Over one weekend I had two- yes two- terrible couponing experiences. They almost made me wonder why I bother trying to save money this way. First of all, let me tell you what happened. Friday evening my husband and I stopped in to Target. There were some great deals I found online that I wanted to take advantage of. To my disappointment, many of the products I needed were already sold out. I was able to pick up five boxes of Kashi cereal for a great price.
My plan was to take advantage of Target’s new price matching policy where they will match competitor prices promoted in ads. Walgreens had the cereal on sale for $2.50 a box. I had $1.50 off coupons, plus when you bought five boxes you got a $5 Target gift card which would essentially make each box completely free. That’s like getting nearly $20 of cereal for free. After reading blogs on other coupon sites I learned that I needed to take my cereal to customer service in order to use the price match policy. The problem was, no one knew how to do it. I waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, after about 30 minutes the manager gave up and rang the transaction as though I had coupons bringing the price down to $2.50 rather than doing it as a price match. Was the savings worth waiting for a full thirty minutes? Not really.
My second terrible couponing experience came on Sunday evening at Walgreens. I’ve been having a lot of problems at Walgreens lately with their Register Rewards system not working. But I wanted to get free toothbrushes, shampoo and a discounted Sunday paper so I headed there for what I thought would be a quick trip. The cashier rang my transaction and no Register Rewards were dispensed. The machine was jammed. After determining the machine couldn’t be fixed my transaction was voided and I was moved to another register. Once again after I completed my sale no Register Rewards printed. I had purchased the correct items, but apparently the system was not working properly. I ended up only buying about half of what I intended to buy and I’m not really sure what happened. The frustrated manager just handed me a bunch of Register Rewards equal to the same amount I had paid out, but I’m not sure exactly how the transaction was processed.
After these two terrible experiences I created this list of five things to prepare for:
1. You will know the policies better than the employees. You don’t have to do couponing for long before you know the stores’ rules better than many of the workers. Be prepared to have to explain it to them.
2. You will have to wait. Mistakes will happen. Things will get confusing. Just be patient.
3. You will have to defend your purchases. I’ve encountered many cashiers who try to argue my coupon use. I used to be timid about defending it, but now I ask lots of questions about whether the policy has changed, why it worked last time or whether they can explain it to me. I don’t mind being wrong, but I do mind being charged for something when I shouldn’t be.
4. You may be wrong. It’s fairly easy to misread a coupon, or not understand it clearly. If a cashier catches a valid mistake accept the error and move on. They’ll probably ask you whether you still want the item or not. Make your decision quickly so you don’t force others to wait in line longer than necessary.
5. Bad experiences are likely. You’d think stores would make their coupon policies and procedures painless since they want you to continue shopping there, but that’s not always the case. Just like my two bad experiences this weekend, anyone who coupons will likely experience something similar.