Support & FAQ

How PriceBack works

PriceBack scans your receipts from Canadian retailers, tracks their published price-adjustment windows (typically 14–100 days depending on the store), and alerts you when an item you bought drops in price — so you can request a price match from the retailer and get the difference back.

Costco is fully supported today, with more Canadian retailers rolling out over time. The current list — including stores marked “Coming soon” that you can opt into to be notified at launch — is in the app under Stores.

Scanning receipts

I scanned a receipt but the items look wrong.

Tap the item on the Detail screen to edit its name, price, quantity, or SKU. If the whole receipt looks off, you can also re-scan or delete and try again. Sharper light, holding the camera squarely over the receipt, and flattening folds usually solves OCR errors. You can also import a receipt from your photo library if you already took the picture.

Claiming a price drop

How do I claim a price drop?

When we detect a drop, tap the alert on the Home screen. PriceBack opens the Claim Assistant with the store’s contact method (email / phone / in-store), a pre-written message you can copy or send, and a checklist so you don’t miss anything. Mark items as Claimed and then Refund Received as the money comes back.

Prices & regions

The price you show doesn’t match the store.

Online prices can lag in-store prices by a day or two, and Costco specifically has different prices for sameday-delivery, .ca online, and in-warehouse purchases. We try to match the in-warehouse price using the weekly flyer when one is in effect; otherwise we fall back to the Costco Same-Day Delivery listing. If the displayed price is clearly wrong, tap Refresh prices on the Detail screen to force a re-check.

Why do I need to give a postal code and province?

Retailer pricing varies by region in Canada (sometimes a lot — Costco prices differ between Ontario and Quebec, for example). Without your postal code we have to guess from your IP, and that guess is usually wrong when you’re behind a VPN, mobile carrier, or corporate network. The postal code is stored locally on your device and sent to retailer pricing endpoints to fetch the correct regional price. We never use it for marketing.

Sharing prices

Can I share Costco prices anonymously with other PriceBack users?

Yes — toggle Share Costco prices on in your Profile. Each scan you make then contributes a tuple of (warehouse, SKU, unit price, date) to our pricing pool, stored under a hash of your device ID. No receipt photo, no item name beyond the master product name, no link back to your identity. You can toggle this off at any time, and doing so triggers a server-side delete of everything you contributed. Disclosed in our Privacy Policy § 4.

Billing & subscriptions

I’m being charged but I cancelled my subscription.

Subscriptions are billed through the App Store / Google Play, not by us. Cancel from your device:

• iPhone: Settings → tap your name → Subscriptions → PriceBack Canada → Cancel.
• Android: Play Store → profile icon → Payments & subscriptions → Subscriptions → PriceBack Canada → Cancel.

Refunds for individual charges are also handled by Apple / Google. We do not have the ability to issue refunds directly. If the charge is fraudulent (you didn’t make it), contact your bank first, then email us.

How does the Price-Drop Guarantee work?

Subscribe to Unlimited on the annual plan. If PriceBack finds no price drop on your receipts during that year, we add another year of Unlimited to your account at no charge — provided you scanned at least 15 receipts in the year, kept the annual plan, got no refund, and kept auto-renew on until we confirmed. We check 14 days before your renewal and tell you in the app. Then turn auto-renew off so the store doesn’t charge you for the next year; if it does anyway, your guarantee year starts when that paid year ends. Full conditions: Price-Drop Guarantee.

Your data

How do I delete my account and all my data?

Open Profile → Delete my account. We permanently erase your account profile, watched items, crowdsourced contributions, and device record on our servers, then wipe local receipts from your device. The action cannot be undone. Server-side deletion completes within 30 days as required by privacy law. See Privacy Policy § 6.

How do I download a copy of my data?

Open Profile → Download my data. We generate a JSON file containing everything we hold about you on our servers plus your on-device receipts and preferences, then share-sheet it so you can email it to yourself or save it to Files. See Privacy Policy § 6.

Notifications

Notifications aren’t arriving.

Three things to check:

• System permissions: in your phone’s Settings, confirm PriceBack has notification permission and that Notifications is toggled on in your Profile inside the app.
• Watched items: price-drop notifications only fire for items still inside their adjustment window. Expired items don’t alert.
• Device push token: uninstalling / reinstalling can rotate the token. Sign out and back in, or scan a fresh receipt to re-register.

Troubleshooting

The app crashed or behaved weirdly.

Try the Try again button on the error screen. If that doesn’t recover, force-quit and reopen. If it still misbehaves, email support@priceback.ca with: your phone model, OS version, app version (Profile → About), and a short description of what you were doing. We receive automatic crash reports, but they don’t include who you are — an email is the only way for us to follow up with you specifically.

Does PriceBack work outside Canada?

No. PriceBack is built for Canadian retailers and Canadian price-adjustment policies. The supported stores are all Canadian chains. We may add US support in a future version but it’s not on the near roadmap.

Email-receipt sync

Email-receipt sync isn’t finding receipts.

Email sync looks for messages from the 20 supported retailer domains in your Gmail or Outlook inbox over the last 60 days. If a receipt isn’t found:

• The store may use a domain we don’t recognize yet — let us know which retailer.
• The email may be older than 60 days — we don’t scan the full archive.
• You may have signed in with a different Gmail / Outlook account than the one that received the receipts.

I’m a developer / journalist / researcher — how do I get in touch?

Reach support@priceback.ca. For security disclosures specifically, use the same address — we follow a responsible-disclosure policy and aim to acknowledge within 48 hours.

Send us feedback

Bug reports, feature requests, and stories about how PriceBack helped you are all welcome at support@priceback.ca.