e-coupon tricks

Monday, March 15, 2010

Here is something I learned by my own trial and error:

When using a paper (internet -IP- or manufacturer coupon -MC) in combination with e-coupons loaded to your store savings card (Safeway or Kroger owned stores), here is a good trick to keep your IP/MC from potentially "beeping" when your cashier scans them.

Hand over your IP/MC's and make sure they are all scanned  BEFORE you ever slide your savings card.

For example:
* Completely Hypothetical Example



Yoplait Fiber One Yogurt 4 pack is on sale 2 for $3

You have IP/MC's for $1 off 1
You also have 1 or more ecoupons loaded to your card for $1 off 1

Lets say you decide to buy 2 of the yogurts. The regular price is $2.49 each.

You head to the checkout.

Yogurts ring up at 2 @ $2.49

Hand over your 2 IP/MC for $1 off 1

Coupons deduct $1 off of each yogurt, making each one now, $1.49

Then you slide your little store savings card.

Instantly the store will subtract the difference between the regular price and sales price, in this case, take off another .99 on each yogurt.

Also at the same time the  e-coupons will deduct. It happens automatically and even if the "value" of the product you are buying (at this point after the sale price and coupon you would be paying .50 for each yogurt) is less than the amount of the e-coupon, the e-coupon will still come off in the full amount.

Many times this results in what is known as "overage"... where your balance is now negative.

So in this scenario, lets suppose you have two $1 off 1 yogurt e-coupons.

If this was all you were purchasing you would be getting back $1 to "buy" these two packs of yogurt.

Most stores won't actually give you overage in the form of cash, but it can be applied to your other purchases.

If you scan your card first and it deducts the sales price and e-coupons you may already in some cases be in the zero or overage range for that product. When this occurs, many times when the IP/MC is scanned it will "beep" and your cashier may or may not force it (manually enter in the amount of the coupon). They may think "beep"= reject coupon. Which it really shouldn't, because the store is still getting reimbursed the full amount of the e-coupon AND the IP/MC plus an 8 cent handling fee for each. So even if it beeps the store is still going to recoup that money if they manually force the coupon.

Unfortunately there are alot of stores who do not educate their cashiers/checkers about how coupons work, and there are those cashiers who have heard stories of heard threats of losing their job if they take fradulant coupons, so if they beep, they will not enter them out of ignorance or fear.

Swipping your savings card LAST is one way to avoid this kind of situation and save yourself the red face and embarrassment of having to explain how coupons work to your cashier.

When it happened to me I had a full line of people behind me and I just said whatever. He did manually force the coupons, but he would not make them multiply/double. It cost me about $7 in savings, but I didnt want to get into it with all those people staring at me! :)

As always, I hope this makes sense. All this couponing is still fairly new to me, I really got started in November of last year so I am still a newbie. But its fun to learn and I love to be able to share so that we can all save our families money!

I am visiting my mom next week and am gonna show her and some girlfriends what I have learned and I even have some coupons stocked up that I won't use before March is up that I am ready to share and help them score some good deals!