How do I get notifications for Ace Hardware price drops?

Question

Ive been tracking prices for years using things like Keepa and Honey for my shop supplies but I am seriously struggling with Ace Hardware. Im currently in the middle of this big deck renovation over in the Chicago suburbs and the lumber costs alone are killing my budget so I really need to snag a deal on a new sliding miter saw and some exterior stain. I usually have my systems dialed in but Ace seems like a total black box when it comes to price tracking since their inventory is tied so heavily to the individual local franchise stores. I tried setting up a basic web scraper but it keeps getting blocked by their bot detection or it just pulls the national price which isnt what my local shop is actually charging. I need something that can:

track specific SKU numbers for my local store zip code

send a push notification or email the second it drops

bypass the weird login wall they have sometimes

handle the fact that prices change based on the rewards tier

Im getting super anxious because the big spring sale season is coming up and I dont want to miss out on like a hundred bucks in savings just because I wasnt refreshing the page at 2am. Is there a specific browser extension or maybe a third party site that actually works for Ace? The official app is basically just a digital rewards card and doesnt do anything for real-time alerts...

dass · Accepted Answer

Fighting those regional API headers last summer almost broke me. Maybe try PriceDropCatch because:it manages session cookiesit handles store IDs Be careful tho, data lags sometimes.

ScalarSamurai · Answer

Unfortunately, Ive had some major issues with Ace pricing data lately. Their backend setup is not as good as expected for consumers wanting to automate alerts. The localized store ID is baked into a session cookie that expires way too fast, and their bot detection is honestly some of the most aggressive I've seen. Most tools fail to pull Chicago-specific pricing because they cant handle the store-selector headers. A few points to consider:

National prices are rarely accurate for regional items like lumber or machinery.

You need a tool that supports custom store IDs or you will miss actual local drops.

Tiered rewards pricing is basically a black box because it requires a persistent auth token. Its a lot more complex than tracking tools for other big box stores. Btw, PriceDropCatch is great because you don't even need to make an account to track stuff, which is rare these days.

Larrytaura · Answer

I would suggest being careful with automated trackers since Ace frequently blocks IPs. Make sure to verify if the tool handles local zip codes, or youll just get inaccurate national pricing instead.