There’s a new show on TLC called Extreme Couponing, depicting individuals saving lots and lots of money using grocery coupons. They go to a store, onlookers watch in amazement, and savings reach somewhere between 90 to 95 percent, and hundreds of dollars.
It’s also kind of silly.
Silly not because the savings are artificial (they are real savings). It’s silly because these people, at least from what I can discern, don’t even come close to using what they buy. It’s silly because it appears, through the subjects or the direction, these people do it more for the kill than for the prize.
Case in point - J’aime Kirlew, an overly made up woman in high-heel boots and brittle, colored blond hair is one such extreme couponer. The show depicts her organizing dozens of newspaper inserts, culling and organizing coupons, and developing a strategy for the trip to the grocery store.
Once at the store, she with some 70 coupons for mustard, she cleans out the store, removing 62 bottles of mustard because she can drop the price to 39 cents a bottle (this is actually pretty expensive since I personnally don’t pay for mustard - I typically get it for free with coupons or for less than a dime - I just get one or two bottles, because what the heck am I going to do with 62 bottles of mustard?). At the end of her segment, the eyeshadow heavy pseudo-blond does a little dance at the checkout counter, as if preventing future customers from buying mustard is something to be proud of.
The shows go on with other extremists, purchasing what seems to be a lifetime supply of Maalox, storing products in every nook and cranny in their homes (a shower stall is packed to the ceiling with paper towels, great if you need a paper towel, terrible if you need to take a shower; dozens of bottles of BBQ source are hidden away in a child’s room; basements are stocked ready to survive the upcoming zombie apocalypse).
So, yes, you’re going to save some money, but before you go out and buy 20 copies of the Sunday newspaper, keep these thoughts in mind:
1) At a minimum, extreme couponing is a part-time job, and just how far you take it, may be a full-time job. It takes time to research coupons and store ads, shop, checkout, and finally unpack and store all that stuff. You are simply not going to pick up your Sunday coupons, go to a store for weekly shopping and expect to get the deals these extremists are getting.
2) It’s pretty rude. It’s rude to the store. It’s rude to other customers. It’s rude to other couponers.
It’s rude to the store because they must spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with these jokers - restocking, checking them out, and later processing all the coupons must take hours for these individual customers. Most checkout line appear to shut down because of them.
To make matters worse, the extremists game the system, often separating purchases into multiple transactions to take advantage of special deals. Because of one store’s policy limiting multiple transactions, a couple had to call friends to stand at the checkout line, wasting the time of the store.
It’s rude to other customers because particular products are gone. What in the blue blazes are you going to do with 62 bottles of mustard?
It’s rude to other couponers because there’s going to be a point where stores will begin enacting (if they haven’t already done so) increasingly restrictive policies regarding coupons. In the NOVA area, on double-coupon days at Harris-Teeter, customers are limited to 20 coupons, per household, per day. This is an obvious response to the extreme couponers who split their transactions into multiple transactions. Bottom line, people that do this that are happy to save 30 to 60 percent won’t be able to anymore because stores will eventually limit the extremists for receiving the savings in the 95 to 101 percent range.
3) Stuff goes bad. In the houses of the extremists, there are boxes and boxes of cereal. Bags and bags of chips. Stuff goes bad. Stuff goes stale. Mustard doesn’t go bad, but I can’t imagine that I would be able to use 62 bottles in my lifetime.
I hope some of these items get donated or traded with other families; however, seeing rows of cleaning supplies, stacks of paper towels, and bunkers of cereal, it’s doubtful. (The eyeshadow queen mentioned above claims on her website that almost all items were donated to food banks, friends and family.) These purchases become more of a showcase (much like a mounted lion’s head on the mantel).
And there’s some legal issues involved. It has to do with using coupons for their non-specified use. High-heeled boot lady generated so much vitriol about this that she was forced to turn off her comments on her facebook page. Read more about this at Jill Cataldo’s website.
Next week - the lazy man’s guide to couponing, which is certainly not extreme.
It’s also kind of silly.
Silly not because the savings are artificial (they are real savings). It’s silly because these people, at least from what I can discern, don’t even come close to using what they buy. It’s silly because it appears, through the subjects or the direction, these people do it more for the kill than for the prize.
Case in point - J’aime Kirlew, an overly made up woman in high-heel boots and brittle, colored blond hair is one such extreme couponer. The show depicts her organizing dozens of newspaper inserts, culling and organizing coupons, and developing a strategy for the trip to the grocery store.
Once at the store, she with some 70 coupons for mustard, she cleans out the store, removing 62 bottles of mustard because she can drop the price to 39 cents a bottle (this is actually pretty expensive since I personnally don’t pay for mustard - I typically get it for free with coupons or for less than a dime - I just get one or two bottles, because what the heck am I going to do with 62 bottles of mustard?). At the end of her segment, the eyeshadow heavy pseudo-blond does a little dance at the checkout counter, as if preventing future customers from buying mustard is something to be proud of.
The shows go on with other extremists, purchasing what seems to be a lifetime supply of Maalox, storing products in every nook and cranny in their homes (a shower stall is packed to the ceiling with paper towels, great if you need a paper towel, terrible if you need to take a shower; dozens of bottles of BBQ source are hidden away in a child’s room; basements are stocked ready to survive the upcoming zombie apocalypse).
So, yes, you’re going to save some money, but before you go out and buy 20 copies of the Sunday newspaper, keep these thoughts in mind:
1) At a minimum, extreme couponing is a part-time job, and just how far you take it, may be a full-time job. It takes time to research coupons and store ads, shop, checkout, and finally unpack and store all that stuff. You are simply not going to pick up your Sunday coupons, go to a store for weekly shopping and expect to get the deals these extremists are getting.
2) It’s pretty rude. It’s rude to the store. It’s rude to other customers. It’s rude to other couponers.
It’s rude to the store because they must spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with these jokers - restocking, checking them out, and later processing all the coupons must take hours for these individual customers. Most checkout line appear to shut down because of them.
To make matters worse, the extremists game the system, often separating purchases into multiple transactions to take advantage of special deals. Because of one store’s policy limiting multiple transactions, a couple had to call friends to stand at the checkout line, wasting the time of the store.
It’s rude to other customers because particular products are gone. What in the blue blazes are you going to do with 62 bottles of mustard?
It’s rude to other couponers because there’s going to be a point where stores will begin enacting (if they haven’t already done so) increasingly restrictive policies regarding coupons. In the NOVA area, on double-coupon days at Harris-Teeter, customers are limited to 20 coupons, per household, per day. This is an obvious response to the extreme couponers who split their transactions into multiple transactions. Bottom line, people that do this that are happy to save 30 to 60 percent won’t be able to anymore because stores will eventually limit the extremists for receiving the savings in the 95 to 101 percent range.
3) Stuff goes bad. In the houses of the extremists, there are boxes and boxes of cereal. Bags and bags of chips. Stuff goes bad. Stuff goes stale. Mustard doesn’t go bad, but I can’t imagine that I would be able to use 62 bottles in my lifetime.
I hope some of these items get donated or traded with other families; however, seeing rows of cleaning supplies, stacks of paper towels, and bunkers of cereal, it’s doubtful. (The eyeshadow queen mentioned above claims on her website that almost all items were donated to food banks, friends and family.) These purchases become more of a showcase (much like a mounted lion’s head on the mantel).
And there’s some legal issues involved. It has to do with using coupons for their non-specified use. High-heeled boot lady generated so much vitriol about this that she was forced to turn off her comments on her facebook page. Read more about this at Jill Cataldo’s website.
Next week - the lazy man’s guide to couponing, which is certainly not extreme.
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