I shopped at Costco on Sunday because the coupons were about to expire, and there were a few items that we usually get that were on coupon.
So I did my shopping and handed them a pile of coupons to scan. The cashier took the pile, scanned the first one, and all of the items I was buying on coupon got credited. I know that they didn't scan all of the coupons individually.
This isn't exactly front-page news but it's interesting. At first I thought it was a bit of a bonanza, since I might get some money off of an item for which I had forgotten to rip out a coupon. But after thinking about it a little more, it's more for Costco's convenience and protection:
- Computers are a lot better at following rules. The wording on the coupons is sometimes a little complicated: “Buy this AND/OR that, limit 4.” So is it four items, or four of both items? I've had (brief) discussions with the cashier about this on occasion when the wording didn't make sense. But the computer will do it the same every time. If the customer objects, then the cashier can at least say that all customers are treated the same by the computer.
- Computers almost never make mistakes. Humans make more mistakes than computers on these kinds of tasks. Computers won't misread an item or its price, or credit a coupon for an item that wasn't purchased. The coupon is credited if, and only if, the item is scanned.
- It's far faster to have the computer look up all couponed items than for the cashier to check. The faster the cashiers can get customers through the line, the longer the lines can be (before people start going elsewhere), and the fewer cashiers they need at any one time. Do more with less.
I guess Costco has decided that the occasional bonus they get from a customer not clipping a coupon isn't worth all of the other benefits of automatically triggering all of the coupons for the customer.
At my Costco you don’t have to scan any coupons, they just automatically take the amount off. Although they do ask if any of your items have coupons, I guess to make sure the computer gets it.
What a nice feature! I wonder if they did this because more people are using coupons with the economy the way that it is. The ease of this system should definitely encourage everyone to clip at least that 1 coupon to activate it.
Yes, if you look at the back all the barcode numbers are the same. I think that this is a great feature. I used to be one that wouldn’t bother clipping the coupons beforehand, so I’d be walking around the store tearing them out one by one. If anything, they probably got tired of the mess created by people like me!
One thing that puzzles me about Costco is that there is usually a gap between when one set of coupons expire and a new one begins. I wonder why they don’t run them for a full month at a time.
Wow, I didn’t know that Costco did that now. I used to work at Costco, about three years ago, and when I worked there we had to scan each coupon individually. And trust me, there were a LOT of times where we would miss coupons, and members would come back and ask us to fix it.
Of course, after the transaction is complete, we can’t do anything about it, so we had to just send them to Member Services to get a refund, which wasted both the member’s time and our time. So this is quite brilliant.
I guess my question would be, do you still have to scan the one coupon? Or do they just come off without any scanning whatsoever?
I noticed that too! Well, actually, I thought that the cashier had superfast ninja coupon-scanning skills or that perhaps I’d been abducted by aliens and returned one second later.
Your explanation makes a LOT more sense.
The cashier at Costco told me we don’t even have to bring in our coupons yet (although I would to make sure I bought the right thing.) Just tell them you have coupons and they can scan something right there on the register.
This makes me question whether or not it was even a coupon. There are two types of discounts. Manufacturer’s rebates and Costco coupons. The rebates come off automatically. The coupons need to be scanned.
When I worked there, we had to scan them. At times we had copies of the flier up at the tills to make scanning them easier, but they took that privilege away from us because our coupon percentage was too high. As in, when a company agrees to let us discount something (put it on coupon), they are expecting a number of sales to go through without the coupon discount. If our coupon sales are at 100%, companies get mad at Costco, etc.
So perhaps the “automatic” coupons were just manufacturer’s rebates, not coupons (though they will appear like coupons in the seasonal fliers/handouts).
My last trip to Costco resulted in the same – didn’t even need the coupon, cashier looked and saw I had a coupon and just clicked a button and poof – money saved. Very cool!
I wish coupons could be redeemed for cash … lol… Is there anyone doing that?
Laura: No, not usually, because it’s illegal.