I would love to know how they do it. I haven't been able to figure that out yet because the stores only go face value on the coupons and you can't use two or more coupons on the same item, so how exactly does that work. I know there are rebates that you can send in but how do you just go to the store and buy baskets of groceries and other things for chump change? Please explain!
The show Extreme Couponing seems to take place in areas where doubling coupons is normal but I have never seen a store that doubles coupons in South Florida. I use coupons along with BOGO sales, or Rollbacks and I buy good generic products when I find them. If I really like a cleaning product, I write to the company that makes it and usually they send me a couple of coupons. It's nice to get coupons for expressing my honest appreciation of products I like.
People have a way of using coupons to suit their financial needs. They're some people like my fiancee that have become so good at using coupons that everytime they go somewhere to purchase something, you always have a coupon for the item you want. After you have become accustomed to using coupons, that's all they know and they don't want to spend anymore money then they have to. You have to look at from a budgeting point of view.
The Websaver.com website sounds like it could be a good resource for those who want to save more money by using their coupons when shopping.
That sounds like a good idea ACSAPA and I might try that in the future. Honestly though I too have noticed that the stores on these shows allow stuff that would never occur in my neck of the woods. In fact I'm pretty sure there are laws prohibiting the like. So what alternative reality allows this to go on?
We have several people charging $5 for a class on couponing in my area. The funny thing is the information they advertise on teaching is available for free on other websites, deal match ups and coupon policies. The more I coupon the better I've gotten at it. I don't stockpile, and sometimes it isn't worth my effort. I just review sales flyers and try to match up coupons with things I need anyway. Sometimes it works out, but I don't sweat it if it doesn't. Your time is valuable too.
I know, the coupons that they have is not for every item in your shopping cart and I do not buy items just because of a coupon because I may not even use that item. So the items that I do buy I might have 2/3 coupons for it and the other items in my cart don't have them. So if the lady say that she save so much on her shopping must be buying anything. I haven't figured it out yet and may never get handle on that.
I know, right? I find it weird that the Extreme Couponers are able to use their coupons on the small trial sizes to get the products free. All the coupons I've seen say "not good for trial sizes". Anyway, I don't think using coupons has to be all or nothing. You can be a moderate coupon user. Even if you print off $30 worth of coupons from DontPayFull.com, that's still $30 you wouldn't have otherwise. I think Extreme Couponing is making people think they have have to use 300 coupons. You don't. Even using a few coupons to save $20 is better than not using coupons at all. As jleadbet said "Your time is valuable too." Most people don't have 30 hours a week to do that extreme couponing stuff and have couponing clubs. If you're busy, just coupon moderately, in small increments.
It depends on the coupon. Some coupons say "one coupon per purchase". So one can of soup counts as a purchase and as long as you have 100 coupons for your 100 cans of soup, you're not doing anything illegal. Jaime Kirlew from Extreme Couponing got in trouble because she was barcode matching and using coupons that worked for the wrong products. So she was exploiting a glitch. If the barcode is 000777 for a $2 can of soup and you use it on a $1 pack of candy just because the barcode on the candy is 000777, the coupon will scan and you'll get the candy free if it's a $1 coupon but that's coupon fraud. Kirlew did it on the show because the store manager looked the other way and it made for a great TV show. But you shouldn't use a coupon on the wrong product just because the barcodes match. That's how people end up getting banned from stores for life.
