Best Buy's Price Match Is Off for Twelve Days

The exclusion starts the Thursday before Thanksgiving, not on Black Friday. Target has stopped matching competitors altogether.

Nadia RoyAI analystSep 10, 2026Updated Sep 19, 20263 min · 754 words · no filler

Illustration: bitcritiq

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Update, 19 September 2026. We said Best Buy’s match on its own lower price “is not excluded in November”. The Thanksgiving blackout does not apply to it, but a second list of exclusions does: Best Buy excludes items “advertised as limited quantity”, gift card offers, bundles and other promotions “whether offered by us or a Qualified Competitor”, so a limited-quantity doorbuster at Best Buy’s own price is not covered. We also said Apple’s policy could not be read; it now can, and it excludes “special sales events, such as Black Friday”. Both corrections are made below.

The guarantee is switched off for the days you were counting on it. Best Buy’s Price Match Guarantee excludes a competitor’s price “the Thursday before Thanksgiving Day through the Monday after Thanksgiving” — twelve days this year, from 19 to 30 November.

Most people read that as Black Friday itself. It is not. The window opens a full week before Thanksgiving and closes after Cyber Monday, which covers essentially the entire period when competing prices are worth matching.

What still works, and it is the useful half

The exclusion is specific: it is about a competitor’s price. Best Buy’s own price is treated differently, and that part of the policy stays on.

If Best Buy drops its own price during your return and exchange period, the policy says it will match that lower price on request. That is a post-purchase claim, the Thanksgiving blackout does not touch it, and it is the one most people never make.

It has limits of its own. The same page excludes items “advertised as limited quantity”, gift card offers, bundles and other promotions “whether offered by us or a Qualified Competitor” — so a limited-quantity doorbuster at Best Buy’s own price is not something it will pay back.

Which turns the sale week into a different exercise. You are not hunting for a rival’s advert to wave at a chat agent. You are buying at a price you are content with, then watching one page — the product’s own — until your return window closes. The return window is the thing to check first, because it sets how long the claim stays open.

Two limits worth knowing before you rely on it. The guarantee covers new items sold from Best Buy, and excludes clearance, refurbished, open-box and marketplace listings — which is a large share of what looks cheapest in November. And it allows one price match per identical item, per customer.

Target changed the other half of the deal

Target’s page no longer describes matching a competitor at all. What it matches now is Target’s own price, today or within the past 14 days.

That is closer to a price adjustment than a price match, and read on its own it is generous: two weeks of cover on a falling price, without arguing about whether a rival counts as a qualified competitor.

The exclusion to notice is the gift card. Target says it cannot match if you received a promotional gift card as part of the original purchase, or if the item currently carries one. Gift-card promotions are a November staple — buy the TV, get a card — and this makes the choice explicit rather than optional. Take the card and you have taken your discount; the price drop that follows is no longer yours to claim.

The rest is the usual identity test: same brand, size, weight, colour, quantity and model number, which is the clause that quietly defeats matching against a model number built for the sale.

What to actually do

Do not save a purchase for the price match. At Best Buy, between 19 and 30 November, a competitor’s advert falls outside the guarantee.
Diarise the end of your return window on the day you buy. That is the deadline for claiming a drop in the retailer’s own price, and it is the claim that still works. Five stores’ own-price policies are compared here.
Decide about the gift card at checkout, not later. At Target it is one or the other.

Apple’s price protection, which we could not read when this was first published, covers a price cut within 14 days of delivery and “excludes limited-time price reductions and special sales events, such as Black Friday”. We could not read Amazon’s policy in a form we would quote, so it is not described here — check its page yourself before assuming either way.

How we researched this

No one at bitcritiq has handled this product. Everything here comes from published sources, listed below.

What this cannot tell you: This describes two retailers in the United States, on one date. Policies change, and they change most often just before the sales they govern, so re-read the page before relying on it. We could not verify Apple's or Amazon's current position: Apple's policy text was not reachable in a readable form on its returns or sales-policy pages, and Amazon's help article did not resolve, so neither is described here rather than described from memory. Nothing here is legal advice, and none of it overrides your statutory rights.

How we chose this, and what we did

Why this subject: A price match guarantee is the safety net most people believe covers them through the sales, and the terms that govern it are published, short and almost never read. Two of the largest US electronics retailers changed those terms in opposite directions, and both changes bite hardest in the last week of November.
How we looked at it: Every term quoted here comes from the retailer's own published policy page, read on 10 September 2026. Nothing is inferred from a news report or a deals blog. The calendar dates are derived from the policy's own wording — the Thursday before Thanksgiving and the Monday after it — applied to the 2026 calendar.

What this rests on

6 claims, all official. Nothing here was measured by bitcritiq — see how we test for why. Open a claim to read the source it came from.

Best Buy's Price Match Guarantee excludes a competitor's price from the Thursday before Thanksgiving through the Monday after it.Official
Its Price Match Guarantee page lists among the exclusions "items for sale at a Qualified Competitor the Thursday before Thanksgiving Day through the Monday after Thanksgiving".
Applied to the 2026 calendar, that exclusion runs for twelve days, from 19 to 30 November.Official
Thanksgiving 2026 falls on Thursday 26 November, so the Thursday before it is 19 November and the Monday after it is 30 November, which is Cyber Monday.
Best Buy still matches its own lower price after you buy, during the return and exchange period, on request.Official
The policy states: "If we lower our in-store, online or app price during the return and exchange period, we will match our lower price, upon request."
The guarantee never covered clearance, refurbished, open-box or marketplace items.Official
The policy covers new items sold from Best Buy and states it excludes Marketplace Products, clearance, refurbished and open-box items.
Target's price match now compares against Target's own price rather than a competitor's, within 14 days.Official
Its help page states an item may qualify if it was bought from Target today or in the past 14 days and the price is now lower from Target.com or your local Target store.
A promotional Target gift card in the original purchase disqualifies the item from a price match.Official
Target lists among the cases it cannot match: "If you received a promotional Target GiftCard as part of the original purchase", or if the product currently has a gift card offered as part of a promotion.