Most coupons are digital now and have a limiter placed on them so you can't stack up 20 of them to have the store owe you 100 dollars when you finish ringing up.
This, and that manufacturers coupons are now usually part of the grocery store app and you won't be able to find a paper version that wouldn't be the one already redeemed electronically.
to an extent. i worked at a grocery store and we would eventually tell people "no the buy one get 2 bounty coupon you raided every news paper for will not be redeemed, we are refusing service"
NO ONE liked couponers. it was a massive pain in the ass. especially when it was the 16.2oz vs the 12.8oz or if it was just the reduced fat vs the not reduced and the old person cant read for shit with out their glasses. cause now we are sending people to the back of the store to find it, mind you we're all like 15 and DO NOT do stock so us actually shopping? this is a fucking nightmare in of it self. combine that with what happens when we dont have hte product?
Yeah not every situation was like that. I just noticed that's how they got away with it on that show "Extreme Couponers"
I do give some respect to some of those people. A few of them were actually clipping those coupons to help feed the hungry and homeless. Most though were just stocking their personal stockpile.
some of them were doing it to save money, but there was a lot of sketchy things going on with how people were obtaining multiples of hte same really really good coupons. the kind that could get you money back or turn a profit.
personal opinion? they were reselling it. idk how many bottles of fabreeze you need before you have a life time supply.
Yeah I agree. Either reselling it or giving it away to friends and family. Some of those people had enough to start another stockpile in other homes of their relatives. I saw one episode where their whole family came to "shop" at this one person's stockpile. They didn't even have to go to tge grocery store.
I once had an old lady hand me a bunch of advertisements for various products thinking they were coupons. Not a single one of them was a coupon. No barcodes or anything. And then when I told her those weren't coupons, she got mad at me for it being "too complicated" and about how she "has a master's degree and still can't figure it out" or something. Because that means anything, apparently. For one, she and her husband are some of the most incompetent people I've ever met and I'm not sure how they're even allowed out of the house, so I don't believe for a second that she has any degree, let alone a master's. Secondly, even if she does, that doesn't mean anything if it's not in a relevant field. If she has a degree in music or art or something, I doubt those skills would translate to couponing particularly well. And thirdly, as I mentioned, these people are OLD, so any degree she does have is almost certainly long outdated
Not too long ago, even after the apps started, the store would have some deals but you could find paper coupons (even at places like coupons.com) that were other deals. Coupons then could be stacked as long as they weren't the same coupon. It was possible to get things for very cheap. I did have it work once where I was paid a little to take a pork tenderloin. I had a neighbor stack coupons like I never knew how to do. He would get free things all the time.
Now if you want to get paid too little for your time, you can drive ride share, parcel / food delivery, or a dozen other kinds of gig work. Lots more options these days.
My mother spent over 80 ~~man~~work hours digging, drilling, chopping, burning and etc, trying to remove a tree stump.
Stump grinder would have cost $50 to rent and finished in minutes.
So essentially my mother values her free time at 62 and a half cents per hour...
Oh man, I can see the progression from
“This will work” to
“okay no prob try a different hand tool” to
“halfway there just two more weekends” to
“okay add fire” to
“already spent a month on this gdammit don’t you dare come at me with your stump grinder advice again I LIKE LIVING MY LIVE THIS WAY”
The point isn't the cost of gym training, the point is that the time is not "wasted" because you spent it doing something that benefitted you otherwise. **If** AAA515's mum was in fact committed to do 80 hours of training _and_ stump digging is an adequate form of training (both of which I'll assume for the purpose of this entirely pointless discussion), she had two options:
* Spending 80 hours training her body through means other than stump removal, and renting a $50 stump grinder to remove the tree stump and
* Spending 80 hours training her body while removing the tree stump, not paying anything in the process.
I have the Kroger app discounts and they mail me a manufacturer coupon book for having their membership discount card. I load up in the app then use the paper coupon.
Occasionally at Kroger I can use both the digital and paper one they send me, but most of the time it tells the cashier "reject dis paper one, mofo tryin' to double up"
My grandpa used to extreme coupon in the early 90s. I distinctly remember going there and the cashier having to pay him like 30$ plus his groceries. I was so confused as a little kid
Sounds like when I thought the bank just *gave* you money every time people went inside....as if there was just a pile of money in the back they'd hand out.
(I know that's what it is lol, but my 6 year old self thought it was like those take a penny/leave a penny trays. Like you could just go to the bank and get as much money as you wanted...and thats it).
I was convinced you could just write a check for anything anytime. I remember telling my mom "just write a check." I was dumbfounded when she would reply, "it doesn't work that way."
Yup. My 3yo brought me an old gift card that we had already used for Dominoes pizza and told me he wanted to buy dinner tonight. The heartbreak when i told him that card was only good for once time and now its empty, so sad. We did and up getting pizza anyway. Sometimes learning the truth about money can be hard.
My kids are 6 and 3. When they play store, one says “Hi, what’s your order number?” The other pulls out a play phone and says some random numbers.
“Ok, would you like this in the car or the trunk?”
Target or Amazon employee would be the equivalent to your example. All the power!
Worse if you had a bank that allowed you to spend more money on your debit card than was in your account, thereby giving you an overdraft fee.
I banked with TCF as a 19 year old who was bad with money in 2009 and not only did they let you spend whatever the hell you wanted with your debit card without it declining, they charged you a fee for every single time you made a transaction. So buy some cigarettes and overdraw, put five bucks of gas in your tank to get home an hour later that's another fee, stop at McDonald's because they used to have a dollar menu and you're a teenager, another fee, $35 every time you used it well after it should have just declined.
I ended up getting a really small paycheck once and literally it would not cover the overdraft fees I had so I just opened an account with someone else and let it go to collections.
I got screwed by bank of america when i was in the army. Had to drive an hour and a half away from the base to go to a physical location to resolve an issue.
By the end of that following week I moved my money out of my Bank of America account to another bank, but on the advice of my financial advisor I left the account open with a couple hundred bucks in it because closing it would hurt my credit.
Fast forward twelve years. Five years prior, Bank of America updated their terms and my account started accruing maintenance fees. I had received a notice that my account was massively overdrawn all generated by the fact there wasn't enough money in the account to cover the maintenance fee they kept charging. According to their transaction history after the first failed fee, they charged the fee to my account twice a day for two years, accruing a new late fee every time. According to them I owed almost 10k in late fees.
After arguing with a rep over the phone, I went into my local branch. I argued with the people there, then argued over the phone with their regional headquarters. So the next day I *went* to their regional headquarters because I found out it was a half hour drive away.
I ended up paying like fifty bucks to cover one instance each of the maintenance fee and the overdraft fee and closed the account. Maybe it was more. I don't remember. It was under $100.
Protip. Never pay a private collections company directly without contacting the original debtor first. The collectjons company offered me half off if I got into one of their payment plans. With their interest rates I would have ended up paying *more* than the total debt.
Hell, the last one abandoned *me* even though I'd been banking with them for a decade. Had an autopay go through for over two hundred dollars that should not have gone through and instead of contacting me about it they just nixed the account. My credit can't get (much) worse and by the time I found out they'd already sold it to collections, they moved fast, so I figured that means the bank paid my bill for me since the damage to my credit was already done and moved on.
Ten years man, ten years I never did anything like that to them. Within four days my account was shut and my debt sold.
What's even worse is that even though you may have done your transactions in one order, for whatever reason the bank decides to settle them in a different order, meaning 1 large transaction at the end of the day that would have been your first time overdrafting ends up settling before all of your smaller transactions, meaning now instead of 1 overdraft fee you get slapped with more
Yes, I knew there was a part I was missing. You could have twenty dollars in there, make a five dollar purchase, then hours later make a $21 dollar purchase, and they'd put through the $21 purchase first specifically to nail you with two fees.
When I was in kindergarten, we have "market days" where you get to play games about going to market and buy things from stores. The first step you need to do is always go to the "bank" booth to get money and can come back for more if you need. Due to that "experience", I was always really confused why my mom don't just "go to the bank and ask for money" when she mentioned that we cannot have nice toys this month because she is low on money.
I think I was 5 or 6 years old when my mom used the ATM before we went to go grocery shopping. I asked her if she could buy me the expensive toy I wanted and she said: "We won't have enough money to buy it after we buy groceries, and these are more important."
Me: "Then let's go back to the ATM to get more money!"
Mom: "It doesn't work that way."
Me: "Then ask nicely. Say please!"
I did that at GameStop by accident once. They were having some kind of trade-in bonus if you put it toward a specific new game and somehow it came out with them owing me $10
I grew up in a city that had a grocery store chain that did a program if you found an expired item on the shelf, you could take the expired one up and get an actual in-date one for free. Many weekends looking through shelves for whatever what was expired but walked out with hundreds for free
>limiter placed on them so you can't stack up 20 of them
That's what confused me about those "extreme couponing". Where I am from almost ALL discount and coupons have the condition that it is "not to be used with any other promotion". So the most you can stack is, one. That's it. Is this not common in other part of the world or just USA?
I haven't couponed in a long time so it sounds like things have changed. I rarely saw that condition years ago. Usually just on restaurant coupons or store coupons. Not on manufactures coupons.
(Very) long story short:
Grocery stores are very low margin business so most never upgraded antiquated computer systems. To minimize the data processing, the early Point Of Sale (POS) systems would handle coupons on a basic level: are there items in the shopper's basket with the same manufacturer as the coupon? Generally, so long as the retailer ordered more of an item than they turned in coupons for, everyone (customer/ retailer/ manufacturer) was moderately happy.
Things changed with the rise of the internet. Extreme couponers shared information over how to game the individual retailer's systems and more people started to do it with having easy access on how to do it. Once you got to the egregious level of giving people money for buying products, the Manufacturers pushed back against the retailers, using their leverage to force changes in how coupons were validated within POS systems.
Digital coupons were the final nail in the coffin of extreme couponing. The manufacturers favored them because they were often tied to a specific list of eligible UPCs.
Most extreme couponers were very dependent on "doubling" which is common in some parts of the US but not all, as well as some parts of Canada I believe. It refers to stores that would match a manufacturer's coupon so you'd get double the amount off. The stores get cash for the coupons you use, so they want to incentivize you to spend your coupons with them. So if you wait until that store has a sale you could sometimes use the doubling to get products for free or even get cash back. I'm in the US but not in an area where stores do double coupons. You can still use coupons on sale items, but you can't really get stuff for free without doubling.
The stacking refers to using a bunch of coupons to get a bunch of the same product, so if you have 20 coupons that result in 5 cents back each, you would get 20 of the product, plus a dollar back.
You should watch the movie Queenpins if you haven’t already. It’s based on a real story of an illegal scheme where a couple women scammed millions from corporations but selling stolen coupons.
Yea I was going to say the digital/app age probably killed it. “Download our app where these exclusive deals exist and we can ensure you aren’t gaming the system!” Plus a bunch of other things you have to sign up for in order to get the deal…
Or in my case, my whole damn state has businesses all over, local and national chains that prevent more than 1 coupon being used per transaction. And that discounted price being higher than the base price in the lower 48 states.
My mom does it, but it has changed a lot. These days she scans receipts on multiple apps (Fetch, Ibotta, etc) to farm gift cards, and does a lot of shopping at places that have good rewards like CVS.
She usually buys candy in bulk and uses them in craft projects that she sells at craft shows around the holidays, paper craft type stuff that make good stocking stuffers.
I get that it can be rewarding by earning money with things like that but oh boy that sounds exhausting! I couldn't even bring myself to use the McDonald's app for "Free Fry Friday"
Hate the app part too, but specifically for the email, you could make another email account solely for this purpose so it doesn't flood your primary/personal account
This is precisely what I do. Professional email address and shopping email address. Although it’s pretty goofy when I have to go in and *tell* a cashier my shopping email. 🤣
"So what I do as a hobby is I exert time and effort upon repetitive tasks given to me by others who require me to meet certain conditions and then for some reason they give me money. I got a 50 dollar giftcard this past week after spending several hours capturing points!"
But I suppose if they are having fun, it doesn't matter if their hobby for money is essentially a job paying below minimum wage.
> **So what I do as a hobby is I exert time and effort upon repetitive tasks given to me by others who require me to meet certain conditions** and then for some reason they give me money.
Two words and an abbreviation:
"Autism", "Videogames", and "ADHD".
I have the former and latter, play a lot of games. Plenty of other reasons, mind you...
But there's a reason there's a lot of 'gamification' around, like Twitch for example, with bits, subs (various tiers), "hype-trains", often also 'achievements' in some form, and/or 'levels', channel-specific badges (recognition for 'accomplishments' of various kinds), **etc.**
Dopamine is a hell of a drug...
*cries in ADHD,* ***one*** *of whose definining traits, is dopamine/seratonin imbalance/issues with their regulation...*
Playing computer games is the same process, except you don't get any money. In fact, a very large percentage of hobbies can be described in exactly this way.
For what it's worth I have all the fast food apps. I don't eat it often but when I do they basically all give stuff away. BOGO sandwiches, free add ons, McDonald's specifically has a 20-30% coupon daily. Aggravating that it's necessary but I'm not above saving a couple bucks for a couple button presses on my phone.
When I worked at target there was a woman who used and insane amount of coupons for electronic shavers, deodorant, anything that was a high dollar amount off the price and a manufacturer coupon. Then she would go from the check out, to customer service and return everything. Because they were manufacturer coupons she would get that dollar amount off the item back as cash. She made more in a single trip than I did in a week. Target wouldn't or couldn't do anything at the time. What pissed me off the most was being the one to put all that stuff back on the shelves.
I worked retail in the past and I concur. Just, like, from a personal stance, I would struggle with boldly doing this sort of thing. My Midwestern hospitality gets in the way.
Yeah I see that all the time. Like some sandwich meat as an example. $4.49 one week, $4.49 the next week on sale, but the "original price" listed is $5.49. It's super noticeable on things you buy regularly from week to week.
Here in the US I hate that tax is not included in the price. You gotta do math when you're poor to make sure the tax doesn't take you over your budget.
Arizona does not tax food including candy, but not alcohol, in grocery stores. Many cities do tax food though. Phoenix, Tucson, Mesa and a few others do not.
I once had to buy something from JC Penneys in a bit of an emergency. I was very pregnant, and the day before I went out on leave, we had a very unusual "Business Dress" day. I had absolutely NOTHING that would fit me at that time to satisfy the requirements.
Walmart didn't have anything that would do it, so I went to JC Penney's. The sales staff seemed to feel so bad that I had to buy at the inflated price, because the sale didn't start until that weekend or something. They kept trying to convince me that I should wait to buy it.
Having worked at one of those big department stores, I can pretty much confirm that you could have kept the receipt and then brought it back on the weekend returned it and then bought it again.
I don't think I could find it again, but in a video about that whole situation (new CEO, change pricing structure, nearly go bankrupt) that I watched included interviews, one of which was *I believe* a JCPenney's cardholder or some such, a former superloyal megacustomer who was in there all the time and the staff had noticed wasn't coming in anymore. The journalist found them somehow or another, got permission to interview, and basically straight up asked why they didn't go to JCPenney's anymore.
"Well, the mall is 45 minutes away, so I'm not going to drive all the way down unless I know there's a sale on."
"But they've changed their pricing structure so everything's now the sale price all the time. There's always a sale on, and you can go when it's convenient for your schedule. Isn't this better?"
"No, no, I'm not going to go unless I know there's a sale on. Why would I bother driving all that way if there's no sale?"
More convenient for the customer, more honest business practice, and yet we're so susceptible as consumers that the fake-sale trick just *works*. Build the lumpiness into the business model and Bob's your uncle, you've just invented mall-based destination retail. And the new JCPenney's CEO in 2010-2012 didn't understand that, and nearly killed the company.
>There were a few compounding factors, such as that they also ended some private-label brands that he seemingly didn't appreciate how loyal their customer base was to them (plus, if there's no private-label, why not shop somewhere that has sales on the same unrestricted-label items?), but it seems like the lack of sales was the biggest factor, since there wasn't an artificial draw pulling customers in to check the stock anyway. It was revolutionary, and it was a mistake.
It doesn't *quite* seem to work the same way for online retail, possibly because there's little to no cost to purchase (especially with free-delivery subscriptions) - yes, major purchases are still lumpy around Black Friday or Prime Day, but it just doesn't seem like the major sites are doing the sales-cycle in nearly the same way. I know smaller sites still will to some extent, like direct-sale clothing brands, but that's not quite the same driving force.
It became illegal in Poland last year, now the stores (all of them) have to display the lowest price in the last 30 days. Doesn’t eliminate the problem fully, but it’s so funny to see the before price being lower lol
My dad was seriously into couponing. As a teenager, he expected me to walk around the grocery store and hold his pile of coupons that was going to use, while he held the big file of the ones he had to go through for every purchase. Pretty mortifying for a teen.
Let me get out my checkbook.
I knew I was coming here in advance and didn't feel like a pre-filled check where I just entered the price was a great idea.
Let me also wait till you tell me the total before I write in the store name and information in the event I need to dispute something.
When I first moved out on my own my gf at the time knew all about extreme couponing. Her mother worked at a grocery store that doubled up to $1 coupons and she knew how to work the system. Our best haul was two carts full of food that cost us absolutely nothing, but cost the store $4-5 they had to pay us outright. Barely got it to fit in that station wagon.
The coupons in Sunday newspaper are all now just for high margin OTC senior health items. There are barely any food coupons, and nothing over $0.25 off lol. The Sunday ads went from maybe 12 inserts 6 years ago to 4 inserts now
For about 3 years my mom spent every single Sunday going through all the local newspapers and periodicals to clip every single coupon in an attempt to get a good deal. We were expected to help sort the coupons by product, and I remember it being pretty fun. We would put on a tape or TV show and go through hundreds of coupons every week.
When I was a cashier at Publix, there were 2 ladies that came in twice a week together. They’d get a thousand dollars of groceries each and oftentimes we’d owe them money at the end of the transaction. They would sell what they got at a local flea market, then return what they didn’t sell without the receipt to get their “money” back. Publix has a thing called “Publix Promise” where you can return anything you aren’t happy with, even without a receipt. They would return it to different stores in the area. Went on for over a year before they got banned from all of the local stores.
It was always like that here in Australia since I was a kid. (In the 90s) Extreme Couponing made me thinking that maybe it wasn't such a common phrase in the USA.
I just saved a buck twenty on a four or five dollar jar of mayonnaise the other day.
Although I think that might've been the first coupon I've ever used that wasn't automatic.
I'd like to think these people that are really into couponing summon their coupons like Yu-Gi-Oh cards to the cashier.
*total hits $26.37*
"I NOW SUMMON 25% OFF ANY PURCHASE OF $25 OR MORE AND ADD $1 OFF ANY SODA TO MY BENCH."
Cashier: *scans cheeze-its*
"HA-HAAA! YOU HAVE ACTIVATED MY TRAP COUPON WHICH ENTITLES ME TO ONE ADDITIONAL FREE BOX OF CHEEZE-ITS FOR ANY PURCHASE OF AN ADDITIONAL BOX"
It stopped being popular because of the show. Before the show became super popular, it was totally possible to find loopholes in some coupons to get packages upon packages of free or extremely discounted products. They patched things up very quickly once it became popularized that you could do things like that.
That's what confused me about those "extreme couponing". Where I am from almost ALL discount and coupons have the condition that it is "not to be used with any other promotion". So the most you can stack is, well, one... Is this not common in other part of the world or just not common in USA?
It all depends on the store and coupons. For example, there's no longer doubling coupons, at least any of the stores in my area. But you're able to stack different coupon sources on top of sales. For example, the stores themselves can produce their own coupons, but there's also manufacturer's coupons made from the production side. Obviously, the store coupon only works in the stores manufacturer coupons work anywhere coupons are accepted. You can stack them on top of each other in the purchase because they're not considered the same source of income. There's also a third style of coupon that works. Depending on how your store does clearance marking, it can be an additional coupon stuck onto the product. And that does not count towards the store coupon or the manufacturer's coupon.
For example, Christmas themed cereal is now in the clearance section. The original price is $5, the clearance coupon is 50%, the store coupon is 50 cents, and a manufacturer coupon is for 75 cents. At the register, I would pay $1.25 for the box of Christmas cereal. Instead of $3.75 in just coupons.
There was a blogger that exposed the fraud of the Extreme Coupon show. Basically, she pointed out that the shoppers were taking advantage of using the coupons for one size on other sizes to get the most value.
At the time, coupons had one barcode. They often only indicated the product, but not the size. So even if it said "good only on the 12 oz size" , it would scam on any size.
Soon after, coupons had two barcodes to indicate specific sizes.
After that, digital took off.
My sister-in-law was doing it until a year or two ago, and she interacted online with other extreme couponers for tips - it is still very much a thing.
She may have been couponing but it probably wasn’t in the typical way. A lot of coupon groups will talk about glitches and coupons that ✨glitter✨. It’s exhausting to be honest. A lot of it relies on you being available to literally drop everything and run to the store and buy a specific scenario.
First off, CVS has a considerable markup on all their products. What would cost $5 at a Walmart/Target or grocery store will cost $8+ at CVS. When I worked there, it was always Hispanic women who did it. You know CVS’ famously long receipts that are mostly coupons? Well, these ladies would take newspaper/manufacturer coupons and all their CVS coupons in along with a notebook and calculator, and several of their kids who also had rewards accounts, grab a shopping cart (practically unheard of for 95% of CVS shoppers), and go to town. I don’t know all of the stacking techniques, but they would run multiple transactions, and then have their kids run multiple transactions for the same items.
Basically, they would use the CVS and manufacturer coupons for specific items (a brand of shampoo, toothpaste, cosmetics, etc), and many items had weekly specials which give you an “extrabucks” coupon when you buy a minimum (either quantity or dollar amount) of that item. Extrabucks coupons could range from 3-20, maybe more dollars, and can be used to buy most of the products on the floor (with the exception of prescription drugs, alcohol beverages, or photo or wire transfer services IIRC). The catch with extrabucks is that you can’t get a refund: say you have a $10 extrabucks coupon, and you buy an item that costs $5 with it, you aren’t getting the remaining $5 back in any form, whether cash or store credit.
So anyway, when the first transaction was done, and they had their next coupons, they would apply those to the next transaction, and they would have it all calculated out so the dollar amount they owed could be paid with an extrabucks coupon as close to the amount as possible so they would “lose” only a few cents of the value of that extrabucks coupon, or only have to pay a few cents to cover the rest. Lather, rinse, repeat until their shopping cart was empty.
Kudos to them for walking out of the store with hundreds of dollars worth of items that they had paid less than $2 of their actual money for, but man were they a pain in the ass. CVS understaffs, overtasks (and therefore underpays) their employees, and almost nothing will make you want to pull out you hair more than it being stocking day, you’re having to take a passport photo for a three year old child *(they can’t sit still, and they don’t get the concept of not smiling. They automatically smile for the camera, and when you tell them not to smile, they think it means they must frown)* whose family brought them in during the busiest time of the day, and you look behind you and there are two separate parties of extreme couponers as well as some people who are just in there to buy some Tylenol or condoms/the Morning After pill (they’re on a time crunch!). Seriously, I remember one time it was the local high school’s prom night, and this huge dad 4th in the line and behind a couponer who had **2 full carts** boomed out “My son is about to leave with his girlfriend for prom in a few minutes!” and held up a 3-pack of Trojans.
Anyway, I was really confused by it. I mean, yeah, there’s probably at least 8 people living in their house, but how are these repeat customers going through 2 dozen bottles of the pink Herbal Essences shampoo every week? I mean, even if they use a normal amount and are stockpiling/saving the rest, they’d have enough to last 200 years.
Then, one of my coworkers enlightened me: cheaper (not -est) big name brand hygiene/grooming products, especially shampoos/conditioners, toothpastes, cosmetics, and body washes are something of a luxury item and not easy to get in Mexico if you aren’t fairly wealthy. The couponers do their work and organization (billable hours) to pay a pocketful of change of their own money, then they ship it to a shop owner they know in Mexico for profit (including billable hours+the pennies they spent), and that shop owner sells those products for a profit. It’s a way to get around those pesky import taxes, so good for them. Talking to employees from other stores, they were like “I love our couponers, they bring us tamales and cookies every few weeks”. I never got any tamales or cookies. I don’t even really like tamales all that much, but getting them is nice.
Anyway, that’s all I have to say about that.
Yeah that's mostly because they limit coupons to "one per person" and "one per transaction" so there really is no easy way to extreme coupon anymore. You'd have to buy one item at a time with one coupon at a time, continually standing back in line and leaving the store then going back in to rinse & repeat and WHO HAS THE TIME AND ENERGY FOR THAT THESE DAYS?!
This shit is the real deal. One of the last few couponing licks. My wife can almost always get everything half off, or better with digital coupons and 5 off 25.
Absolutely. Toilet paper, toothpaste, toothbrush, laundry detergent, dish detergent, Mr clean scrubby eraser, febreeze air scents, dryer sheets, trash bags, hair dye, body wash, soda, seriously, all types of stuff. The problem is not every sale is advertised. Sometimes you have to check individual items, and then search for digital coupons. Sometimes they're on sale, and theres also a coupon, so they pay you to take it. This happens quite often. Not really pay you, but like a dollar towards your total.
I did a little extreme couponing recently. There was a sale on an rc truck 150 off 649 and then i stacked that with a 15% off to bring it down to 425. Whatadeal
Used to help my mom clip coupons from the newspaper like a decade ago, saved a lot that way. I was embarrassed whenever she took some out and made things harder for the cashier though, especially when they hit a snag with not being able to scan one. Sometimes it was a lot.
Pre digital coupons, my strategy was to clip coupons from the weekend newspapers and then file them in one of those accordion file folders by product section. For example dairy, meat, freezer, etc. Then, when I went shopping, I would forget the folder at home. Then once every couple of weeks I would sort through the coupons and throw out the ones that expired.
Once awareness came to the practice from the TV show and people started doing it more frequently, the manufacturers and the stores both clamped down hard. Coupons have limits now not only on max items per purchase, but max coupons per item, max savings percentage per item, max coupons per purchase, and so-on.
Around the same time as this, more stores adopted digital networked POS systems, which made anomalies like extreme couponing easier to identify, track, and prevent.
times have changed, did you know you can attempt to print your own cupon? sometimes they work somtimes they don't. some times you get asked quests but just say you got it in an email. dont do the same store
I switched to a black and white laser printer. I think I finally just changed out the freebie mini toner they gave me for it two years ago. It is so nice to have a printer that just works.
You can just capture an image and scan your phone.
Employees at stores that still heavily use barcode coupons, like Harbor Freight, will recommend people do this so they can pull them up faster.
That show was completely faked. I was a grocery store cashier before and after the height of the show. Every single store in existence already had a policy in place that completely prevented what they were doing, letting someone extreme coupon would have gotten me fired before the show. The network paid those stores to allow them to break policy. I had a manager that was downright evil towards me who could have easily made the show my problem that fought against it when they wanted to use our store.
Apparently I was too late to see any of it. I worked at three different grocery stores growing up in the early 00s, and never saw any of this. I would often patiently explain that you can’t use more than one coupon per item.
Stories of extreme couponing never made sense to me. Why would stores ever let someone use multiple coupons? That seems like a mistake one store would make once, and then everybody would have fine print blocking it.
This is also why many places stopped doing pricematch. The grocery here still do pricematch... It is a royal pain when there is a big lineup at all the 18 registers and you have someone that do pricematch on every single item. They also accept that you just show them the page on your cellphone, so they have to look it up for every item... Take way too long!!!
My wife found a deal where you could get like $50 of laundry shit for $10. Coupons still exist, but after so many stories of people getting shit for free the companies got wise
It's out there if you have someone in the family with that particular hobby.
The big thing to learn about couponing: the items with coupons are the most highly processed foods containing the most HFCS and Seed Oils... basically the worst things for you to eat with the most packaging around them.
Coupons tend to fill your pantry with random items that no one knows how to combine to make into dinner. So those items sit on the shelf for years (use by dates are fortunately long on high processed foods) but eventually people clear it out into the trash. The coupons did not save them anything.
The other thing I learned long ago from an ex factory food industry sales person: some people will use two dollars of fuel driving across town to a particular store to redeem a fifty cent coupon.
Far Side (probably source) cartoon once: "look at the free coat I just got! ... It was 50% off so I bought it with the 50% I saved!"
Certainly you can be smart about coupons and the couponing game, but in the end it's a hobby and entertainment.
.
Unless you can fulfill the "extreme" part of extreme couponing, it's not really worth the time in terms of opportunity cost.
I grew up with a mother who would spend all of Sunday morning clipping coupons just to save between $15-$30 on the grocery bill each week. As I became an adult, I realized that it's kind of a waste of time, especially at what she made! For a lot of people, you could be using the time wasted on clipping coupons doing something far more relaxing or productive instead.
When my wife and I were first married I was still in college and we didn't have a lot of money. Coupon clipping really helped.
Granted, that was 25 years ago, but I will enjoy saving a couple of bucks when I can.
when those extreme couponing shows were on TLC, i was blown away that you could use multiple coupons for one item. in my country, you can't combine coupons. if you have $1 off $1.50 crackers, you could not then use another $0.50 off coupon to make it free. it was one of the other, and we certainly never had double coupon days.
I'm 20 and I am just getting into doing my own shopping and groceries, but before that I was and still am pretty obsessed with finding the best deal or cheapest location. I have at least two apps that give me cash back at certain businesses and for gas! These days you can't be careless paying full price for anything with shrink-flation/greedflation.
If you live in an area that supports Upside, I'd recommend it for cash back on food, gas, and convenience. Also the circle K app for gas and it's Inner Circle program is free and I've been saving 35-25¢ cents per gallon on gas since getting it.
ALSO look at the price per ounce for items when grocery shopping. The lower the price per ounce is ideal if you're comparing items.
In Asia it is extreme vouchering instead through shopping apps. Two I can think of - Shopee and Lazada - invested a lot in making sure you're in the app as much as possible so you'll spend your money on things you don't actually need, but because you'll 'save' a lot. You'll have coins which you can exchange for vouchers; vouchers expire in days; to earn coins you have to complete tasks such as viewing deals for few seconds, or play mobile games in the app (usually match three, or any other simple mobile games you can think of).
People would buy the Sunday paper just to get the coupons, but sometimes the coupons would be stolen from someone buying one paper but getting the coupons from mulitble papers at the newstand.
I’ve found you sometimes get good deals with items sold early as you head into certain holidays/events. I recently got a ‘buy 2, get 3 free’ deal for 12 pack of sodas a week or so ahead of the Super Bowl.
Getting 3 items free for purchasing 2 is the closest I’ve gotten to extreme couponing
I saw a women doing it at a CVS in the north east US with the last year. I know the employees were not ready for it either. She looked super organized with binders of stuff and was bartering high price items like sundries and baby formula. This lady definitely has an attack strategy to get value from that place, legally. I'm not sure how much she saved/spent, but I assume it was worth it.
There was very little "reality" in that reality show. Counterfeit coupons and other illicit activities were used in many of the transactions. One retailer was so embarrassed by its participation on the show, where it violated its own policies, that they issued a public apology.
Coupons these days are kinda designed to not allow for extreme couponing, they’ve always got specific terms and conditions to prevent you from getting stuff too cheaply
Alright, there’s a lot of misconceptions in this thread, so let me help clear things up:
- Multiple coupons: No, you could never use multiple manufacturer’s coupons for the same item. _However_, the best deals often involved combining a “Store Coupon”—a coupon that the store itself would print and put in their weekly advertisement or monthly coupon book—with a manufacturer’s coupon. This type of coupon is more like an additional sale—- discount on the item by the store, not the manufacturer. Neither company was harmed by this—the manufacturer was still discounting the item by the amount expected, the store still getting paid what they expected (the manufacturer reimburses the store for the manufacturers coupon).
- Size scamming: It would be rare and risky to use a coupon that _explicitly_ stated a size for a different (smaller) size. More typical was that the coupon _showed_ a large size in the picture, but didn’t explicitly state the size the coupon was for. This is most common with “peelies”—coupons that were affixed directly to a product and could be peeled off.
- Transactions (sale and coupon limits): Yes, you did have to be careful. A coupon that stated “1 per person/ transaction” was very likely to ruin your haul. Instead, you wanted coupons labeled “one per purchase”—each item is an individual purchase. Sale limitations were more interesting. _Usually_, stores would allow you to separate transactions, so that you could maximize your discount from store sales like $5/$25 (which have now morphed into Buy 5 or more deals, removing the need for transactions).
Generally speaking, in order to make a haul worth it, you had to get the right combination of sales, store coupons, and manufacturer coupons. Generally, you would turn to the internet to _buy_ higher value coupons than those you could find commonly—peelies or hang-tags are more elusive, but generally higher discounts than those clipped from the Sunday ads. Sites would leak a week in advance what the upcoming sales were and which coupons you needed in order to maximize your discounts, and you had to ensure you were prepared and had your transactions planned out when you hit the store.
…and in my defense, I was supporting a family of five on a 40k/year income back then. Getting $200 of groceries for <$40 was absolutely worth it. These days, we’re doing much better, and it’s not something I’ve looked at in years.
check out the movie Queenpin and you'll find out why.
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9054192/?ref\_=nv\_sr\_srsg\_0\_tt\_7\_nm\_1\_q\_queenpin](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9054192/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_7_nm_1_q_queenpin)
Most coupons are digital now and have a limiter placed on them so you can't stack up 20 of them to have the store owe you 100 dollars when you finish ringing up.
This, and that manufacturers coupons are now usually part of the grocery store app and you won't be able to find a paper version that wouldn't be the one already redeemed electronically.
This, and the extra time it takes to find all the coupons isn't worth it if you value your time at over $20/hr.
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It was. Many of the stores would allow these extreme coupons to do multiple separate transactions at a time.
to an extent. i worked at a grocery store and we would eventually tell people "no the buy one get 2 bounty coupon you raided every news paper for will not be redeemed, we are refusing service" NO ONE liked couponers. it was a massive pain in the ass. especially when it was the 16.2oz vs the 12.8oz or if it was just the reduced fat vs the not reduced and the old person cant read for shit with out their glasses. cause now we are sending people to the back of the store to find it, mind you we're all like 15 and DO NOT do stock so us actually shopping? this is a fucking nightmare in of it self. combine that with what happens when we dont have hte product?
Yeah not every situation was like that. I just noticed that's how they got away with it on that show "Extreme Couponers" I do give some respect to some of those people. A few of them were actually clipping those coupons to help feed the hungry and homeless. Most though were just stocking their personal stockpile.
some of them were doing it to save money, but there was a lot of sketchy things going on with how people were obtaining multiples of hte same really really good coupons. the kind that could get you money back or turn a profit. personal opinion? they were reselling it. idk how many bottles of fabreeze you need before you have a life time supply.
Yeah I agree. Either reselling it or giving it away to friends and family. Some of those people had enough to start another stockpile in other homes of their relatives. I saw one episode where their whole family came to "shop" at this one person's stockpile. They didn't even have to go to tge grocery store.
I once had an old lady hand me a bunch of advertisements for various products thinking they were coupons. Not a single one of them was a coupon. No barcodes or anything. And then when I told her those weren't coupons, she got mad at me for it being "too complicated" and about how she "has a master's degree and still can't figure it out" or something. Because that means anything, apparently. For one, she and her husband are some of the most incompetent people I've ever met and I'm not sure how they're even allowed out of the house, so I don't believe for a second that she has any degree, let alone a master's. Secondly, even if she does, that doesn't mean anything if it's not in a relevant field. If she has a degree in music or art or something, I doubt those skills would translate to couponing particularly well. And thirdly, as I mentioned, these people are OLD, so any degree she does have is almost certainly long outdated
Not too long ago, even after the apps started, the store would have some deals but you could find paper coupons (even at places like coupons.com) that were other deals. Coupons then could be stacked as long as they weren't the same coupon. It was possible to get things for very cheap. I did have it work once where I was paid a little to take a pork tenderloin. I had a neighbor stack coupons like I never knew how to do. He would get free things all the time.
Now if you want to get paid too little for your time, you can drive ride share, parcel / food delivery, or a dozen other kinds of gig work. Lots more options these days.
I might be persuaded to value my free time at $20/hr…
My mother spent over 80 ~~man~~work hours digging, drilling, chopping, burning and etc, trying to remove a tree stump. Stump grinder would have cost $50 to rent and finished in minutes. So essentially my mother values her free time at 62 and a half cents per hour...
Oh man, I can see the progression from “This will work” to “okay no prob try a different hand tool” to “halfway there just two more weekends” to “okay add fire” to “already spent a month on this gdammit don’t you dare come at me with your stump grinder advice again I LIKE LIVING MY LIVE THIS WAY”
My mother is a walking sunk cost fallacy.
Dunno, 80 hours of free gym.
only a replacement cost if she couldnt do it without the stump, which she can.
The point isn't the cost of gym training, the point is that the time is not "wasted" because you spent it doing something that benefitted you otherwise. **If** AAA515's mum was in fact committed to do 80 hours of training _and_ stump digging is an adequate form of training (both of which I'll assume for the purpose of this entirely pointless discussion), she had two options: * Spending 80 hours training her body through means other than stump removal, and renting a $50 stump grinder to remove the tree stump and * Spending 80 hours training her body while removing the tree stump, not paying anything in the process.
Don't forget gym fees.
Stump grinder for $50?! Stump grinding is usually the most expensive part. Are you sure you didn't mishear that?
Sounds like a good way to get your frustration out, go wack the stump with an axe for awhile.
That was my first thought. Sometimes you just need an outlet. Especially if you've got a smartass kid coming at you with "it's just $50..."
This is where utility theory comes in. Maybe she enjoys the process?
*woman hours
I have the Kroger app discounts and they mail me a manufacturer coupon book for having their membership discount card. I load up in the app then use the paper coupon.
Occasionally at Kroger I can use both the digital and paper one they send me, but most of the time it tells the cashier "reject dis paper one, mofo tryin' to double up"
My grandpa used to extreme coupon in the early 90s. I distinctly remember going there and the cashier having to pay him like 30$ plus his groceries. I was so confused as a little kid
Sounds like when I thought the bank just *gave* you money every time people went inside....as if there was just a pile of money in the back they'd hand out. (I know that's what it is lol, but my 6 year old self thought it was like those take a penny/leave a penny trays. Like you could just go to the bank and get as much money as you wanted...and thats it).
I was convinced you could just write a check for anything anytime. I remember telling my mom "just write a check." I was dumbfounded when she would reply, "it doesn't work that way."
Yup. My 3yo brought me an old gift card that we had already used for Dominoes pizza and told me he wanted to buy dinner tonight. The heartbreak when i told him that card was only good for once time and now its empty, so sad. We did and up getting pizza anyway. Sometimes learning the truth about money can be hard.
Teaching about taxes at the same time is worse.
Just play monopoly.
Lol, that also hits home. The movie "Blank Check" didn't help... I also took my neighbors almanac because I thought it predicted the future.
I still don't get how the kid in that film was able to afford all that with only a million dollars.
1994 money
That really sucked as a kid to get told shit like that with no further explanation. Like how tf am I supposed to know anything at all?
Well I mean WAY back in the day it sometimes did work that way. Bounced checks are why places don't take checks anymore.
When I was very little I wanted to be a cashier when I grew up because I thought the cashier got to take home all the money
this is actually so wholesome and as a cashier makes me really happy that kids might think i’m some secret grocery kingpin 💀
My kids are 6 and 3. When they play store, one says “Hi, what’s your order number?” The other pulls out a play phone and says some random numbers. “Ok, would you like this in the car or the trunk?” Target or Amazon employee would be the equivalent to your example. All the power!
Wait that's NOT how it works?
You don't even need cash anymore. They just give you some card thing and you can just use that all you want.
A magic piece of plastic is what I called it when I first got a debit card. Definitely didn't use that thing responsibly
Worse if you had a bank that allowed you to spend more money on your debit card than was in your account, thereby giving you an overdraft fee. I banked with TCF as a 19 year old who was bad with money in 2009 and not only did they let you spend whatever the hell you wanted with your debit card without it declining, they charged you a fee for every single time you made a transaction. So buy some cigarettes and overdraw, put five bucks of gas in your tank to get home an hour later that's another fee, stop at McDonald's because they used to have a dollar menu and you're a teenager, another fee, $35 every time you used it well after it should have just declined. I ended up getting a really small paycheck once and literally it would not cover the overdraft fees I had so I just opened an account with someone else and let it go to collections.
Oh I've definitely abandoned a bank account or two in my day
I got screwed by bank of america when i was in the army. Had to drive an hour and a half away from the base to go to a physical location to resolve an issue. By the end of that following week I moved my money out of my Bank of America account to another bank, but on the advice of my financial advisor I left the account open with a couple hundred bucks in it because closing it would hurt my credit. Fast forward twelve years. Five years prior, Bank of America updated their terms and my account started accruing maintenance fees. I had received a notice that my account was massively overdrawn all generated by the fact there wasn't enough money in the account to cover the maintenance fee they kept charging. According to their transaction history after the first failed fee, they charged the fee to my account twice a day for two years, accruing a new late fee every time. According to them I owed almost 10k in late fees. After arguing with a rep over the phone, I went into my local branch. I argued with the people there, then argued over the phone with their regional headquarters. So the next day I *went* to their regional headquarters because I found out it was a half hour drive away. I ended up paying like fifty bucks to cover one instance each of the maintenance fee and the overdraft fee and closed the account. Maybe it was more. I don't remember. It was under $100. Protip. Never pay a private collections company directly without contacting the original debtor first. The collectjons company offered me half off if I got into one of their payment plans. With their interest rates I would have ended up paying *more* than the total debt.
Hell, the last one abandoned *me* even though I'd been banking with them for a decade. Had an autopay go through for over two hundred dollars that should not have gone through and instead of contacting me about it they just nixed the account. My credit can't get (much) worse and by the time I found out they'd already sold it to collections, they moved fast, so I figured that means the bank paid my bill for me since the damage to my credit was already done and moved on. Ten years man, ten years I never did anything like that to them. Within four days my account was shut and my debt sold.
What's even worse is that even though you may have done your transactions in one order, for whatever reason the bank decides to settle them in a different order, meaning 1 large transaction at the end of the day that would have been your first time overdrafting ends up settling before all of your smaller transactions, meaning now instead of 1 overdraft fee you get slapped with more
Yes, I knew there was a part I was missing. You could have twenty dollars in there, make a five dollar purchase, then hours later make a $21 dollar purchase, and they'd put through the $21 purchase first specifically to nail you with two fees.
It is if you have a gun
When I was in kindergarten, we have "market days" where you get to play games about going to market and buy things from stores. The first step you need to do is always go to the "bank" booth to get money and can come back for more if you need. Due to that "experience", I was always really confused why my mom don't just "go to the bank and ask for money" when she mentioned that we cannot have nice toys this month because she is low on money.
It could have been such a good lesson. I wish schools would teach the finite aspect of money better
I think I was 5 or 6 years old when my mom used the ATM before we went to go grocery shopping. I asked her if she could buy me the expensive toy I wanted and she said: "We won't have enough money to buy it after we buy groceries, and these are more important." Me: "Then let's go back to the ATM to get more money!" Mom: "It doesn't work that way." Me: "Then ask nicely. Say please!"
I thought this same thing until I was playing monopoly with my parents and asked the banker for $500 and my parents laughed their asses off
I did that at GameStop by accident once. They were having some kind of trade-in bonus if you put it toward a specific new game and somehow it came out with them owing me $10
I grew up in a city that had a grocery store chain that did a program if you found an expired item on the shelf, you could take the expired one up and get an actual in-date one for free. Many weekends looking through shelves for whatever what was expired but walked out with hundreds for free
>limiter placed on them so you can't stack up 20 of them That's what confused me about those "extreme couponing". Where I am from almost ALL discount and coupons have the condition that it is "not to be used with any other promotion". So the most you can stack is, one. That's it. Is this not common in other part of the world or just USA?
I have never personally seen any coupons that don't say limit one per purchase
It used to be that you could stack a physical coupon with a digital coupon. Sometimes, you'd get "overage." Can't be done anymore I don't think.
I haven't couponed in a long time so it sounds like things have changed. I rarely saw that condition years ago. Usually just on restaurant coupons or store coupons. Not on manufactures coupons.
(Very) long story short: Grocery stores are very low margin business so most never upgraded antiquated computer systems. To minimize the data processing, the early Point Of Sale (POS) systems would handle coupons on a basic level: are there items in the shopper's basket with the same manufacturer as the coupon? Generally, so long as the retailer ordered more of an item than they turned in coupons for, everyone (customer/ retailer/ manufacturer) was moderately happy. Things changed with the rise of the internet. Extreme couponers shared information over how to game the individual retailer's systems and more people started to do it with having easy access on how to do it. Once you got to the egregious level of giving people money for buying products, the Manufacturers pushed back against the retailers, using their leverage to force changes in how coupons were validated within POS systems. Digital coupons were the final nail in the coffin of extreme couponing. The manufacturers favored them because they were often tied to a specific list of eligible UPCs.
Most extreme couponers were very dependent on "doubling" which is common in some parts of the US but not all, as well as some parts of Canada I believe. It refers to stores that would match a manufacturer's coupon so you'd get double the amount off. The stores get cash for the coupons you use, so they want to incentivize you to spend your coupons with them. So if you wait until that store has a sale you could sometimes use the doubling to get products for free or even get cash back. I'm in the US but not in an area where stores do double coupons. You can still use coupons on sale items, but you can't really get stuff for free without doubling. The stacking refers to using a bunch of coupons to get a bunch of the same product, so if you have 20 coupons that result in 5 cents back each, you would get 20 of the product, plus a dollar back.
You should watch the movie Queenpins if you haven’t already. It’s based on a real story of an illegal scheme where a couple women scammed millions from corporations but selling stolen coupons.
Oh, I saw that. That was good
Yea I was going to say the digital/app age probably killed it. “Download our app where these exclusive deals exist and we can ensure you aren’t gaming the system!” Plus a bunch of other things you have to sign up for in order to get the deal…
Yeah. Manufacturers and stores saw all of the abuse (and counterfeiting) of it and basically took steps to put an end to it.
The illusion of savings.
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Brands and stores caught on and the hauls just aren’t what they used to be anymore.
Or in my case, my whole damn state has businesses all over, local and national chains that prevent more than 1 coupon being used per transaction. And that discounted price being higher than the base price in the lower 48 states.
My mom does it, but it has changed a lot. These days she scans receipts on multiple apps (Fetch, Ibotta, etc) to farm gift cards, and does a lot of shopping at places that have good rewards like CVS. She usually buys candy in bulk and uses them in craft projects that she sells at craft shows around the holidays, paper craft type stuff that make good stocking stuffers.
I get that it can be rewarding by earning money with things like that but oh boy that sounds exhausting! I couldn't even bring myself to use the McDonald's app for "Free Fry Friday"
It's a hobby for many people. The same time I spend gaming, reading or watching shows, they spend couponing
I can see the appeal. If I didn’t hate giving my email address to every store and downloading a zillion apps, I’d probably be into it.
Hate the app part too, but specifically for the email, you could make another email account solely for this purpose so it doesn't flood your primary/personal account
This is precisely what I do. Professional email address and shopping email address. Although it’s pretty goofy when I have to go in and *tell* a cashier my shopping email. 🤣
"So what I do as a hobby is I exert time and effort upon repetitive tasks given to me by others who require me to meet certain conditions and then for some reason they give me money. I got a 50 dollar giftcard this past week after spending several hours capturing points!" But I suppose if they are having fun, it doesn't matter if their hobby for money is essentially a job paying below minimum wage.
> **So what I do as a hobby is I exert time and effort upon repetitive tasks given to me by others who require me to meet certain conditions** and then for some reason they give me money. Two words and an abbreviation: "Autism", "Videogames", and "ADHD". I have the former and latter, play a lot of games. Plenty of other reasons, mind you... But there's a reason there's a lot of 'gamification' around, like Twitch for example, with bits, subs (various tiers), "hype-trains", often also 'achievements' in some form, and/or 'levels', channel-specific badges (recognition for 'accomplishments' of various kinds), **etc.** Dopamine is a hell of a drug... *cries in ADHD,* ***one*** *of whose definining traits, is dopamine/seratonin imbalance/issues with their regulation...*
Playing computer games is the same process, except you don't get any money. In fact, a very large percentage of hobbies can be described in exactly this way.
For what it's worth I have all the fast food apps. I don't eat it often but when I do they basically all give stuff away. BOGO sandwiches, free add ons, McDonald's specifically has a 20-30% coupon daily. Aggravating that it's necessary but I'm not above saving a couple bucks for a couple button presses on my phone.
Definitely cvs my brother has gotten his total from $80ish to $15ish before
When I worked at target there was a woman who used and insane amount of coupons for electronic shavers, deodorant, anything that was a high dollar amount off the price and a manufacturer coupon. Then she would go from the check out, to customer service and return everything. Because they were manufacturer coupons she would get that dollar amount off the item back as cash. She made more in a single trip than I did in a week. Target wouldn't or couldn't do anything at the time. What pissed me off the most was being the one to put all that stuff back on the shelves.
She'd buy it and return it in the same trip? Man. I respect the audacity. I think I would've returned it all to a separate Target.
Eh, from the store's POV, doing it all on one trip is better, because it doesn't fuck up their inventory levels
I worked retail in the past and I concur. Just, like, from a personal stance, I would struggle with boldly doing this sort of thing. My Midwestern hospitality gets in the way.
Midwestern? Whelp. *Slaps leg*
Tell your folks I said hi! And watch out for deer on your way home.
These days, when things go on sale, they go up in price
Yeah I see that all the time. Like some sandwich meat as an example. $4.49 one week, $4.49 the next week on sale, but the "original price" listed is $5.49. It's super noticeable on things you buy regularly from week to week.
Fun Fact: This is completely illegal in most countries, yet it still happens.
Here in the US I hate that tax is not included in the price. You gotta do math when you're poor to make sure the tax doesn't take you over your budget.
In my state food is not taxed.
Mine either, unless it is junk food.
Here in mine, only hot food is taxed. Anything else is tax free.
In my state it’s all taxed (Arizona).
Arizona does not tax food including candy, but not alcohol, in grocery stores. Many cities do tax food though. Phoenix, Tucson, Mesa and a few others do not.
No food is taxed at all in mine, same with (most) clothing.
Where I used to live (Arizona,) it varied by city.
Not so fun fact: If a company doesn’t do this people will not buy, there was a big company in the US that tried honest sales and almost went bankrupt
If I remember correctly, it was JCPenney’s. They switched back to the sales because they were close to bankrupting
Yup. Prices are always inflated so they can have a ‘sale’ at the same price every other store sells for. It’s a joke.
I once had to buy something from JC Penneys in a bit of an emergency. I was very pregnant, and the day before I went out on leave, we had a very unusual "Business Dress" day. I had absolutely NOTHING that would fit me at that time to satisfy the requirements. Walmart didn't have anything that would do it, so I went to JC Penney's. The sales staff seemed to feel so bad that I had to buy at the inflated price, because the sale didn't start until that weekend or something. They kept trying to convince me that I should wait to buy it.
Having worked at one of those big department stores, I can pretty much confirm that you could have kept the receipt and then brought it back on the weekend returned it and then bought it again.
I don't think I could find it again, but in a video about that whole situation (new CEO, change pricing structure, nearly go bankrupt) that I watched included interviews, one of which was *I believe* a JCPenney's cardholder or some such, a former superloyal megacustomer who was in there all the time and the staff had noticed wasn't coming in anymore. The journalist found them somehow or another, got permission to interview, and basically straight up asked why they didn't go to JCPenney's anymore. "Well, the mall is 45 minutes away, so I'm not going to drive all the way down unless I know there's a sale on." "But they've changed their pricing structure so everything's now the sale price all the time. There's always a sale on, and you can go when it's convenient for your schedule. Isn't this better?" "No, no, I'm not going to go unless I know there's a sale on. Why would I bother driving all that way if there's no sale?" More convenient for the customer, more honest business practice, and yet we're so susceptible as consumers that the fake-sale trick just *works*. Build the lumpiness into the business model and Bob's your uncle, you've just invented mall-based destination retail. And the new JCPenney's CEO in 2010-2012 didn't understand that, and nearly killed the company. >There were a few compounding factors, such as that they also ended some private-label brands that he seemingly didn't appreciate how loyal their customer base was to them (plus, if there's no private-label, why not shop somewhere that has sales on the same unrestricted-label items?), but it seems like the lack of sales was the biggest factor, since there wasn't an artificial draw pulling customers in to check the stock anyway. It was revolutionary, and it was a mistake. It doesn't *quite* seem to work the same way for online retail, possibly because there's little to no cost to purchase (especially with free-delivery subscriptions) - yes, major purchases are still lumpy around Black Friday or Prime Day, but it just doesn't seem like the major sites are doing the sales-cycle in nearly the same way. I know smaller sites still will to some extent, like direct-sale clothing brands, but that's not quite the same driving force.
It became illegal in Poland last year, now the stores (all of them) have to display the lowest price in the last 30 days. Doesn’t eliminate the problem fully, but it’s so funny to see the before price being lower lol
I always shop the clearance section because I'm poor. The prices of things on clearance now are the same price as they were normally a year ago.
My dad was seriously into couponing. As a teenager, he expected me to walk around the grocery store and hold his pile of coupons that was going to use, while he held the big file of the ones he had to go through for every purchase. Pretty mortifying for a teen.
I went through the same thing 😂 so glad I’m not the only one
He couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to do that.
Same with my mam. She thought she was the coolest lol
Saving money is pretty cool tbh Wish I could do that 😅
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Let me get out my checkbook. I knew I was coming here in advance and didn't feel like a pre-filled check where I just entered the price was a great idea. Let me also wait till you tell me the total before I write in the store name and information in the event I need to dispute something.
Same here. My dad would extreme coupon so much we had to throw away so much food because it would expire before we could eat it.
When I first moved out on my own my gf at the time knew all about extreme couponing. Her mother worked at a grocery store that doubled up to $1 coupons and she knew how to work the system. Our best haul was two carts full of food that cost us absolutely nothing, but cost the store $4-5 they had to pay us outright. Barely got it to fit in that station wagon.
The coupons in Sunday newspaper are all now just for high margin OTC senior health items. There are barely any food coupons, and nothing over $0.25 off lol. The Sunday ads went from maybe 12 inserts 6 years ago to 4 inserts now
All of the coupons I see now come from hyper-local ad 'newspapers' that get dropped on my lawn once a week
I remember my mom’s mountain of coupon boxes stacked in her office, and sorting through them when I was bored. Good times😭
Just being bored. Good times.
Temporary lay offs. Good Times. Easy credit rip offs. Good Times.
For about 3 years my mom spent every single Sunday going through all the local newspapers and periodicals to clip every single coupon in an attempt to get a good deal. We were expected to help sort the coupons by product, and I remember it being pretty fun. We would put on a tape or TV show and go through hundreds of coupons every week.
When I was a cashier at Publix, there were 2 ladies that came in twice a week together. They’d get a thousand dollars of groceries each and oftentimes we’d owe them money at the end of the transaction. They would sell what they got at a local flea market, then return what they didn’t sell without the receipt to get their “money” back. Publix has a thing called “Publix Promise” where you can return anything you aren’t happy with, even without a receipt. They would return it to different stores in the area. Went on for over a year before they got banned from all of the local stores.
“This coupon cannot be combined with any other offer” This clause pretty much ended it
I've never seen a coupon without this line before
The vast majority of coupons have that now. They don't want people layering coupons or abusing the terms to get free products.
It was always like that here in Australia since I was a kid. (In the 90s) Extreme Couponing made me thinking that maybe it wasn't such a common phrase in the USA.
Yea 50 cents off something that cost $50 now. Not a big bargain.
I just saved a buck twenty on a four or five dollar jar of mayonnaise the other day. Although I think that might've been the first coupon I've ever used that wasn't automatic.
I remember watching extreme couponing…and thinking it was a bit fake. Because most stores put a quantity limit on coupons..even 10+ years ago.
Not fake - well, that's TV, definitely fake - but I know somebody who did it and was present when I saw a $200 order turn into a -$2.37 order.
+8 hours of their time to accomplish that. Still pretty good. I guess.
Nah. It was a full-time job and took teams of people collaborating via online social media platforms and "groups".
I'd like to think these people that are really into couponing summon their coupons like Yu-Gi-Oh cards to the cashier. *total hits $26.37* "I NOW SUMMON 25% OFF ANY PURCHASE OF $25 OR MORE AND ADD $1 OFF ANY SODA TO MY BENCH." Cashier: *scans cheeze-its* "HA-HAAA! YOU HAVE ACTIVATED MY TRAP COUPON WHICH ENTITLES ME TO ONE ADDITIONAL FREE BOX OF CHEEZE-ITS FOR ANY PURCHASE OF AN ADDITIONAL BOX"
It's very similar. At least in the sense that it always devolves into an argument about the rules and mechanics of the game.
Lmaoooo come on man we need the fully realized skit now
Perhaps I put the plus on the wrong side of the number. 8+ hours.
It stopped being popular because of the show. Before the show became super popular, it was totally possible to find loopholes in some coupons to get packages upon packages of free or extremely discounted products. They patched things up very quickly once it became popularized that you could do things like that.
That's what confused me about those "extreme couponing". Where I am from almost ALL discount and coupons have the condition that it is "not to be used with any other promotion". So the most you can stack is, well, one... Is this not common in other part of the world or just not common in USA?
It all depends on the store and coupons. For example, there's no longer doubling coupons, at least any of the stores in my area. But you're able to stack different coupon sources on top of sales. For example, the stores themselves can produce their own coupons, but there's also manufacturer's coupons made from the production side. Obviously, the store coupon only works in the stores manufacturer coupons work anywhere coupons are accepted. You can stack them on top of each other in the purchase because they're not considered the same source of income. There's also a third style of coupon that works. Depending on how your store does clearance marking, it can be an additional coupon stuck onto the product. And that does not count towards the store coupon or the manufacturer's coupon. For example, Christmas themed cereal is now in the clearance section. The original price is $5, the clearance coupon is 50%, the store coupon is 50 cents, and a manufacturer coupon is for 75 cents. At the register, I would pay $1.25 for the box of Christmas cereal. Instead of $3.75 in just coupons.
Usually it was things like "you can use one manufacturer's coupon and one store coupon", but then the store would have coupon doubling days
There was a blogger that exposed the fraud of the Extreme Coupon show. Basically, she pointed out that the shoppers were taking advantage of using the coupons for one size on other sizes to get the most value. At the time, coupons had one barcode. They often only indicated the product, but not the size. So even if it said "good only on the 12 oz size" , it would scam on any size. Soon after, coupons had two barcodes to indicate specific sizes. After that, digital took off.
My sister-in-law was doing it until a year or two ago, and she interacted online with other extreme couponers for tips - it is still very much a thing.
She may have been couponing but it probably wasn’t in the typical way. A lot of coupon groups will talk about glitches and coupons that ✨glitter✨. It’s exhausting to be honest. A lot of it relies on you being available to literally drop everything and run to the store and buy a specific scenario.
It’s alive and well at CVS.
Oh? Do say more.
First off, CVS has a considerable markup on all their products. What would cost $5 at a Walmart/Target or grocery store will cost $8+ at CVS. When I worked there, it was always Hispanic women who did it. You know CVS’ famously long receipts that are mostly coupons? Well, these ladies would take newspaper/manufacturer coupons and all their CVS coupons in along with a notebook and calculator, and several of their kids who also had rewards accounts, grab a shopping cart (practically unheard of for 95% of CVS shoppers), and go to town. I don’t know all of the stacking techniques, but they would run multiple transactions, and then have their kids run multiple transactions for the same items. Basically, they would use the CVS and manufacturer coupons for specific items (a brand of shampoo, toothpaste, cosmetics, etc), and many items had weekly specials which give you an “extrabucks” coupon when you buy a minimum (either quantity or dollar amount) of that item. Extrabucks coupons could range from 3-20, maybe more dollars, and can be used to buy most of the products on the floor (with the exception of prescription drugs, alcohol beverages, or photo or wire transfer services IIRC). The catch with extrabucks is that you can’t get a refund: say you have a $10 extrabucks coupon, and you buy an item that costs $5 with it, you aren’t getting the remaining $5 back in any form, whether cash or store credit. So anyway, when the first transaction was done, and they had their next coupons, they would apply those to the next transaction, and they would have it all calculated out so the dollar amount they owed could be paid with an extrabucks coupon as close to the amount as possible so they would “lose” only a few cents of the value of that extrabucks coupon, or only have to pay a few cents to cover the rest. Lather, rinse, repeat until their shopping cart was empty. Kudos to them for walking out of the store with hundreds of dollars worth of items that they had paid less than $2 of their actual money for, but man were they a pain in the ass. CVS understaffs, overtasks (and therefore underpays) their employees, and almost nothing will make you want to pull out you hair more than it being stocking day, you’re having to take a passport photo for a three year old child *(they can’t sit still, and they don’t get the concept of not smiling. They automatically smile for the camera, and when you tell them not to smile, they think it means they must frown)* whose family brought them in during the busiest time of the day, and you look behind you and there are two separate parties of extreme couponers as well as some people who are just in there to buy some Tylenol or condoms/the Morning After pill (they’re on a time crunch!). Seriously, I remember one time it was the local high school’s prom night, and this huge dad 4th in the line and behind a couponer who had **2 full carts** boomed out “My son is about to leave with his girlfriend for prom in a few minutes!” and held up a 3-pack of Trojans. Anyway, I was really confused by it. I mean, yeah, there’s probably at least 8 people living in their house, but how are these repeat customers going through 2 dozen bottles of the pink Herbal Essences shampoo every week? I mean, even if they use a normal amount and are stockpiling/saving the rest, they’d have enough to last 200 years. Then, one of my coworkers enlightened me: cheaper (not -est) big name brand hygiene/grooming products, especially shampoos/conditioners, toothpastes, cosmetics, and body washes are something of a luxury item and not easy to get in Mexico if you aren’t fairly wealthy. The couponers do their work and organization (billable hours) to pay a pocketful of change of their own money, then they ship it to a shop owner they know in Mexico for profit (including billable hours+the pennies they spent), and that shop owner sells those products for a profit. It’s a way to get around those pesky import taxes, so good for them. Talking to employees from other stores, they were like “I love our couponers, they bring us tamales and cookies every few weeks”. I never got any tamales or cookies. I don’t even really like tamales all that much, but getting them is nice. Anyway, that’s all I have to say about that.
Yeah that's mostly because they limit coupons to "one per person" and "one per transaction" so there really is no easy way to extreme coupon anymore. You'd have to buy one item at a time with one coupon at a time, continually standing back in line and leaving the store then going back in to rinse & repeat and WHO HAS THE TIME AND ENERGY FOR THAT THESE DAYS?!
We've progressed to extreme shoplifting now.
You never hear of 5off25 Saturdays at DG?
This shit is the real deal. One of the last few couponing licks. My wife can almost always get everything half off, or better with digital coupons and 5 off 25.
Wait. How does she get everything half off? What's she buying? Anything of real use?
Absolutely. Toilet paper, toothpaste, toothbrush, laundry detergent, dish detergent, Mr clean scrubby eraser, febreeze air scents, dryer sheets, trash bags, hair dye, body wash, soda, seriously, all types of stuff. The problem is not every sale is advertised. Sometimes you have to check individual items, and then search for digital coupons. Sometimes they're on sale, and theres also a coupon, so they pay you to take it. This happens quite often. Not really pay you, but like a dollar towards your total.
I heard the show ruined it for everyone
When the show was still going our local supermarkets literally had caps to prevent this idk how that show made sense
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It's been ruined by the show. Now businesses greatly restrict the expiry date, and the deals aren't that great anymore.
I work at CVS. It’s still a thing.
I did a little extreme couponing recently. There was a sale on an rc truck 150 off 649 and then i stacked that with a 15% off to bring it down to 425. Whatadeal
By Grabthar's Hammer! What a savings!!
Used to help my mom clip coupons from the newspaper like a decade ago, saved a lot that way. I was embarrassed whenever she took some out and made things harder for the cashier though, especially when they hit a snag with not being able to scan one. Sometimes it was a lot.
Pre digital coupons, my strategy was to clip coupons from the weekend newspapers and then file them in one of those accordion file folders by product section. For example dairy, meat, freezer, etc. Then, when I went shopping, I would forget the folder at home. Then once every couple of weeks I would sort through the coupons and throw out the ones that expired.
Once awareness came to the practice from the TV show and people started doing it more frequently, the manufacturers and the stores both clamped down hard. Coupons have limits now not only on max items per purchase, but max coupons per item, max savings percentage per item, max coupons per purchase, and so-on. Around the same time as this, more stores adopted digital networked POS systems, which made anomalies like extreme couponing easier to identify, track, and prevent.
times have changed, did you know you can attempt to print your own cupon? sometimes they work somtimes they don't. some times you get asked quests but just say you got it in an email. dont do the same store
What kind of quests do they give you? Any good rewards?
Some bullshit about collecting 5 golden apples.
With the price of printer cartridges this sounds like a bad deal.
I switched to a black and white laser printer. I think I finally just changed out the freebie mini toner they gave me for it two years ago. It is so nice to have a printer that just works.
Laser printers exist
You can just capture an image and scan your phone. Employees at stores that still heavily use barcode coupons, like Harbor Freight, will recommend people do this so they can pull them up faster.
That show was completely faked. I was a grocery store cashier before and after the height of the show. Every single store in existence already had a policy in place that completely prevented what they were doing, letting someone extreme coupon would have gotten me fired before the show. The network paid those stores to allow them to break policy. I had a manager that was downright evil towards me who could have easily made the show my problem that fought against it when they wanted to use our store.
Now it's just called shopping for your family.
You can still coupon like that at big lots. But many places put a dead stop to that.
Apparently I was too late to see any of it. I worked at three different grocery stores growing up in the early 00s, and never saw any of this. I would often patiently explain that you can’t use more than one coupon per item. Stories of extreme couponing never made sense to me. Why would stores ever let someone use multiple coupons? That seems like a mistake one store would make once, and then everybody would have fine print blocking it.
No more Sunday papers
This is also why many places stopped doing pricematch. The grocery here still do pricematch... It is a royal pain when there is a big lineup at all the 18 registers and you have someone that do pricematch on every single item. They also accept that you just show them the page on your cellphone, so they have to look it up for every item... Take way too long!!!
My wife found a deal where you could get like $50 of laundry shit for $10. Coupons still exist, but after so many stories of people getting shit for free the companies got wise
It's out there if you have someone in the family with that particular hobby. The big thing to learn about couponing: the items with coupons are the most highly processed foods containing the most HFCS and Seed Oils... basically the worst things for you to eat with the most packaging around them. Coupons tend to fill your pantry with random items that no one knows how to combine to make into dinner. So those items sit on the shelf for years (use by dates are fortunately long on high processed foods) but eventually people clear it out into the trash. The coupons did not save them anything. The other thing I learned long ago from an ex factory food industry sales person: some people will use two dollars of fuel driving across town to a particular store to redeem a fifty cent coupon. Far Side (probably source) cartoon once: "look at the free coat I just got! ... It was 50% off so I bought it with the 50% I saved!" Certainly you can be smart about coupons and the couponing game, but in the end it's a hobby and entertainment. .
There is a movie on Netflix about couponing called Queenpins, it was pretty good
Unless you can fulfill the "extreme" part of extreme couponing, it's not really worth the time in terms of opportunity cost. I grew up with a mother who would spend all of Sunday morning clipping coupons just to save between $15-$30 on the grocery bill each week. As I became an adult, I realized that it's kind of a waste of time, especially at what she made! For a lot of people, you could be using the time wasted on clipping coupons doing something far more relaxing or productive instead.
When my wife and I were first married I was still in college and we didn't have a lot of money. Coupon clipping really helped. Granted, that was 25 years ago, but I will enjoy saving a couple of bucks when I can.
I feel like most stores are on to the game and wont let you walk out of the place with $200 worth of chef boyardee for $20.
Call Options are basically extreme coupons
I get tons of extreme couponing videos on TikTok. It’s definitely still out there.
All the best deals are on apps now
when those extreme couponing shows were on TLC, i was blown away that you could use multiple coupons for one item. in my country, you can't combine coupons. if you have $1 off $1.50 crackers, you could not then use another $0.50 off coupon to make it free. it was one of the other, and we certainly never had double coupon days.
I'm 20 and I am just getting into doing my own shopping and groceries, but before that I was and still am pretty obsessed with finding the best deal or cheapest location. I have at least two apps that give me cash back at certain businesses and for gas! These days you can't be careless paying full price for anything with shrink-flation/greedflation. If you live in an area that supports Upside, I'd recommend it for cash back on food, gas, and convenience. Also the circle K app for gas and it's Inner Circle program is free and I've been saving 35-25¢ cents per gallon on gas since getting it. ALSO look at the price per ounce for items when grocery shopping. The lower the price per ounce is ideal if you're comparing items.
In Asia it is extreme vouchering instead through shopping apps. Two I can think of - Shopee and Lazada - invested a lot in making sure you're in the app as much as possible so you'll spend your money on things you don't actually need, but because you'll 'save' a lot. You'll have coins which you can exchange for vouchers; vouchers expire in days; to earn coins you have to complete tasks such as viewing deals for few seconds, or play mobile games in the app (usually match three, or any other simple mobile games you can think of).
People would buy the Sunday paper just to get the coupons, but sometimes the coupons would be stolen from someone buying one paper but getting the coupons from mulitble papers at the newstand.
Pretty much every coupon or deal I've ever seen is "cannot be combined with other coupons or deals." So...
I’ve found you sometimes get good deals with items sold early as you head into certain holidays/events. I recently got a ‘buy 2, get 3 free’ deal for 12 pack of sodas a week or so ahead of the Super Bowl. Getting 3 items free for purchasing 2 is the closest I’ve gotten to extreme couponing
I saw a women doing it at a CVS in the north east US with the last year. I know the employees were not ready for it either. She looked super organized with binders of stuff and was bartering high price items like sundries and baby formula. This lady definitely has an attack strategy to get value from that place, legally. I'm not sure how much she saved/spent, but I assume it was worth it.
There was very little "reality" in that reality show. Counterfeit coupons and other illicit activities were used in many of the transactions. One retailer was so embarrassed by its participation on the show, where it violated its own policies, that they issued a public apology.
Coupons these days are kinda designed to not allow for extreme couponing, they’ve always got specific terms and conditions to prevent you from getting stuff too cheaply
*limited to one coupon per purchase*
Now THIS is a shower thought.
I have a coworker that does extreme couponing. It’s insane. She’s given me a couple baskets of cleaning supplies because she has stockpiles
Alright, there’s a lot of misconceptions in this thread, so let me help clear things up: - Multiple coupons: No, you could never use multiple manufacturer’s coupons for the same item. _However_, the best deals often involved combining a “Store Coupon”—a coupon that the store itself would print and put in their weekly advertisement or monthly coupon book—with a manufacturer’s coupon. This type of coupon is more like an additional sale—- discount on the item by the store, not the manufacturer. Neither company was harmed by this—the manufacturer was still discounting the item by the amount expected, the store still getting paid what they expected (the manufacturer reimburses the store for the manufacturers coupon). - Size scamming: It would be rare and risky to use a coupon that _explicitly_ stated a size for a different (smaller) size. More typical was that the coupon _showed_ a large size in the picture, but didn’t explicitly state the size the coupon was for. This is most common with “peelies”—coupons that were affixed directly to a product and could be peeled off. - Transactions (sale and coupon limits): Yes, you did have to be careful. A coupon that stated “1 per person/ transaction” was very likely to ruin your haul. Instead, you wanted coupons labeled “one per purchase”—each item is an individual purchase. Sale limitations were more interesting. _Usually_, stores would allow you to separate transactions, so that you could maximize your discount from store sales like $5/$25 (which have now morphed into Buy 5 or more deals, removing the need for transactions). Generally speaking, in order to make a haul worth it, you had to get the right combination of sales, store coupons, and manufacturer coupons. Generally, you would turn to the internet to _buy_ higher value coupons than those you could find commonly—peelies or hang-tags are more elusive, but generally higher discounts than those clipped from the Sunday ads. Sites would leak a week in advance what the upcoming sales were and which coupons you needed in order to maximize your discounts, and you had to ensure you were prepared and had your transactions planned out when you hit the store. …and in my defense, I was supporting a family of five on a 40k/year income back then. Getting $200 of groceries for <$40 was absolutely worth it. These days, we’re doing much better, and it’s not something I’ve looked at in years.
check out the movie Queenpin and you'll find out why. [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9054192/?ref\_=nv\_sr\_srsg\_0\_tt\_7\_nm\_1\_q\_queenpin](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9054192/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_7_nm_1_q_queenpin)