Beating Mitre10 & Bunnings by 15%

One of life's little mysteries (at least to me) is how Mitre10 always seems to be slightly more expensive than Bunnings or other stores yet still offers a generous 15% price beat guarantee. You'd think it would be more effective for them to simply match or slightly undercut competitors' prices. My guess is that they're counting on customers to not shop around and to trust the guarantee as proof they're getting the best deal. Or maybe they rely on customers doing a price match but picking up other items in-store — like their home brand products — that aren't eligible for price beating but have equal or better profit margins.

The Rules

There are a few criteria to qualify for the price guarantee:

• Identical product: Even the packaging needs to look exactly the same.
• Locally stocked: The product must be available in a local store — online-only retailers don't count. Plus, the other store must be open at the time you're price matching. Many smaller shops are only open Monday to Friday, so be careful — they can be strict about this.
• In stock and available: The item has to be in stock at the other store and cannot be on clearance. Also, the price promise doesn't apply to "trade" prices.

Many items that Mitre10 stocks are also available at Bunnings Warehouse, which is great news since Bunnings is often cheaper. If Mitre10's price ends up being higher, the same rules apply in reverse!

The Extension

Anyway, using a bit of help from Claude, I've created a Chrome/Edge extension for both Mitre10 and Bunnings websites. It quickly finds the make and model number of the item you're browsing and automatically performs a Google search to see if another retailer has it cheaper. That way, you can shop around and support small local stores, or get a 15% price beat and drive home with a better deal.

nzjjay/m10_model_search

It's open-source, light-weight, and super easy to use, let me know if you have any feedback of course. Some features:

• Works on both Mitre10 and Bunnings
• Stops you from searching their home brands (e.g. Number 8 and Craftright) which is impossible to find somewhere else

Here's the extension in action:

A Lavish Example

Lastly, here's a lavish example where Mitre10 has the Ausclimate dehumidifier for $649, while Bunnings is $544. You could get it for $490 using the price beat policy at Mitre10, nearly a $160 saving.