Stores Confront Extreme Couponers’ Tactics With Policy Changes

[The Straight Story]

Stores Confront Extreme Couponers’ Tactics With Policy Changes

For extreme couponers who pay only a few bucks for an entire shopping cart’s worth of goods, or even earn money on their shopping trips by reimbursing coupons with a higher value than the item’s price, couponing practically functions as a part-time job. Stores are ready to give them the pink slip.

Supermarkets popular with extreme couponers have a delicate balance to maintain: They don’t want to alienate their coupon-loving customers, but they also don’t want to disappoint non-extreme shoppers who can’t buy sale items because some shopper with a file folder and dreams of TLC stardom just emptied the entire shelf of product. To that end, some grocery retailers are adding to or clarifying their existing coupon policies.

The Detroit News profiles one extreme couponer who admitted her quest to buy 34 containers of chocolate milk at once was “a moneymaker,” since she intended to get 11 cents back each by combining a coupon with her local Walmart’s sale price. While the store manager did allow the shopper to score her $3.74 cash back, the process was, according to her, deliberately annoying. Each container of milk had to be rung up as an individual purchase, and the cash back was doled out 11 cents at a time, along with 34 separate receipts.

Walmart wouldn’t comment on this practice when asked by the newspaper, but increasing the hassle factor for extreme couponers is only one of the ways retailers are trying to limit their losses and keep shelves stocked in the face of this fanatical frugality.

http://moneyland.time.com/2012/02/29/stores-confront-extreme-couponers-tactics-with-policy-changes/

[HeiressofBickworth]

1. Many times at the local grocery

I've seen signs with sale prices with the notation "Limit 4" or some other number. That keeps the hoarders from sweeping the shelves clean leaving nothing for other shoppers.

[Chan790]

2. My local store requires people using coupons to have a bonus card.

Then they place limits on the bonus card items. When it says, limit 5...they mean for the calendar week. Don't think of bringing your roommate with your other card on the same account number or making a trip a day. They said "Limit 5" and they meant 5.

Edit: The other thing I see them doing is placing sale-minimums on the best discounts. "Half-gallon Turkey Hill Ice Cream...$1.99. Minimum $25 purchase."

[kentauros]

3. So, what did that one "shopper" do with those 34 bottles of milk?

If she didn't give them away, then I'd guess she poured them out and went right back to the store to waste more product in the name of making a few bucks...

[Phentex]

4. This is so timely...

Not to be a curmudgeon but I was behind an extreme couponer last night when I stopped to pick up a few things. The express lanes were long (dinner time, every one of us making a quick stop) so I picked a line that had two people in front of me. Did not realize until it was too late there was an extreme couponer. I could have moved but I was kind of curious about the guy in front of me so I stayed. (He had all sorts of good ingredients so I figured he must cook.)

I was thinking maybe the cashier should have turned the light off of this lane so that more people would not get in line. The coupons were being rung up as the items were scanned which was different, but they looked more like vouchers than coupons so maybe there was a reason for that. Part of me thought, Well MORE power to her for saving! The other part thought it was so annoying to wait while the manager was called over to override at least three times. And another part thought, well I'm the one standing here looking at the groceries of the guy in front of me! Who's the lamest?