Interesting article today in Entrepeneur Magazine–How to Stop Losing Money from Coupons.
If you’ve been following me for as long as “that show” has been on, you know I’m not a fan. And I’m prone to rant about it.
My existential couponing crisis
Anyone else sick of Extreme Couponing?
Retailers getting tougher on couponers
If TLC is The Learning Channel, What are we learning?
But, as shown in the Entrepeneur article, retailers have had enough. Also, if you’ve followed this blog, you’ve surely noticed I’ve cut way back on the amount of matchups I do. Even promoting home delivery services like Peapod. Make no mistake, I’m still a serious couponer. In fact, just scored a nice haul of detergent today at Target, on clearance + coupons. But I also heard from a couponing friend that was hassled tonight at our local Acme, and they wouldn’t take her bogo printables.
Look, I am friends with several of the bloggers/couponers that have been on that show. They’re nice people and the ones that I know are honest, polite and to my knowledge don’t commit coupon fraud. But by and large, that show has been a disaster for us that have been doing this a long time. My hope is that this will blow over within a year or two, the economy will rebound more and people will lose interest. Couponing does take time and it’s not for everyone. Another one of the reasons why I don’t just bring you coupon deals. If you try to save money solely by clipping coupons, you’re not going to come out that much ahead. Grocery budgets are only 9-10% of your household budget–even if everything is free, you still have 90% of your household budget to look at, for ways to trim money.
If this is your lifestyle, we’ll evolve. If you are just in this for the freebies and think it’s easy to just walk into a store and walk out with four carts of crap for free………then you’ll probably fade away. The guidelines have gotten gradually stricter over the past 5 years, increasingly more strict over the past year. But, I’m still able to find very cheap and free stuff, and have no plans to stop. The difference is that most of us die-hards are reasonable about it, not demanding to cashiers, nor do I commit fraud to get there.
Thanks to one of my fellow mods on hcw for the heads up on the article!
Thanks for sharing. I just did my grocery shopping yesterday and had a great experience at the local Acme with my coupons. I think that with couponing you have to treat others as you want them to treat you. Nicely, patiently and respectfully. Granted – I wasn’t pulling up 4 shopping carts, but I needed help w/ some things and both the customer service rep and the cashier were great. So, keep on using coupons – it does help – just do it nicely!
Great info! Stumbling.