Many stores offer 30 day price protection. If you buy something and the store lowers the price within 30 days, they’ll refund the difference. The hard part was knowing when they had lowered the price. An alert reader sent a link to this TechCrunch article, describing PriceProtectr2.0. This online service which lets you enter a link to an item you bought along with your email address. If the price goes down, you get an email alert. They claim to have saved buyers almost $60,000, with limited exposure. Although these services are not yet prevalent, expect them to become more popular, which will raise the cost of price reductions for value buyers, but also reduce time shifting by price buyers.
The service is currently free, but PriceProtectr2.0 (note the comical, auto-generated “Web2.0” style logo) could offer to split the savings with customers, providing a simple way to monetize and expand the venture.