On Saturday morning, the couponing group that I regularly meet with met, for the first time in a couple of months. With vacations and stuff, we sort of took a break for summer.
One of the moms asked “where are all the peanut butter deals?” and we really can’t find one. It used to be, that this time of year, peanut butter is free all over the place (by stacking deals) and then we’d all get 10-20 jars to last us until next back-to-school season. Not this year.
Then we started reminiscing about great deals we’ve encountered in the past that we just can’t find anymore. I’ve had to readjust my stockpile prices for items in my head. Not trying to sound like a jerk–but there are things I never thought I’d have to pay for–spaghetti sauce, peanut butter, granola bars, shampoo, razors–because I got so many of them free for so long, and now I find myself barely saving 20%-30% on those things. It’s crazy. The deals are disappearing. Supercouponers like myself have noticed much less traffic on the various deal boards. Sure, part of the reason is that people are too lazy to post a deal, but there just aren’t that many deals to post.
Coupon inserts these days–they suck, plain and simple. So many coupons are now $1 off 3, $1 off 4, no good values anymore. Lots of stores have tightened their coupon policies–Dollar General, Kmart, CVS, Rite Aid. So many have stopped doing the super promos they used to do. I don’t think Kmart has done a real superdoubles in two years. Shop Rite–haven’t heard about triples or superdoubles, in what, six months? Superfresh hasn’t done triples in at least two years. Many grocery stores are no longer letting you stack e-coupons with paper coupons. Wording on catalinas is stricter in many deals, and the catalina deals themselves suck almost as much as the coupons. The BTFE deals used to be $5 back in BTFE, then it went down to $2.50–the deal at Acme that started yesterday is down to $1.50.
I always thought I was one of those people who would always clip coupons. After all, I’ve been doing it for about 20 years. But now I’m starting to wonder. It just seems like so often, it’s not even worth it, like should I just try to save money in other areas?
I’ve done several posts surrounding the Extreme Couponing phenomena, and all along I’ve said that I don’t believe that all of this is due to just one stupid tv show. Now, I’m not so sure. They did a marathon of reruns on Saturday night, and I got sucked in. As usual, it left me rolling my eyes and disappointed that a popular show is regularly portraying fraud. They showed this one woman, she was getting 180 of something (I don’t want to say what it was) for free. First of all, as she’s clearing the shelf and filling her cart, she exclaims “Gee, I sure hope we like this product, we’ve never had it!” How stupid is that? And then, to get it free, she was using printable coupons.
Please tell me where someone has access to 180 printables? That would mean that you’d need 90 computers because the sites only let you print two per computer. My guess–she photocopied them. Fraud, plain and simple.
Sure, as a deal blogger, I know that the deal blogs and websites have contributed to making the deals more accessible to everyone. But, you still have to seek out the information yourself and find it. With tv–it’s just handed to you, you just have to be clicking around, and there it is. Delivered right to you and you didn’t even know you were looking for it. As someone who has taught coupon classes and is friends with moms all over the country who do so–I can tell you, it’s the tv show. People are contacting us saying “I want to do that! Like on tv!”
What can we do? I don’t know. I know that I’m getting tired of hearing negative stories surrounding the show–the fraud, the moms stealing newspapers, stores making it tougher on all of us. I’m not ready to hang up my scissors just yet, but I know that as far as the amount of time I spend clipping coupons and matching to deals–I’m definitely going to be paying attention to my ROI on my time. And I’ll start pursuing other ways to save money. Because with coupoing, I’m just not saving as much as I used to.
And fwiw, no, this is not sour grapes. I, and many of my friends have been asked to be on the show and we declined. I’m not just sour because I’m not on tv. If I’m going to be on tv, it’s not going to be reality tv. Extreme Couponing has done nothing positive. Nothing. Other than that some of the show’s participants have an increased traffic on their blogs and websites, that’s it. They were portrayed as freaks on tv and didn’t even get paid for it. Blog hits–that’s all they get.
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