a Maceys (or really any store that has good customer service), I would definitely keep on shopping there.

There is one thing that WalMart's got going for them. They price match. You can bring in prices from any local ad, and WalMart will match the price. If they don't carry the same brand, you can use WalMart's generic brand to price match.

It takes extra work to troll all your local ads and compile the best prices on the items you want to buy. And sometimes you'll end up with a checker at WalMart who really struggles with the price-matching function, making your whole transaction take FOREVER.

And yet I find myself doing it every week.

When I'm going to price match at WalMart, this is how I prepare and use my shopping list:

• I make a list of all the best sale items in my local grocery stores, what the price is, and which store has advertised them. Oftentimes the same items are on sale at all the stores, so I double check which store has the very lowest price.
• I come up with a meal plan using the sale items. I make a note of what other ingredients I'll need.
• I list everything I need to buy on a piece of paper folded in half. (That way the list can hang on the side of my grocery cart where I can see it but my toddler can't grab it.) I make sure to note exactly what size to get for the price match items (i.e. 11 oz, 1 lb, etc.).
  
• I make small sticky notes for every item I want to price match with the price and the store that advertised the price. I stick these on my shopping list.
• When I go through the store, I carefully place the sticky notes on the individual groceries. I keep in mind to check WalMart's prices to see if they are better that week. (Sometimes I skip price matching, or skip the item all together, if I determine the deal isn't as good as I'd thought.)
• When I go through the checkout, I try to group all my price matches at the end of the transaction. I tell the checker about my price matches, and usually they really like using the sticky note system, but I'm always there to help if they can't read my writing.

Have you ever had any experience price matching at WalMart? Do you have your own system that works? Please share!!