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{getting back into couponing} days 5, 6 and 7~clip and shop!

January 6, 2013 by · Leave a Comment

extreme couponing, bandwagonWell, here we are, wrapping up the first week of the new year. One of my resolutions is to get back into saving money on my groceries, pay attention to what I’m buying, pay more attention to what we’re wasting and overall just be a better shopper. It takes time, it takes effort, but I think the savings I will see are significant and worth the time and effort.

So if you’ve been with us since Day 1, we are now at Day 5. And today’s task, and the task f0r tomorrow and the next day…. clip your coupons and shop!

We should be all ready–we cleaned out our pantries, we looked at the sales ads, we planned our meals for the week, so now it’s clip today’s coupons, complete your list and go.

This week, I’m choosing Superfresh. I go back and forth between Superfresh and Acme, usually going to Acme. But I like the P&G deal they have and the cereal is a good price. Since I don’t need much–just milk and produce and a few other things, Superfresh is just a better choice.

Another thing I’m going to try to resolve to do–shop alone. Even if it means I go at night when I’m tired, I’m going by myself. My kids just really mess up my deals and couponing mojo and I can’t think.

Have a great week!



Filed Under: Back to Basics-extreme couponing for the beginners, Grocery Store ads, deals, matchups, coupons and clearance finds Tagged With: , ,

Extreme Couponing back for new season~now with more fraud!

May 29, 2012 by · 6 Comments

Sigh, I really hate that show. I cannot think of one positive that has come out of that show, can you? It has completely ruined couponing for the rest of us. A new season started again this week, I was flipping through and found it, was looking for Storage Wars (which I have also read is staged and makes me sad, I’m still in denial over that one though). But anyway, back to “that show.”

A few weeks ago I filmed a tv segment for PHL 17 at the Acme in Bala Cynwyd. Since there was a bit of downtime, I was talking with the store manager and of course we talked coupons. He said that store managers were told that as many as 75% of all coupons for FREE items are counterfeit. Is the percentage actually that high? Who knows? But does it matter–because that’s what Acme managers think it is, so I have to pay the price. I recently did a sponsored post for Clorox Green Works and got some coupons from them, for FREE items. Big whoop–can’t even use them, because even though they are 100% legit, no stores will take them. I’m doing an Udi’s giveaway soon for some free item coupons….hopefully the winners can actually use the coupons.

Last night’s show portrayed more “couponers” with fists full of coupons for FREEs. No one, I mean no one, can get their hand on that many FREEs legitimately. They’re counterfeit or stolen from a company. They are even listed on some counterfeit coupon websites as an alert. Yet TLC chose to portray them. Are they even paying their researchers or fact-finding department? Because they totally stink. Please tell me what the difference is–if I film myself with a bunch of counterfeit money, and show you all the stuff I “buy” with it, and redeeming a stack of counterfeit coupons. How is this ok? How is TLC ok with this? Are they that desperate for ratings and shows?

I miss the old couponing. I miss the deals, I miss the freebies. I miss the excitement of getting a good ole’ fashioned deal that you found on your own, with deal stacking. I miss the thrill of finding a cool scenario on a blog you loved, and trying it yourself and having it work. I miss rolling catalinas. I miss getting stuff for free and then coming home and sending in a rebate form for it. I miss the good old days and I’m only 41.

Instead, some lazy tv production people, combined with some lazy couponers too lazy to even find a real deal, have ruined it for the rest of us. Who remembers when CVS had monthly ECB items and NO limits? Then it was limit 5, then 3, then 1. Now the ECB freebies are not only limit 1, but you have to get in there on Sunday or Monday or you don’t get it–their freebies are 2 day deals. Same goes for the grocers–their best deals are only for 3 days, not 1 or 2 weeks like it used to be.

Please boycott the show with me. Even better, let’s all write to them and tell them how much they stink and how they should be ashamed of themselves. Tell them how they have ruined it for us moms who are really having trouble stretching a buck and trying to feed our families. Yes, the economy is slowly getting better, but there are still millions of Americans that are unemployed and the prices of everything are rising. Coupons help with that. And now, thanks to EC, instead of a $1 off one item, we’re lucky to get $0.20 or $0.35 (are you listening Tide?). 

I don’t 100% blame them. Sure, companies are trying to save money and work with less, that’s led to decreased coupon values. Unemployment was high which meant more people had more time to clip coupons and do deals. But Extreme Couponing on TV made it sooooo easy. You didn’t have to do a google search and browse dozens of blogs to find one that fit you. It was right there. All people had to do was lay on the couch like Homer Simpson in their underwear, and it was just all right there….right in front of you. And if you wanted to see it again, you knew exactly where to go to see it again. It made it just a little too easy–not like the kitchen table conversations I’ve had with friends, or evening tutoring trips I’ve done to CVS, to really show someone the ropes.

And now, this is their solution to show–just show up with a pile of counterfeit coupons, and voila! Free stuff! The stores should be ashamed of themselves too, really.  Meh, maybe it’s the record heat we’re having here, but this is really getting to me today. I guess it’s because I was pretty excited about my Suave deal at Acme, and was trying to get back into couponing. Now this just sours me all over again.

Who wants the free Green Works coupons? Lol.

Other posts I’ve done on this:

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Extreme Couponing Tagged With: , ,

It’s not my imagination! TLC is affecting us.

November 4, 2011 by · 2 Comments

 

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!

Filed Under: Acme sales, deals and coupons, Catalinas, Coupon Apps, E-Coupons, Coupons & Printable Coupons, Extreme Couponing Tagged With: , , ,

My existential couponing crisis (aka complaining about *that tv show* again!)

September 5, 2011 by · 1 Comment

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.

You might also like:

One supercouponer’s opinion of Extreme Couponing

If TLC is the learning channel, what are we learning?

Retailers getting tougher on couponers

Anyone else sick of extreme couponing?

Slow death of supercouponing?

Filed Under: Extreme Couponing Tagged With: ,
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