My friend from church taught us a mini class on how to use coupons, price matching, and sales to get items for very cheap or occasionally free. Chanelle has been doing this for a while now, and is a seasoned veteran with clipping coupons, trading online for more coupons, negotiating with disgruntled managers and cashiers, and more… and she does this all while entertaining her 4 kids and filling her shopping cart with goodies.
I attempted to duplicate her efforts at Walmart, the low price leader, who supposedly price matches and honors all coupons. I left my two little ones with Michael, and went to the store armed with the ads from 4 local stores and a handful of coupons from the internet. Excitement filled my heart as I saw that I could get red bell peppers for $0.69/lb and romaine lettuce for $0.33 with price matching. Then my cart was filled only with items that would be very cheap after price matching and coupons (remember- I can only spend money this month on essential food items).
I couldn’t find any young looking cashiers, so I settled for a lady who has been working at Walmart for 10 years (I assumed she would know the drill by now). To make a long story short, it took 30 minutes to check out (the guy in line behind me was not happy…), and 3 different manager type ladies were called for assistance. She carefully scrutinized each ad of my price matching for date, size of object, and compared it with what I wanted to purchase. It then took her forever to change the price on each item.
They then would not honor the price of some of my items, because the coupons were from Stater Brothers or Target, and they don’t accept those (according to Chanelle, and their corporate website, they do honor those coupons). I gave up and handed those items back. Then came my bell peppers and lettuce. Apparently Los Rios (our local Hispanic food store) has inferior produce to Walmart and they don’t honor their prices. I convinced them to honor them this once, but the cashier didn’t comprehend how to weight vegetables for a price match. It was drama! For the sake of the poor guy behind me (6 other people had given up on me and left my line already), I sent back the vegetables. So much for trying to eat healthy for cheap! Over all I had a bad experience. Saving the few dollars I did was not worth the time, aggravation, or frustration caused by that experience. Sorry Chanelle! I’m not as dedicated as you are.
Note- I tried couponing again at Vons. They had a sale on cereal (brand name boxes for $1, $1.50, and $2.00). I bought some boxes ad used online coupons and Target coupons. They easily honored them all and even doubled some. Some of my cereal was just $0.50! Checkout took very little time. Yeah for Vons!
