Shopping with coupons: lessons learned

Shopping during double and triple coupon days has been quite a learning experience for me. Here are the lessons that I learned:

1) if the stores are not doing this promo often, there is a great chance that they are not prepared to handle all smart shoppers that will jump in on an extra-savings opportunity. The doubling/tripling coupons started last Thursday, and there were only 3 checkout lanes open on Thurday night. The lines were huge and it took forever to check out.

2) if this is a limited-time action (ours was 4-day only promo), it will likely attract customers who may not normally shop in the store, but have a bunch of coupons to redeem. Not only this would add to the checkout time, you would also face your competition: searching for the same items you have coupons for, sometimes beating you to them and emptying the shelves if something's a particularly good deal.

3) speaking of the deals, with double and triple coupons they are awesome! I made one more trip to Shoppers during promo days (I needed to deposit my checks from surveys and reward programs, MySurvey and InboxDollars mostly, and my bank is conveniently located in Shoppers) and matched my coupons more carefully that time. Got a few products free or better:

• Crab Classics imitation crabmeat (on sale for $1.99 each, free with doubled $1 coupon from here, limit 2 printouts per PC);
  
• Easy Mac (on sale 10/$10 - 2 pks free with doubled $1/2 coupon from the most recent paper)
• Ronzoni Smart Taste pasta (reg. $1.59/lb - better than free with doubled $1 coupon from the most recent paper)
• Mt.Olive relish (2/$3 - free with tripled $.50 coupon from the paper)
• French's mustard (priced between $1.20 and $1.34 - better than free with tripled $.50 coupon from the paper)
• Rice-a-Roni or Pasta-Roni (10/$10 or 8/$10 - better than free with tripled $.50 coupon from here)
• I also got a loaf of French bread free for a survey that printed at the bottom of my receipt last time around.

4) although it may be very tempting, next lesson is: do not try to redeem each and every coupon that you have. Just because it can be doubled or tripled doesn't mean you're getting the best deal: the product may be on sale at a competitor's store and you can get a better deal with the coupon redeemed for the face value there.

5) don't get discouraged if you can't redeem all the coupons you have! :) I have observed a couple trying to find ALL the items for ALL the coupons and getting very upset if they couldn't. It's not the end of the world. Seriously.

6) shop on Saturday. Our crazy sale run Thursday thru Sunday. All the early birds flew in on Thursday, and most of the folks I know were going to shop there on Sunday: they had to take the advantage of the promo, but needed to find/clip/organize their coupons. That leaves Friday when a lot of folks stock up for the upcoming weekend, and Saturday... when it was nice: some of the stuff that was sold out on Thursday got re-stocked and there were very few people in the store :)

7) it helps to organize the coupons by aisles. After the first trial run, I had a pretty good idea what is located where, and when I put my coupons in the order I'd expect to see the products in the store, it was a breeze to find what I needed.

8) if the coupon says "do not double" it doesn't mean it won't double at the register. This is something that I learned from comments to my earlier post, but haven't tried this time around. All the coupons I had doubled and tripled correctly (but none said "do not double" as I had separated and left those at home)

This was fun! :)
I hope Shoppers (or any other grocery store in our area) does it again!

Shoppers

So, this was true: Shoppers triples coupons up to $.50 and doubles up to $1! I spent some time clipping all and every coupon up to a $1 that didn't say "do not double" and went on a Shopper's quest last night. The store was buzzing with the couponers all looking for the same items, comparing prices and waiting patiently at checkout lanes... that seemed to take forever!

I got a lot of stuff and learned a few lessons along the way.

I will not list everything individually (and I most certainly won't remember every coupon I used), but it's over $99 worth of stuff that I paid less than $28 for! Granted, I got some items that I wouldn't normally purchase or got multiples of something only because of the coupon requirements, but I bought NOTHING that we wouldn't use, and our fridge is full, so I'm happy (and as an added bonus we'll get to try some things that we don't usually buy).

I got 4-pk Scott toilet paper (ultra mega rolls!) and Scott paper towels, Marcal napkins (that's my favorite find - only $.19 after doubled coupon!), Quacker granola bars, 4-pk of Dannon yougurt, Warm Delights dessert bowl, Glade candle, huge bag of Malt-O-Meal cereal, 3 boxes of Yogos for Victoria (she's been asking for them forever and this is the first time I actually bought them... @$.50 each after coupons and sent the UPCs for Yogos Notebook Offer too :)), Ronzoni dinner kit, Pasta-Roni, Rice-a-Roni, 4 boxes of Success Rice, Daisy Sour Cream, French's mustard (regular and 2 gourmet), 2 jars of Mt.Olive relish, 4 cans of new Campbell's Select Harvest soup, 6-pk of Fiber One yogurt, Smart Balance omega oil and buttery spread, Crisco omega oil, 2 tubs of Hilshire Farm deli meats, deli sliced Sargento cheese, Bob Evans fresh sausages, Philly Cheesecake filling (huge tub!), Hilshire Farm smoked sausage (the only item I didn't use coupon for - this is something DH asked for) and Crab Classic crab meat. (Phew, I think that's it!).

Most of my coupons came from recent papers, but here are the printables that are worth mentioning:

1) Crab Classic is on sale this week for $1.99, there's a $1 printable here, that doubles to $2 = your crab meat is FREE

2) Rice-a-Roni are on sale 10/$10, there's a $.50 printable here, that triples to $1.50, so you are actually getting $.50 overage!

3) Pasta Roni are on sale 8/$10 and 10/$10 (depending on variety), use the same coupon to get it better than free! [you can print 2 coupons per computer]

4) Malt-o-Meal cereal: HUGE bag is $2.69 (and they have great varieties too), there's a $1 printable here (or print it from the widget on the right side of my page or below), that doubles to $2 = your final price is $.69!

What did you get?

Shoppers: tripling coupons up to $.50 and doubling up to $1!

My DH was so excited that we scored some free rice at Shoppers last week and said we should definitely do it again, if Shoppers would decide to make tripling coupons a standard practice. I laughed: it was the first time ever that any store in our area tripled coupons, and it was hard to believe that it would happed again any time soon.

Well, apparently I was wrong. DH has heard on the radio that this Thursday through Sunday Shoppers is tripling again - up to $.50 AND doubling coupons with values between $.51 and $1! It's even better than what they did last week (they didn't double higher value coupons). It looks like I will be going through my coupons tonight, clipping and sorting the ones that I might use at Shoppers in the next few days.

Any good coupons/deals out there?..
If your grocery stores double or triple coupons, which coupons do you use and what do you get?

in a nutshell

I haven't updated for a while: we have just bought a house and are super-duper busy right now. Excited, splattered with paint and tired. But happy :)

I still manage to carve some time for bargain shopping - mostly CVS (I had a lot of ECBs expiring this weekend, so I had to go and spend them even though I didn't really need anything), but also Staples and Office Depot for school supplies, and our local Shoppers tripled coupons up to $.50 - for the first time ever! - so we got some freebies there too. We've found Success Rice with was on sale 2/$3 with $.50 peelies on them (that when tripled, made the rice free), and here's a printable coupon for $.50 off any Rice-a-Roni or Pasta Roni (Rice-a-Roni is on sale 10/$10, so you're $.50 ahead when the coupon triples). You can print two coupons per computer I think, and you may need to register (it's free) and then click on "Printable grocery coupons", it was on the first page for me.

I can't count how many times we've been to Home Depot and Lowes this week, and I imagine this may become another part of our daily routine... We got a 10% HD coupon (that we're holding until we buy something big... which will probably happen tomorrow: we need to replace the doord) and a Lowes Bonus card, but other than that I'm not sure if there any other current offers for home imptrovement stores... Anyone?

Anyway, I'm going to pick the winner of my first giveaway and call it a night...