Saturday 7 October 2017

Extreme Couponing - my thoughts

I love watching episodes of Extreme Couponing on the telly, when I see the savings I really want to give it a go myself.

But then, when I think about it afterwards I see the flaws.


Do these Extreme Couponers, or Kewponers as they all seem to call themselves, do a 'proper shop' when the cameras stop rolling?  Most of the purchases seem to be toothpaste, a particular sports drink, 'feminine products' as they are politely called on the show and some sort of weird pasta which I have never seen before.  I am not sure how people can live on these items alone.

I also don't understand how, if everything is so carefully planned out, the shoppers can spend up to 10 hours per shopping trip.  I also think that the time each till is tied up with the mega loads would not be appreciated here in the UK.

The room that is needed to store the stockpiles also amazes me, to have that sort of spare floor space here in the UK would require a property of the size needing the kind of income that this sort of penny-pinching would not be needed, but they all seem to have double garages or basements, even those on the lowest of incomes.

In the US it seems that you can 'layer' coupons, that is use a manufacturer's coupon on an item along with a store coupon, here in the UK most coupons say 'cannot be used with any other offer'.

Also, in some stores, if an item costs, say 60 cents and you have a coupon worth 50 cents which will 'double', (some stores will double coupons with a face value of up to 50 cents) the additional 40 cents per coupon can be used against the total spend.  In some cases, stores will give you a voucher to use on your next visit if your coupons total more than your actual spend.

In a couple of episodes I have watched, it seems that in the US if an item is incorrectly labelled at a lower price than it actually is, then the store has to stand by it, here in the UK, a price is 'an invitation to treat', in other words it is an invitation to enter into negotiations to buy the item, the store can refuse to sell at the labelled price and withdraw the product, this rarely happens as the item will be reduced as 'goodwill', but it could.

But after all that nay-saying, I would still like to try it.