Do you know what map pricing is?
Map stands for M’inimum A’dvertised P’rice, this is a price that the manufacturer puts an advertising limit out to the authorized resellers of their items so that the market price of their items stay competitive.
This does not in a lot of cases mean that you cannot sell for less, you just cannot advertise that lower price online. And yes you may not know but it is a huge possibility that if you call or walk into the store, you can get a better price without even asking for a discount. Yes, it is a fact! There are hundreds of items that are price higher online.
It is not for all items, as there are items that do have stricter policies in place and if the manufacturer would audit or test out the reseller and see that they can get it for cheaper then the demanded price, they would penalize the reseller with no longer shipping the item to them for an extended period of time.
Then you can sometimes bump into hidden online pricing, where you have to take action in order to reveal the actual final price online, some send you an email with a link that gives you a better price or tap for price or even more restrictive is that you can only see the actual price in cart or checkout.
So when doing online shopping there is a lot to be on the lookout for all these pricing techniques as some won’t show up even on google, as there it would also be a violation of the map policy.
It is wise to shop around a lot, and even better to also call in a few stores to check if it could actually be better, especially when you see all retailers stick to a specific price point.