Happy Friday: Using Coupons w/ Confidence
Sent from reader, Jill:
After my guy was already on his way to pick up his truck from the repair shop, I realized I had a coupon. I quickly took a picture of the coupon and sent him a text suggesting that he ask if they would honor the coupon from the picture and I that would be happy to drop off the original coupon later. They were able to scan the coupon from his phone, it saved him $216.24 and they didn’t need the original coupon. He doesn’t usually like to use coupons without me right there with him but it was a very positive experience for him. Thank you PEP BOYS for being so gracious! AND thank you COLLIN AND TEAM for building my confidence in using coupons by teaching me how to use them, hosting thought-provoking discussions about ethically using coupons, telling me about tons of fabulous deals and more…
HAPPY FRIDAY!
Do you have a funny, “Hip”, or unique photo to share?! Email us at happyfriday@hip2save(dot)com. Every Friday, we post one photo, submitted by a Hip2Save reader, that gives us a glimpse into their frugal lifestyle or simply makes us smile. If your photo is published on Hip2Save, we’ll email you a $10 Amazon e-card!
I love PepBoys
Good for your hubby!! And good on pep boys!
THAT IS AWESOME! Great use of a coupon to save some serious money for your family!
Wow that’s awesome!!!
Nice! Saving on automotive stuff is great! And good work to hubby! Bet he was proud too. Lol
The cashiers always ask me” are you doing this for your wife today?” I reply, “nope, I use hip2save!”
Guess they do not see many men that coupon!!
Happy Friday Hip2Savers!!!!
totally awesome.
Thanks for sharing! Sorry you had such a costly repair, yikes.
Yay for your guy and Pep Boys!!! They left our town a while ago, we miss them!
Awesome, Jill! You’re raising him well! 🙂
wow that’s great saving. I am newbie to H2S and I have never used coupons before and having trouble in printing too, please need suggestions.
Sometimes I hit a wall printing a coupon but try watching the lego brick looking icon on the left of the website url. Sometimes it turns red or has a bar across the circle. Click it to change settings. Also watch for a “blocked” pop up bar above the Web page below the url.
As for this hip2saver it’s so awesome that hubby did that! Men (and even women) don’t believe the savings till they see it. I had been telling my mother about couponing for a year but she hadn’t believed me until she watched me at the register at CVS one day then she started doing it! Now after 3 years of couponing my husband is glad to see me couponing at the grocery store after a 3 month break. (I was at the end of my pregnancy with a 5 and 1 year old) so it’s a lot of fun and even better when you have other people excited for you!
Good for you, Jill! It is great that your husband used the coupon. My husband will as well, but he really doesn’t like doing it. I hope he takes you out to dinner with some of the savings.
Great job Jill! It never hurts to ask
My husband loves to use coupons, now he’s much better than me using coupons!
Last Christmas we had a family vacation trip to Disney World (1 week) and he used his Hilton HHonors points to pay for the hotel, it was FREE, we saved +2,300!!!
Also he is member of other rewards programs like AutoZone, he does price match in almost everything, he does rebates, etc, and of course he follows Hip2save.
My husband never spent time couponing until he went with me a couple of times and saw how I saved. We have a grocery store here that you get cents off a gallon of gas on some items you buy. You can then turn around and use it as thwir gas statuon. He gets so excited to tell me how many cents he added back on our fuel saver card. 🙂
Awesome! I’m trying to get my fiancé to coupon more, hope one day he can be this confident to do it on his own!
I started Couponing lately and I’m to be honest, overwhelmed, it’s very serious thing, it’s a full time job!!!thanks to hip2save I made $20 ECBs and $20 RR plus $20 rewards points!!!but I’m very afraid to missed up and will not spend them effectively!!!i have a $10 off $40 facial care at cvs also!!!i coupon just at Walgreens and cvs, yesterday I tried Walmart and I ended by spending more!! they didn’t accept almost all of my coupons, like the $1 off three chobani yogurt??!!and the cashiers there were looking to me bizarrely, I wanted to ask them if I’m the only one who ever coupon here??!!!
Walmart sucks and it’s more expensive on most items in my area. And they always will give you a hard time. The cashier’s usually hate their jobs so they don’t care.
Yeah it was really a hard time!!never coupon at Walmart again
If Wal-Mart cashiers didn’t have to deal with so many scammers it wouldn’t be a problem. They have people who come in with fake coupons, people who come in trying to price match to fake ads, etc. They also have to deal with people like you. Who must treat them like scum. It’s really fun to deal with the public. Try it some time.
I never price match. I go to the store. Much easier. There is no excuse in my opinion. Kroger and Target cashiers never act like Walmart cashiers and I am sure they have to deal with scammers or do they only go to Walmart.
I’ve never had problems with coupons at Walmart! Are you sure you had the correct product/the coupon hadn’t expired/was for a different store etc?
I checked every single product n coupon and every thing was right but!!!i don’t know !!
It can definitely be consuming if you let it. I would suggest sticking to one drugstore and get really familiar with their rewards. All deals are cyclical so don’t be worried if something isn’t on sale right now. Also to relieve stress at the store, always take a printout with the deals listed clearly so you don’t miss any savings. It’ll get easier with time! Lastly, coupons at Walmart are not fun. Stick to the drug stores and grocery stores!
Thank you a lot Rochelle i appreciate your advices 😉
I always have problems with my coupons at Walmart.
Walmart is a little further away from me than other stores so I don’t go there as often. Mostly the stores I stores I go to and the experiences I have with coupons are pretty positive. I’ve had a few bad experiences (very few, fortunately) shopping with coupons. Mostly I just don’t go back if I don’t have a good experience. There are lots of places to shop where I live.
I find that every store is different. A year or so ago I went to a Subway store with a coupon from the newspaper. They wouldn’t take the coupon because they were taking a different coupon that week, The coupon they were taking was not as good a deal and I didn’t have it. I explained that I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t take it because my coupon didn’t have a start date, only an expiration date. They said it was just their policy that they only took 1 kind of coupon per week. They couldn’t even tell me when they would be honoring the coupon I had and they were a little brusque, I used that same Subway coupon at a different Subway later that same week with no problems at all.
Last month there was a text coupon for a free Subway Sub if you purchased a drink. It had been more than a year since I had been to the Subway near me. I decided to give them another try. They wouldn’t honor the deal because it wasn’t a paper coupon.. A few days later a different Subway took the text coupon without batting an eye.
All this to say — Hang in there. It gets easier. And if you can, vote with your dollars by supporting the stores that treat you well and avoiding the stores that don’t.
It sounds like you are attempting to shop all the drugstores. No wonder you feel overwhelmed. It’s tough to keep track of all those reward programs. Why don’t you shop the one drugstore you like the best? I did them all for a while (and I am still stocked up on free HBA items!) but it was all-consuming. I switched to CVS for many years, but even rolling $10-15 ECBs required more time and effort than I wanted to spend, so a couple years ago I quit CVS too. I still shop the drugstores here and there for specific items, but I almost exclusively shop at grocery stores and Target and find very similar deals with less hassle. Once you have a decent stockpile of the things that you regularly use, couponing becomes much less overwhelming since you don’t need as much. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you “need” something simply because it is a good deal and you have a coupon for it. Figure out which stores are coupon friendly, and don’t be afraid to tell cashiers to remove items from your order if they refuse your coupons. Also be sure that your coupons are legitimate and come from trusted sources (coupons.com, smartsource, red plum), and use the coupons that companies email you directly rather than links posted on the Internet. It does get easier.
Great advice! Thank you.
i stocked up for 2 years on HBA items, now I only stock up if it’s free. Nice to use from my stock pile. I used to like cvs but now actually like plenti point from rite aid….good for 1 year. Never like walgreen
That is why I don’t shop at walmart. They look at me like that too. They look like I am trying to steal their money and I feel like I am ripping them off. I actually had a clerk that told me that I was the reason groceries were so high because I use coupons. She also said it wasn’t fair that couponers could save and normal people couldn’t. I didn’t know we were an exclusive club you had to join. I tried to say that anybody can coupon but she said that normal people don’t have time to coupon. I worked one full time and two part time and had custody of my two grand kids and my two disabled brothers and I found time to coupon. I mostly coupon at Kroger and Target now.
Sweet! Im happy for you@
Great move, Jill. And I wholeheartedly agree with all the cudos you gave Collin and her team!!
Nice savings! Thank you HIP2SAVE! How does one get their paws on a PepBoys coupon??
Once I signed up for their rewards card, I started getting coupons in the mail. I just started using the Keyring app for rewards cards and I just noticed there are some coupons in the app too for Pep Boys and others.
I’m a college student and live with my parents and since using this app I don’t let them grocery shop anymore because they never use coupons and it’s frustrating! 😉 I love being able to save money and have other people save money! Thanks Collin and team!
That’s awesome! I use an app called Receiptpal. Lets me take a picture of my receipts and saves them for me. It’s been fantastic to return items when I can’t find my receipt. A few places have been skeptical of me not having the actual receipt, but once they are able to scan the bar code from my phone, they are surprised! I’ve never argued if they can’t use the picture of my reciept, but I give it a go if I can’t find the original and it’s worked at the few places I’ve gone too. 🙂
Awesome advice Sara! I’d like to give them a go.. Do they do referrals? If so, can you email me your referral link??? Thekergerfamily at gmail
I love using ReceiptPal, too! I just cashed out for a $25 gift card last month.. Making money just taking pictures of receipts!! I also love ReceiptHog! It’s almost the same thing 🙂
Nice! I’m going to have to look into that! I have a shoebox where I file all paper receipts by month but every once in a while I just can’t find the receipt I’m looking for. And it will be nice to make a bit of money as well!
Nice!!!
Like a hundred times over!!!!
That’s awesome! 🙂
I have been couponing for a while and am starting to get more and more comfortable with it. So much so that I have been helping friends and complete strangers save money. Today, while at Target, I was helping complete strangers by giving them savings tips while in the beauty/beauty clearance section! There was a 25 percent off cartwheel for 2 different Olay products, a number to text for a $5 gift card with $20 purchase, etc. I couldn’t help myself. I scored moisturizer for $5 (reg. $15.99!) on clearance, a sample bottle of Olay Active Botanicals moisturizer for $.66 cents (reg $3.99?) on clearance and 2 cartons of Peppermint Chai tea on clearance for $2.61 each!
Can you please tell me how to get the coupon for $5 gift card if you spend $20 via text.
Thanks
Text GLOW to 827438
Yay!! I completely agree, Collin has really built my couponing confidence.. I was so intimidated until stumbling on her site.. Awesome job Jill and thanks so much to the hip2save team!!!
Wow Jill, you are so clever! I’m not sure I would have thought of taking a photo of the coupon. And what amazing savings!!! Your hubs must have been so proud 😀
I didn’t know they’d accept a photo, either! For $200, I would have made him turn right around and get the paper coupon!
I had a great cashier tonight at target. My battery on my phone was dying. It wasn’t bright enough to scan my cartwheel barcode. She took a picture of the Barcode for me and scanned it from her phone and then deleted the picture. It totally worked. So thankful as I had a couple bucks from my cartwheel.
Just a quick hint for Target Cartwheel that I must’ve picked up here. Print out your Target Cartwheel barcode and carry it with you. I have mine laminated and carry it in my purse. Your barcode doesn’t change, no matter what you have loaded on it.
Nice!
Thanks Liz on ….
My son cashiers at Target and a few days ago a woman had a roughly $700 order and tried to use about $500 worth of coupons – but they didn’t match her items. He said she had about $100 worth of hair dye coupons and wasn’t buying hair dye, for instance. She got very irate, swearing and carrying on, when declined. She had to be escorted out by security. Wow, just wow. Nonsense like that reflects poorly on legitimate couponers.