How To: These Online Retailers Will Give You Unpublished Discounts if You Abandon Your Cart

Shopping online can be as easy as buying cigars in Mexico. You find what you like, ask for the price, and walk away. "My friend! Come back! I give you 10% off. Just for you."

Online retailers have discovered that out of the 67% of customers who abandon their online shopping carts, about 36% do so because of prices. To combat this, several sites will offer you discounted prices or free shipping if you abandon your shopping cart. It's good for them, and good for us.

Of course, this tactic seems to be the exact opposite of airlines, who actually raise the price on you when you come back.

Sites Where This Trick Works

Many sites will just send you spam reminders saying, "Act now! Limited supply, proceed to checkout!"—but don't fall for their tricks. Here is a list of known retailers who offer discounts via email when you abandon your cart.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, so regardless of what site you're buying from, it's worth a try. And it should go without saying that you need to be logged in while shopping. How else do you think they send you those emails?

• Bed Bath & Beyond - 20% off purchase

• Coastal - various discounts
• Dick's Sporting Goods - various discounts
• Dorco - 5% off entire order
• GoDaddy - 30% discount
• Guitar Center - various discounts 48 hours after abandonment
• Kate Spade - 15% off

• Levi's - 20% discount
• Nieman Marcus - 10% off purchase
• Overstock.com - various discounts
• Pro Flowers - 10% off
• Quill - various discounts
• Sierra Trading Post - 35% off any purchase
• ThinkGeek - various discounts
• Virgin Media - various discounts
• Zazzle - various discounts
• 1-800 Mattress - various discounts

Unfortunately, bigger sites like Amazon.com do not give discounts for abandoned carts, though they will send email reminders when a price drops if it's saved for later, and they will give you a partial refund if you bought an item whose price dropped shortly thereafter.

Won't Retailers Catch on to This?

Yes. They know we know this, and they love it. We are much more likely to open an email from a company if we think it contains a discount, and we are even more likely to purchase their product if we are given that discount.

There is a good chance several other sites also give discounts for abandoned carts. Just be sure to give them an alias email name when you register, and reap the benefits. Also, beware that some sites will just empty your cart without a second thought, which is a ploy to get you to buy more, since you might not remember what you had in there to begin with.

If you know of anything missing from this list, let us know who and what the deal was, and we'll add it to this list.