Previous Entry
The Coupon Complex
Amy Storch of Amalah.com | December 17th, 2008 - 3:14 PM
Confession: coupons make me nervous.
Not AS A CONCEPT or anything. I’m not scared of barcodes, like this one kid I knew in high school whose mother was convinced that stuff like credit cards and supermarket scanners were predictions from the Book of Revelations about the End Times. He seriously was scared of barcodes. And his mother, frankly. I think we all were.
No, coupons make me nervous because of all the fine print. All the expiration dates and exclusions and limitations. I read and reread them, convinced that I’ve missed something. Â THEY FREAK ME OUT, PEOPLE.
My current anxiety about coupons most certainly does NOT come from my childhood. My mother was the best coupon-clipper I have ever known. She dutifully went through the paper and the circulars every week and clipped clipped clipped and filed them neatly into her wallet-like coupon organizer. I used to beg to help her, and I’d sit at the kitchen table scanning the pages for grocery items I recognized, proudly announcing each relevant coupon I found as I neatly cut it out and filed it into the appropriate category in the organizer. At the store, it was my job to go through it and find any coupons we could use, and double-check the expiration dates. I would hand them to the cashier with confidence. Coupons were easier, back then, somehow.
I was totally thrown the first time I ever encountered one of a coupon with a STARTING date in addition to an expiration date. It was at slightly-above-my-price-point clothing store at the mall, and I was SO EXCITED when the coupon arrived in the mail. It was a generous 30% off and I was starting a new job — and I desperately wanted some nice grown-up business wear. So I went to the store and loaded up. I spent hours there, raiding the sales racks and cackling with glee over how crazy-cheap I was going to get everything, and finally I lugged everything up to the register and handed over my coupon and…
Yeah. I couldn’t use it until the next week. They would only hold my clothing choices for two days. I meekly slunk out of the store empty-handed, disgraced. When I returned a week later, the sales racks had disappeared, replaced by full-priced new arrivals for the next season. It was a terrible, sobering moment, when my little 20-something self learned a hard lesson about how the retail world works: They Will Screw You Out Of Bargains Somehow, Some Way, All The Time.
Ever since, I cannot even use a 25-cents-off coupon for baby wipes without obsessively scanning the fine print. I check and double-check the expiration date. Hmm…the picture of wipes on the coupon is the GREEN box, and I want the WHITE box, can I still use the coupon? Â Is “jumbo” bigger or smaller than “mega?” Are we in Alaska? Because this coupon is void in Alaska.
Store coupons freak me out the most, what with the long list of things you CAN’T use the coupon on (diapers, formula, prescriptions, special orders, Fancy But Affordable Line by Fancy Designer, installation services, sale items, clearance items, electronics, household appliances bigger than a breadbox and the One Color Of Hand Towels That Amy Picked, You Just Know It).
It’s gotten so bad that — oh my God, I can’t believe I’m admitting this to the Internet — that I tend to hoard coupons and use them only on shopping trips that my husband is present during, so I can make him hand them to the cashier and pay while I suddenly go somewhere else (oh look! a bulletin board flyer for a lead guitarist in search of a band! I should totally take his number!). If I’ve screwed up on the coupon screening, I don’t even want to be there to hear about it.
What am I nervous about? I don’t even know, exactly. Getting the coupon handed back to me at the cash register, like a rejected credit card? Having to pay full-price for baby wipes? Having to put an expensive item back because I could only justify it with the coupon? The simple implication that I am, in fact, an illiterate moron who is unable to make sense of the fine print on a stupid COUPON?
Hmm. All of the above, now that I think about it. But mostly the last one.
In the olden days of coupons (I’m old enough to be your mother)they weren’t scanned; the checker had to look for the expiration date, so I could occasionally slip an expired one by. Now the coupons are often for specific sizes, shapes, colors, and personalities. Too complicated for me.
Until recently, I, too was afraid to use coupons. But then, my husband got laid off, and I have had to learn to get groceries at the regular supermarket instead of the local, organic one that never had coupons anyway, so double win!
Only once have I ever had a coupon rejected (and it was lame, because it shouldn’t have been). Instead, I have often had the checkers actually key in the discount, even when the scanner thingie wouldn’t work!
And now, we are subsisting on a grocery budget of $200/month (including wine!), so it can be done.
The cashiers freak me out with coupons. I bring up so many sometimes that they look pissed and about half of them don’t even know how to enter them. I feel your pain.
On a good note, if you look sad and haggard enough sometimes they will let you use a coupon past it’s expiration date. (I know this firsthand).
I hate using coupons. I always pick the thing that is in the teeeeny tiiiiny little exception. OR, the dreaded “this coupon can only be used if you use your store charge card” routine. Thanks but no thanks.
That’s why I do the majority of my non-day-to-day shopping online. Most sites have that little box for a coupon code and it is instantly applied. With site like retailmenot.com and couponcabin.com you can find a code, and if it doesn’t work, you can try another one! Yay for ordering son’s xmas present online for 30% off plus free shipping on what would have cost me full-price in the actual store.
I am the same way. It’s mostly my fear of the rejection of the handing back of the coupon.
And a little part of it is working retail and dealing with the customers who didn’t understand the coupons and were VERY ANGRY about it. I want to avoid being those people as much as possible.
And, I agree with the sad and haggard looking trick to getting to use the expired coupons. If people were nice to me, and seemed genuinely saddened by the loss of coupon ability, I would always take it anyway.
(If I could- if it’s a super-awesome, time-limited coupon it is probably not even possible.)
That’s getting too complicated to bother with!
I can remember once, while my kids were small, we lived near a medium-size supermarket where you could take ALL your coupons – you didn’t have to buy the item, they could be expired or whatever – and they would add them all up and give you a store credit for the amount. This was heaven. Between my daughters and I, we came up with about $25 a week in coupons without even buying any newspapers or magazines we didn’t normally buy, and since this was in the 70s, I think (we lived there at the time that Elvis died, if that helps – maybe it was the 60s – when did Elvis die?), $25 bought a lot more groceries than it does now.
But then the coupon police caught them, and our lovely scam ended. It was great while it lasted.
My husband and I have started clipping coupons like mad, to save money since the economy, the new baby, etc. etc. But notice I said CLIPPING. Much better at clipping than USING. Baby steps, right?
I completely understand. I have been obsessively using coupons since I quit my job in April and yet I still get nervous every time they ring me up. Especially if the coupon beeps and they have to check it over. I actually got 2 of my coupons rejected by a Kroger cashier this week because she apparently has her own coupon policy that doesn’t apply with any of the other cashiers I use there. Walgreens is typically the most coupon friendly store I shop at but Kroger and CVS are awesome too. It helps to use sites like http://www.moneysavingmom.com to plan shopping trips because they do all the work for you by checking the deals, matching relevant coupons, etc so all I do is pick what items I need and use their coupon list as a guide. I do love the feeling of walking out of the store with really cheap products though. I scored 2 coffee mate christmas peppermint creamers at Walgreens last night for 49 cents and felt like I won the lottery.
That’s why I pay to belong to http://www.refundcents.com and/or http://www.grocerygame.com. They do all the work, all I have to do is look at their lists, clip appropriate coupon and voila, money saved.
I LOVE using coupons! I just read every little bit of them..lol!
I am also scared of coupons! But my worry is more about HOLDING UP THE LINE while I hand my coupons over and they get scanned and figured out and verified (and quite possibly rejected.) It all just seems like it would TAKE SO LONG and I’m scared of pissing off the people behind me. That’s just me and my Britishness, though, so I guess I should get over it.
Three words: Self. Check. Out. You can use expired coupons at the self checkout. I’ve done it – not intentionally, I SWEAR(!!), and since you scan it, and then drop it into the slot, there’s no one to see if it’s expired.
Now, I’m not saying it’ll work on a coupon from 1998 or anything, but a week or two past the expiration date? It will totally work.
Somehow, you always manage to hit a topic I have on my mind! I spent a lot of time last month clipping and organizing for my Christmas trips this month, and have only managed to use ONE coupon so far! (AAANNDDD, that one was a retro-actively applied Babies-R-Us one b/c I think the manager felt sorry for me.. he had to put in a bunch of overrides..).
So, rock on with your irrational (yet totally sane!) fear of coupons…! I’ll jump on that train!
PS – I would so only buy certain expensive things on sale…
I occasionally find cashiers who are afraid of coupons and that makes me breathe easy. Usually the teenage boys. I can even slip a few not-quite-kosher ones past them. They would rather key in the discount than bother figuring out the jumbo vs mega dilemma, etc.
I’ve found that using the self-check lane at the grocery (instead of interacting with an actual human being) is the best way to sneak any “questionable” coupons. I recommend the self-check only if it’s a small shopping trip. Taking a long time at the kiosk is a lot more awkward than having a coupon handed back to you by a cashier.
My manicurist went off on a coupon rant the other day. She had received one in the mail from Large Department Store That Has an Annual Thanksgiving Day Parade In New York. English is not her first language. It may not even by her third or fourth language. But she pronounces coupon as “COO fahn.” Apparently, her coupon was supposed to be good for 15% to 20% off. As she related the story about her coofahn, she got more and more agitated and was sawing away at my thumbnail. I think she was saying that she wanted to get the 20% off, but they wouldn’t let her use it on anything she wanted to buy except for one item. And that was for 15% off. As she angrily sawed away at the nub of thumbnail I had left, she said (I think) “Why they sen you coofahn if they don let you use coofahn? I tole them “you the wans to sen coofahn. Now you say I cane use coofahn? Why you do that? Thas cwazy.” I no go back there anymore.
What happen to you thumb?
I second the poster who said she clips coupons but doesn’t USE them. I have a whole envelope of coupons, ready to go, and I have yet to bring them to the store with me. Maybe I’m just inherently afraid of the coupon rejection like Amy is.
I don’t think that they are worth the trouble (i.e., the clutter of paper that accumulates in my purse/wallet because even though I have the BEST of intentions, I never use them).
But when I read about people saving oooodles of money (and hello! 2 Coffee Mate creamers for 49 cents!!!)…I’m swayed again.
Stop whatever you are doing and go to hotcouponworld.com. Create a use name and have at it. It will change your entire attitude toward coupons. I now pay pennies for shampoo, razors, soap and many other things … or get them for free. I am still using baby wipes that I got for free last December!
I had a horrible experience lately at the local Walmart store. I had started receiving coupons online in my e mail account. You just print them off and they have the barcodes on them and everything. I went through all of the coupons trying to save as much money as I could since I now have a new baby, a layed off husband, and a 70 mile drive to work one way every day.
I went through the aisles looking for the items I had coupons for. I was so proud of how much I was going to save….
Walmart refused to use the coupons. Would not take them. They claimed that they would be counterfeit and that they had had an issue recently were someone came in with $20 off some electrical equipment and it was fake and now they won’t take coupons unless they are on the shiny paper you get in circulars. I explained that I only wished to save .35 on two tubes of crescent rolls, and how and why would I counterfeit that??!!!
Walmart refused my print off coupons!!!!
Expiration dates?! HA!
They don’t matter.
I used coupons last weekend that “expired” in October. It’s totally a scam, those expiration dates. So go ahead, go wild, use old coupons.
Our local grocery store takes expired coupons. I use them like mad. YEARS old. Target does not take expired. I save minimum $10 per grocery trip.
Expired coupons are not a scam. If the store takes those coupons from you, they lose that money. It is a loss. I for one will not be teaching my kids that is is okay to do this (as it is essentially stealing). I used to use coupons like mad but stopped getting the paper. Always used to save $30+ on my grocery trips, without using expired coupons. I do think coupons should have longer expiration dates, if only for the stores to not have to deal with the loss. It all adds up when alot of people save 35 cents here and there. When I used to work at a grocery store, I did take an expired coupon from an irate customer. Do you know what happened to me? I got written up! I was told that I was personally responsible for the store to lose money. I would not wish that upon anyone working in that field, it is already bad enough!
Now, if you are talking a store that is named after someone who had the same last name as what a one cent piece is called- I used to work there. Cashiers did not get in trouble for accepting those coupons a day late or taking them for housewares (pots, pans, mixers) which is ALWAYS excluded on any one of their coupons. The thing is there is always a pattern as to how their coupons worked out and how they still got the same amount of money anyway. With grocery stores, it rarely works out that way. They depend on the reimbursement from those coupons and if they are expired when they are used, they will not get the refund from the companies.
Unfortunately, my local stores (throughout the entire city and suburbs >.<) will not take personally printed coupons. I think it stinks that a few bad eggs ruined it for everybody. I think cashiers should be trained to recognize the scams and stop entering in clearly counterfeit coupons. (I can’t believe that my grocery coworkers would take “FREE 24 pack PEPSI coupons, but it really is the “dumb” ones that ruined it rather than the printer/photoshop scammers.)
I used to work at a grocery store.More 4 less.Well anyways we only sent our coupons out once a month and got credit for them.We would send them to headquarters and they would do the rest.Stores don’t send them out every day.So I don’t think using expireds are bad.The store still gets credit for them.As a cashier I would still take them.I would even bring my coupon stash with me.The ones getting ready to expire and when someone came through my aisle I would match the coupons up to get rid of them.Everybody loved me.Except one time this mean old lady through a fit over a price on onions when I had saved her over $20 in groceries with my coupons.That upset me alot.Guess you can’t be nice to everyone.