Comments on: The Coupon Complex

By: elizabeth

elizabeth — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:28:03 +0000

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.

By: Shannon

Shannon — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:41:30 +0000

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.)

By: Elisette

Elisette — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 16:45:26 +0000

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.

By: Amanda

Amanda — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:23:31 +0000

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.

By: JoAnna

JoAnna — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 18:42:28 +0000

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!!!!

By: Tammy

Tammy — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:48:32 +0000

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!

By: Heather

Heather — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 15:47:35 +0000

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.

By: Marie

Marie — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 15:01:07 +0000

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.

By: Donna

Donna — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 11:59:28 +0000

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?

By: Genevieve

Genevieve — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 03:24:38 +0000

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.