Another Target Trip Today - 6.7

So my girlfriend and I decided to make a trip to Target today to pick up some more things. Like snacks, our kids can go through snacks! Esp. now that school will soon be out. Well anyway, we have our coupons ready, and make our way through the Aisles. We get up to the registers, and are then told that they are now limiting the number of coupons. Two per same item purchased. Well okay, but I wish I had known this ahead of time. I hate having to re-organize my pile of items. Afterwards, I still walked out of there with a great deal. I ended up saving about $32.00. Not bad. The big find I was able to get was Axe Shower gel, trial size. I had 2 $1.00/1 coupons that did NOT exclude the trial size items. I was able to get two bottles for free.

I will say that we did get to talking with the manager, and understand fully why this particular store is limiting the number of coupons you can use per transaction. I will now have to re-plan my Target trips into envelopes, and just make a few extra trips during the week.

With all that said, I would just like to reiterate a few things:

Some people who use coupons are giving the rest of us a bad name.

Please if you are a beginner couponer I ask you to follow a few of these simple rules:

1. Read your coupon before you use it. Does it say "Excludes Trial Sizes"? If so, please do not try and pass a trial size item through, and then give the cashier a hard time when it beeps.

2. Do not try and use an expired coupon, the stores will not be reimbursed for these coupons. They lose money when this happens.

3. When shopping, and you arrive at the register, be prepared and organized, you will find that most cashiers are very appreciative of this. And your transactions will go smoother.

4. If a coupon states that you need to buy 2 or 3 of an item, than that is what you need to do. Please do not try at "get away" with only buyng 1.

These are the 4 biggest rules that I find people try and pass through. Now I don't know about you, but I used coupons to SAVE money. I don't want to "screw" stores. I want to save as much money as I possibly can. I really don't want those few bad apples to ruin it for me.

Yes it's an absolute high to walk out of a store paying only a few dollars for several bags of items, but you need to abide by not only the rules on the coupons, but also by the stores policies.

Now if you happen to know that you are correct if a situation does arise, by all means challenge it. If you don't get anywhere with a store manager, or supervisor, then you have a choice, pay for the item and leave or not pay for the item, and leave. Go home and call corporate and hope for some type of rectification or take your coupon to another store. If you are calling corporate, I would suggest you make notes, writing down everything that had occurred, have the sale ad, if that is what you had an issue with, and also your receipt. Also have a pen and paper ready. Have the coupon with you as well. If you call the corporate offices, and are not prepared, you are not going to get very far. As always, attitude is everything, be calm cool and collected when talking to them, or in that case, anyone who you are challenging.

And lastly to all the store managers out there reading this blog, please understand this. Most of the couponers out there are good people, all trying to save money in these tough economical times. When you have a sale, and we have coupons making the item either free or extremely cheap, yes we stock up, we ask family and friends for their coupons, and some will even purchase coupons online, so we will usually end up with anywhere from 5 to 30 coupons for the same item, some of us have large families, or like a particular brand, some of us buy supplies to last the year, depending upon what the expire dates are on a certain items, not to return the items later for cash, but so we don't have to pay full price. We have stock piles in our homes. We do this to save money, and for no other reason than that. It's that simple. I myself have 26 bottles of salad dressing. This will be made to last my family the summer.

Do you have additional tips? I would love to hear them! Leave me a comment.