interesting article on extreme couponing

here's something i found through Start Sampling tonight....i don't get the station that shows this Extreme Couponing show so i never saw this. but its a very eye opening and interesting article on how much scamming these people who get all this free stuff really are. (i'm not talking people who get a few things cheap or a few free things now and then cuz they're on sale for $1 and their 50cent coupon is doubled)
check it out...
http://supercouponing.com/extremecouponingquestions.html

I have bits and pieces of the show mentioned. In one episode that I watched, they showed someone's garage that was converted into a food pantry. Those people probably have enough food for months on end.

gawd i hope they use that for the homeless or hungry! cuz unless somebody has an enormous family (like those folks who have 19 kids...i see the title of the show but never saw it...or at least haven't seen it since they only had like 15 or 16 kids!)there's no way you need or can use an entire garage full of food!
(though i will admit when i actually dream about having a place to actually live i dream of having a little linen closet or something so i can have a year's worth of TP and kleenex.....not more than that, just one year's worth and i know just about how much i use in a year!)

I have a huge amount of animosity toward "super couponers." I think they're rude to the rest of the people in the stores, and that they take advantage of a system set up to save REGULAR shoppers a few bucks. How in the world does someone who gets $400 worth of groceries for 18¢ help out anyone but themselves? Manufacturers and the stores that sell the products will both take hits, because there's NO way that $400 worth of product could be manufactured for that 18¢. How will they recoup the loss? By raising prices, that's how.

I had a woman in front of me in the store one morning, who turned out to be a super couponer. She had a cart FULL of groceries, which she made the checker split into several different transactions, so she could take advantage of the system, with her 3-ring binder full of coupons. There was no other line open, so I couldn't move along to avoid this. It was an endless, complicated transaction. I was so incensed by the time this was over that I sent a letter to the grocery store to tell them that, if they're going to allow this, they need to open a lane for super couponers only, and if I ever experienced anything like this again, they would never see me again in their grocery store, and I would make it my mission to tell as many people as I could about the experience. I'm the consumer that makes them profitable - not that super couponer.

It's rude, and it should be criminal.

I like getting bargains with coupons, and clip them when I can, but there super couponers are really too much.

i'm with you bc...they need their own register to check out at and the cashier at that register also needs free valium and $1 more an hour! we have people who do that splitting order crap to use the same type coupon several times. we also have people who sign their kids up for the birthday club and have it sent to several addresses so they come in with sometimes 4-6 of these $3 off ANY purchase coupons. then they buy something that is as close to $3 as they can....they have tried to buy things for $2.99 to get around it but the coupon won't go through unless its over $3.

according to the article there is a coupon code on the coupons that is either the same for multiple brands or the same as an actual item.(I wasn't really clear on it when i was reading it). these people get around using the correct coupons for items by knowing these codes. the article pointed out that the person on the show was buying on sale cheap (kiddy type) cereals and using Fiber One $1.50 coupons with it. they didn't buy Fiber One cereal but they were using a big pile of those coupons!

I got a good deal today on some bar soap.the coupon was $1 off two multi packs....i didn't say that it had to be an 8 or 10 bar pack or a 2 bar pack.the big packs were on sale for $3.99 and buying those would have been a good deal if you had a family using it. but $7 (after i took off the coupon) for soap was half of what i had for grocery money and it would take me at least a year to use up that soap! SO i got two 2-packs for $1.23 each (they were 99cents until the store that is remodelling jacked up the price last weekend).so i paid less than $1.50 for 4 bars of soap. BUT i read that coupon very carefully and if there would have been a problem with the coupon i was going to just let it slide and put the coupon where the big packs of soap were for someone else to use.

I notice on that coupon that it said you couldn't use more than 4 of the coupon at one time. i don't know how the companies can control it but its a good idea. nobody needs to buy more than 4 of something in one single transaction....if they're that desperate they need to come back the next day!

I haven't really seen any of that here in Dallas but I agree with both of you. To me what they are
doing is fraud and will ruin it for the rest of us. One thing of note, in Denton which is north of me.
A women was ticketed for stealing newspapers from a box to get the coupons out of them. What she was
doing was buying one paper, then taking the coupons out of the rest of the papers and putting them back. The
contractors became enraged and had the local law enforcement write her ticket. I mean they can't sell the newspapers
with the coupons missing. That's what a lot of people buy a Sunday paper for. She thought it was no big deal. I don't
know what happened to the case.

Again what are they going to do with all that stuff. Unless the donate it to charity, what are they going to do with it?

I bought a years supply of Basis Soap (about 60 bars) once when it was "buy a bar, get a bar free" promotion from the manufacturer (I had a total of 30 2-bar packs). I waited until the last day of the sale, an hour before the store closed. That way everybody else had a shot at it first. No other customers were in the store at all when I did this. When the cashier and shift manager balked saying I'd wiped them out of inventory, I asked them if they wanted to make the sale or not since I can't use anything else due to allergies and my income was a lot lower than theirs. I also pointed out the shelf was still half full of that soap despite what I had in my cart so there was plenty for tomorrow's customers. They sold me the soap. Still cost me nearly $75 since it's about $4 for a bitty bar. But I've had no further hassles stocking up when it's on sale. If I didn't do that when I had the money, I'd run out of soap when money is tight.

I found out if you let a bar of soap age about six months it gets harder. Still lathers up pretty well but seems to go a bit further before it vanishes to a tiny sliver (which gets tucked into the lil pockets in a loofa sponge so it isn't wasted).

I certainly understand special products or circumstances. The only people that bug me are the ones who have a veritable supermarket in their basements at the expense of others who might want to pick up some of those products in a reasonable quantity too. Fif was considerate enough to wait until others had a chance.

we used to have a litle specialty booklet thing for suggestions of things to buy kids with various handicaps...there was a coupon on the back for something...like $5 off a $20 purchase or many even somethinglike $5 off anything..can't remember. BUT we had a couple people who kept coming in with stacks of the coupons (10-20 at a time)and buying one thing, using a coupon kept it up til their over flowing baskets were done. tying up cashiers for sometimes half an hour cuz each thing had to be done seperately, we had to do our 'shpeel' for each one (if we don't ask certain questions and take certain info the 'guest' can call us out on it and get i believe at that time a $5 gift card)..and they usually wanted seperate bags for each transaction and gift receipts.
the next year they stopped putting that coupon in the booklet thing and we had a couple people throw fits. but what they can't get they can't take away from others. (these folks were coming into stores and taking all the booklets that were in the displays...they had to be going to different stores over and over).

when I was at the library on Saturday I picked up one of the free brooklyn papers that are published weekly. There is supposed to be a bunch of free coupons (like you get in the Sunday paper. ) someone had taken it, and had taken it from every single paper there.

Somebody was just arrested in a nearby town here for doing something similar. They'd pay for one paper, leave the box open, remove all the coupon inserts, then put the papers back. The reason most folks buy a Sunday paper is for the coupon sections. Not sure what they charged that person with: they only took one newspaper so technically didn't steal any but they did take the coupons.

one of the publishers of coupons in the sunday paper is Red Plum. you can actually go to their site and have them send you the insert. i was reading that in the start sampling forum.
probably the safest (and this would also keep somebody in a job!) thing would be to have the Sunday paper delivered to your house. most places have special deals for just the weekend or just the sunday paper every week!

Jeane, it does supply jobs and it used to be if you hustled you could make some darn
good money at it. Still the greed behind the whole movement is sickening.

Saturday I was stuck in line with someone doing that scam. To me it is a scam and
what made it even more infurating was that this woman was in the express line. ESH!!!
No wonder cashiers have high blood pressure.

Fif, it's considered theft because the contractors can't sell the paper. It's incomplete, in Texas it's
called theft of services. I have no sympathy for people when they get caught and ticketed.

That's probably what they'll charge this guy with then.....I haven't heard any updates on that yet.

I'll have to spend a lil money to save money in the long run......mom and I found 5 watt flourescent bulbs online on one site that fit regular light fixtures. Much better than the 13 watters in my fixtures now (the smallest size I can find in the stores here), and that lil 5 watter gives plenty of light. With those I might actually be able to afford to turn on the lights now and then. But it comes out to about $5 a bulb if you add the shipping costs in. Much cheaper than the one other site I found them, almost half the price.

I do cut out coupons that I or my mom can use. I'm one of those people who use coupons on something I get anyway and not buy something just because I have a coupon for it.

$5 for a light bulb? i've never paid more than $1 for even a four pack! i've never paid more than $1 for a florescent...

fluff you're right....use coupons for things you would buy anyway in that brand. the only time i buy something that's not a brand i would normally buy is if it would be cheaper to get it with the coupon in the other brand. but most of the time i get a lot of generic store brand stuff. i even worked out how many pennies difference per roll it would be to buy a single roll of generic, a four roll of generic or a large pack of brand name tp with a coupon. the generic 4 roll pack was the cheapest over all. though its better for me to buy the huge pack if i can get a ride home...its a hassle to buy a small pack every month. but right now i have to do what i have to do.

I figure the savings from the utility bill, along with the fact I won't have to buy another bulb to replace it for at least 8-10 years or more might make that $5 bulb worth it..............HUD says I have to have a bulb in those fixtures but they don't say how big they have to be.

I was reading in the paper where an extreme couponer was arrested (don't know where) for taking papers that were put out for pick up by the vendor for not having been sold. he wanted all the coupon inserts.
here in NY they just send back the fron pages and send the rest of the papers for recycling.

there's been two different people in the past...maybe 10 days?....who have been arrested in different parts of the country for coupon fraud. i know one they showed on the news had packed coupons into bags and was reselling them (which is expressly written on the coupon that they can't be resold so its very blantantly against the law!) but i think they did the same thing or sorts.....stole the papers out of paper boxes or stole the coupon parts from the box.
makes you think they need to cancel those extremem couponing shows. its like they're tutorials on how to steal!

like those teenage pregnancy shows which are supposedly done to make kids think better of getting pregnant but end up with the pregnant teens becoming celebrities and more teens trying to emulate them

yep...same sort of thing.
i actually had a woman try to use two coupons for the same box of diapers at work today. i thought she had meant she wanted to use a vendor coupon and one of the coupons we have in booklets. nope..she meant two vendor coupons. i told her i couldn't do it, that if she read the coupons she'd see it was against the law to use two coupons for the same item. she didn't protest, but i wonder if she does that elsewhere! (had another nasty old thing throw a fit because she wanted to buy a TOY with a coupon that said it was not for toys...really, its a coupon for a baby item, and says in the top line of exclusions NOT for toys!) i wound up giving it to her to shut her up and get her out of the store. but if she shows up again that will be another story.

I had something happen to me today at Kroger. I picking up food for the Wild Bunch
a woman was taking the ready to use coupon's off of bags of Purina Kitten Chow. They had
expiration date of Dec 2012. I found a manager, found the woman and complained. The manager
actually showed some backbone. He gave me one of the coupons, confiscated the rest. As I was leaving
the store he told me he had an employee tape the coupons back on the product. I hate that type of thing.

Anyway the Wild Bunch will be eating kitten chow. Hey $3.22+tax a bag vs $4.22+tax a bag.

when i lived in TX every grocery store i'd go to always had whatever was attatched to it stolen...they'd put stuffed animals in little boxes or windows on cereal and everyone would be opened and stolen! you'd think that somebody would have seen it happen!
i can't believe that woman did that right in front of you.;.esh!
but honestly, the cat food companies need to put the coupons INSIDE the bags where they can't be ripped off. (I was just thinking that when i was mixing the chow a few weeks ago.).

I have been quilty of taking few coupons that were taped onto the top of the cans of cat food. I haven't gone as far as taking off every coupon that I could find on the cans though. In the past month or so, my dad has found coupons for kitty litter inside the kitty litter bag for the same brand every week that he changed litter around the house.