PING!
That’s outrageous! What a flagrant abuse of a system that was set up to help people.
Clearly, it is time for the federal government to step in and close the “coupon loophole” immediately.
I shall be writing my congress-critter a letter this very day.
;-)
lol. I guess the stores that offer to double your coupons are doubly cheating the system? lol
Just want to point out that my regional grocery chain, Ingles, has posted the following policies:
-no “free” coupons downloaded from the internet will be honored.
They also set a limit on the dollar amount of coupons that escapes me at the moment, they make a huge deal out of doubling the value of coupons, so this new policy must be in response to your peerless readers cranking coupons on their purchases.
So, what is couponing? Is this just cutting coupons out of the sunday paper and ad mailers?
My best deal was the 9 (or so) cubic foot freezer for 159 bucks that came with 200 dollars worth of free frozen foods and a 50 dollar gift card to the same store. We loaded up the cart with all the frozen foods and our normal haul of food and ended up pushing the freezer, the cart of frozen and our normal “thrifty” shopping cart load through. The lady behind us watched as about 600 dollars worth rang up.. Then the coupons free gift card and sales discounts hit. Total bill, 169.65..
Required a manager override because we saved “to much”
Lady behind us offered my wife money to do her shopping for her :D (BTW she does)
We didn’t even need the freezer, sold it NIB on Craigs list for 175 dollars. we ate free for months on that deal.
PING !
Hmmm. Why are coupons produced? To give stuff away for free? No it is to entice people to try a product or preferentially buy one brand over the other.
Using a sequence of coupons that don’t prohibit stacking is gaming the system to take advantage of someone’s failure to fully cover their bases in the small print.
Is that cheating the system? By the standard definition of the phrase... Yes it is. Its not a lot different than circling the free samples cart in order to get your lunch for free. Illegal? No. Abuse of good faith marketing? Yes.
If your neighbor put out a sign on his garage sale that said “free shirt just for looking” would you feel comfortable coming back to look 40 times and emptying his rack clothing rack? The morality of an act isn’t based on the identity of the abused party.
The cashier was completely out of line.
Here is what is going on:
There is a certain group of people who have to buy their favorite brand: Skippy peanut butter, Crest toothpaste, Thomas’ English Muffins. There is another group of people who shop for either lowest price or best perceived value.
There are companies making products by the tens of millions. 90% of those products will be sold at regular price. The other 10% will be sold to marginal buyers who are happy to choose alternatives. In any event, the marginal cost of the 10,000,000th box of Sugar Frosted Flakes is a lot less than that of the first box. On top of that, a small percentage of these discretionary sales will find they prefer the product and remain customers. You can bet that without the coupon, Joohn Smith wouldn’t be going into Walgreens to relieve them of their surplus of JiffyPop. If not for coupons, some of this stuff would wind up in dollar stores or worse, discarded.
This is no more an abuse of the system than one who aggressively seeks leisure travel airfares. They are playing by the airlines schedule, and the airline fills an otherwise empty seat. The full fare guy paid for security and convenience.
I say all this as someone who rarely uses coupons, and whose wife buys mainly Aldi stuff, vegetables and commodities (e.g. milk, ground beef) that don’t get the same level of coupon exposure.
“Don’t be shy about posting on this thread...”
You’ll love this...
Went to a new Walgreens yesterday. I try to spread the deals out among as many different stores as I can. Luckily, there are a lot around here. Anyway, the cashier was impressed with the deal I got, saying “someone sure taught you to shop” (implying a lady taught me.) She looked at me like I had two heads when I quietly replied “the coupon whisperer.”
Please add me to your list. Thanks!
Why did the cashier even worry about it? It’s not like the money was coming out of her/his pocket. Reminds me of the waitress who gets p-oed when she refills the coffee a time more than she feels is necessary. They should have a new reality show called, ‘Mind your own business.’
She called the manager to the front of the store instead. He proceeded to apologize profusely and rang up my original, perfectly legal deal just like she should have done. I then suggested to him that perhaps he'd like to educate his cashiers on proper coupon use instead of having them accuse their customers of criminal activity. I never saw her in that store after that so either she quit or they got rid of her snarling face.
Toss me on the ping list please, PJ. I’m going to have to study this.
Could you add me to your list please? It’s my birthday, I’m snowbound with four kids and dh 1000 miles away, and it would make my day to be a disciple of ‘The Coupon Whisperer’! LOL
FWIW, last month I was at Target just looking around and decided to check the shoes because I needed a pair of boots. As usual, I started in the clearance section :) I found a pair of very cute and stylish black boots w/2 inch heels for $5.24. I almost didn’t try them on because they were 1/2 size smaller than I normally wear, but I did and they were a perfect fit! When I got to the checkout, the cashier told me that they were a return from an internet order and that such items are discounted heavily when returned to the store. I don’t know why that is, but I liked getting boots for about 1/6 of the original price!
Bet that checker would never say that to a food stamp user.
Please place me on your ping list. Thanks!
marked
Just an aside: You guys do realize that other than paper products, you use coupons to the detriment of your health, right? Coupons are for packaged foods. Things that bring nothing to your health. Just thought I’d mention that. Focus on the produce and meats, dairy. Remember that you don’t SAVE anything by buying packaged starch foods — they will cost you more in the end with medical issues.
ping;readlater