Avalanche Store
Discounts
Member Discounts - Price Matching Discounts - Volume Discounts
By purchasing your gear from us for the same lowest price you can get anywhere else you are helping to support our nonprofit work.
Member Discounts - All the time
Members who are logged in while they shop automatically have a discount applied to their cart, and pay no shipping within the US. The discount rate varies from time to time. Join Now ! Orders over $100, including discount items, include a years membership.
Price Matching Discounts - We Will Match Any Price
Manufacturers and distributors generally have strict policies against discounting. We have posted competitive discounts and sale prices in the past only to be told we can't do that. Often we were reported by a large operation with high volumes, who ironically offer discount themselves. But they buy such large volumes that the policies are enforced much less strictly for them. So we do not exactly operate in a free market! What we can do is match discounts initiated by others, and we can also make deals privately without posting anything about prices below suggested retail.
In matching discounts we will follow these policies:
We will match any discounted price directly, including regular sales which do not specify a limited number of items available. Clearance sales which specifically state that only a certain number of units are available may or may not be matched. Inquire. (Large operations often have clearance prices that are a significant loss, just to dump the items from their inventory. It's a cost of doing business for them. We cannot match those kinds of prices!)
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We will match discounts consisting of free items, such as a free shovel or probe with a beacon. We can offer several options. One is to calculate the effective percentage and offer that much off of either item. We can also include a similar item of your choice and calculate an equivalent discount. Why get a free probe you don't want when you can choose one you do? Or why not just get a discount on the beacon which is really the only item you want?
We will match any package deal directly, with substitutions for products we do not carry. Since there are so many combinations possible please contact us with information on a package you like and we will work with you to match it in a fair manner, including the items you prefer.
Discount orders are treated the same as any other order for the purposes of being considered a contribution. Orders over $100 will be considered contributions for the purposes of receiving membership for one year.
Shipping may or may not be matched. For international orders we often offer reasonable shipping via USPS whereas some stores only offer outrageous private shipping fees. On the other hand we do not have anywhere near the volume required for contract deals with the likes of UPS or FedEx for domestic US shipping.
Volume Discounts
We can offer special pricing to anyone ordering a large quantity at one time, including clubs, companies, groups of friends pooled together, etc. Contact us with the size of your potential order and the items included and we will provide a quote.
For large orders worthy of a volume discount we may require payment via some means other than paypal. We found out the hard way, fortunately on a small order, that we have insufficient protections from paypal. (We sent a study kit to the UK and it did not arrive fast enough for the customer. He reported it as not received even though it was in transit with tracking. Paypal refunded the order and of course the product was never returned.)
Shipping
When we began our project and our store 25 years ago it was easy to include free shipping, even on many international orders. Since then the postal service has increased rates dramatically, and we are currently and frequently re-evaluating our shipping fees. We continue to absorb some part of this cost but cannot promise free shipping on anything sent anywhere anymore.
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