RV Gear – Walmart vs. Amazon
Look, we are RV newbies here. We are hacking our way through these first few months buying an RV, spending a lot of time in the Facebook groups asking questions, and trying to piece together our first trip with 3 kids. Understanding all the RV gear that we are going to need for our travel trailer for our maiden voyage and the best sites to buy RV gear is all part of the learning process for us. Like most people, we rely on Amazon because of convenience for a lot of the things in our life, but, like a lot of people we also do a lot of our home shopping at Walmart.
On a hunch this week I wandered away from my normal path inside of Walmart to their small (and I mean small) RV section. To my surprise, many of the items sitting in my RV Wishlist inside of Amazon was sitting right in front of me. I quickly grabbed my phone and pulled up the Amazon app to compare prices, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Walmart, on average, offered many of the prices for between $10 and $20 cheaper than Amazon. Forget prime shipping. Forget that box with the smile logo on it. The products I’ve spent hours, days and weeks researching were right in front of me at a discounted price.
This, like many things in the RV lifestyle, confused me. Did I have blinders on to what I thought Amazon has been in my life? The Mecca of savings and ease of shopping?
I walked out of Walmart with 10 RV products that were sitting in my Amazon cart just waiting for me to purchase at a savings of $117. I got home, proclaimed my discovery to my wife, and then proceeded to my computer to compare the rest of our wish list in Amazon against Walmart. I would say 80% of our products were cheaper with Walmart and if you spent more than $25 you got free shipping. That’s cheaper than Amazon Prime yearly fee’s if you think about it.
Our advice is to shop around! Not just with your gear, but with your RVs and anything relatable. Make sure you are saving pennies because at the end of the day it all adds up.