I'm very glad that Wegmans has come to our neck of the woods, and that they've continued to double manufacturers' coupons. It's been quite a while since a grocer local to me has offered this.
Growing up, I remember that there used to be a limit on which coupons they'd double. It may have been 75 cents, or it may have been up to a dollar. I'm not sure. The limit is still in place at ours. It reads: “Wegmans will double manufacturers' coupons up to 99 cents.” (Additionally, the price after all discounts are taken off cannot exceed the price of the item.)
I asked Customer Service at our Wegmans exactly what this meant, because there are two interpretations:
- Wegmans will double any coupons but only up to $0.99. Thus, a $5.00 item with a $2.00 coupon would get $2.00 + $0.99 off, for a final price of $2.01.
- Wegmans will double any coupons that have a value of $0.99 or less. In the same situation as above, my $2.00 off coupon wouldn't be doubled at all, so the final price would be $3.00.
The correct interpretation is the second one: there is no doubling at all for coupons of $1.00 or more.
Quite a few manufacturers issue $1.00-off coupons for their products, and Wegmans' doubling policy excludes these. I mean, $1.00 off is $1.00 off, but $1.00 off isn't as nice as $2.00 off.
How many manufacturers is “quite a few?” Well, I checked on MyPoints‘ printable coupon section, and tallied up the coupons for the grocery store items for my ZIP code. Here's what I got:
- $4.00 off: 1 coupon
- $3.00 off: 2 coupons
- $2.00 off: 4 coupons
- $1.50 off: 6 coupons
- $1.10 off: 2 coupons
- $1.00 off: 36 coupons
- $0.80 off: 1 coupon
- $0.75 off: 5 coupons
- $0.60 off: 3 coupons
- $0.55 off: 7 coupons
- $0.50 off: 11 coupons
- $0.40 off: 7 coupons
There were 85 printable grocery coupons. Fifty-one of them (60%) were $1.00 or more. But 42% of the printable coupons were exactly $1.00. $1.00 off was the most common amount by more than a factor of three.
If manufacturers were to bring down the value of their $1.00 coupons to $0.98, all of these coupons would be able to be doubled under Wegmans' current rules. Why two cents rather than just one? It's not that noticeable for Wegmans (and other grocers) to change their policies from “We double coupons up to 99 cents” to “We double coupons less than 99 cents.” The latter would exclude 99-cent-off coupons, but not 98-cent-off coupons. They could exclude whatever they want, of course, but the change in their policy would be more noticeable.
This change wouldn't make or break anyone's food budget but it would make coupon doubling a little bit more fun.
Now, the only question is, how to persuade the manufacturers to start issuing those 98-cent-off coupons…
Stores can work for you though. For example, Bestbuy has made it so that if you buy a video game, you can get 10 dollars off the game if you preoder another game by laying down a five dollar deposit. Even if you don’t plan on buying the other game, you’re still getting five dollars off the video game.
I was just talking with my neighbor the other day who about how much they spent at the grocery store how much they could have saved with manufacturer’s coupons and how they can be used anywhere. I’d have to say I save about 10% off of my total bill at the grocery store. I still clip allot of coupons out of the sunday paper but I find more and more often allot of coupons online, more then I can in the paper. Lately I’ve been using the great bricks printable manufacturer’s coupon index at Cap’n Coupon – they got some pretty great stuff here latley. Anyways, just wanted to share my savings tips – thanks everyone.