Extreme couponing can it be done on LI? (Hauppauge: sale, coupons)

[nycbrooklyn]

So my wife watched the extreme coupon show on TLC last night (moments after she returned from fighting with the Walbums checkout clerk about stacking coupons) and she brought up a good question. Can you truly do that effectively out LI? The grocery stores in the south let you double and even triple coupons and purchase 17 of the same items. I don’t know if anyone still double coupons and allows you to stack coupons at the same time. Did anyone watch the show (yes some of them are crazy) or does anyone have a great coupon strategy and what store do you use without hassle?

[FrmlyBklyn]

I doubt you'd be able to pull it off in Long Island., but who knows, someone prove us wrong.

[eugenet]

I doubt it. At most locations, the computer controls whether a coupon is accepted or not and many clerks aren't willing to override it.

On an unrelated note, Extreme Couponing looks like it's worth it but do i really need 12 deodorants and 14 jugs of detergent or 40 jars of pasta sauce. I wonder how much of this stuff goes bad and ends up being thrown out - just a waste. This is behavior is bordering on hoarding and I think is pretty silly. The saving is great but having garages/dens that rival many mom and pop grocery stores is insane.

IMHO.

[daihung]

I watched the show for a few minutes last night while flipping through the channels. It's almost unrealistic how much they can save! I've never seen it done in NY. I wonder if all those coupons are legit. I read that people online have beat the coupon printing system where they can just print fake coupons themselves at home. Those homemade coupons look real and actually work in the store.
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]

[jkmc120]

I watched the show last night too with my husband. I was amazed because I had felt good about my grocery shopping yesterday where I had spent $98 and saved $88. I didnt even save 50% on my total order and the people on TLC save 90% or better. On Long Island a lot of the stores double coupons but some won't double $1.00 coupons - king kullen is the only one I know that does. I do not think the savings the people on the show get are possible here.

[GinaFromQueens]

On the show, the shoppers admit spending 20 plus hours a week getting "ready" for their excursion to the stores!! Who really has that time? Not me!!

[RoleModel]

The most likely place you would be able to pull off a really good deal with coupons like that is probably of all places, Stop & Shop. They're the only ones that seem to both have $1 coupon doublers (in the circulars approximately once a month) and decent catalina deals.

Waldbaums and Pathmark never have $1 doubler coupons, King Kullen never has deals even though they double $1, and Shoprite, even though different stores are owned by different owners, a lot of them are incredibly and ridiculously strict with coupons. That's probably the worst thing about Shoprite (particularly the Hauppauge store).

[Gpsma]

Co-worker of mine is into couponing. She also is the tightest tight-wad on Plant Earth. She squeezes a nickel so tight that the buffalo makes a bowel movement. If there is a coupon for something, she will use it whether it is a brand or item that she normally would use. Anything in her mind to save a few cents.
She told everyone a story once...a story that would normally be embarrassing for most people...seems her and her husband went shopping, he wanted to buy ice cream, she didnt because it was too expensive. The wimp put his foot down and bought it. They get home and she finds a coupon for the ice cream and demanded he go back and redeem the coupon by first returning the item and then repurchasing it with a coupon.

The genital-less hubby did what he was told.

[majortom1981]

ON the show they use coupons on sale items but here on long island a lot of the stores will not let you use coupons on sale items. I really do not see how these couponers save soo much money. I do not see any chain stores allowing you to do half the stuff they do on the show.

[I_Love_LI_but]

I watched two episodes of the show.

The real "secret" to these people's success is that:

a) they have a newspaper distributor on their side who gives them all the coupons that didn't get delivered; thus they have a huge coupon inventory, while most people only have 1 coupon they got from the Sunday paper they bought for each item. Otherwise what are you going to do without an insider giving you thousands of coupons? Buy 100 Sunday newspapers each week for the coupons?

b) they are willing to make psychos of themselves plus waste hours of their time by making 18 separate transactions, etc., to get their couponing right.

c) they live in areas where the supermarket rules are extremely lax. For example, one woman was actually making money on a coupon that ended up netting her a free product PLUS a dollar back on a certain item. Around here, I think it is harder to get them to do that in the supermarkets because I had a friend that used to try it and the cashier would not give them MORE back than what the sale price plus coupon of the item was.

Another thought I had was just how selfish these people are and how much waste must happen. They were showing off their "storehouses" full of thousands of items that they and their family could not possibly eat before expiration date. One woman who couponed with her twin sister had thousands of boxes of diapers ... and she doesn't even have any kids. A man had thousands of boxes of toothpaste just sitting there. It made me think of the homeless and people who have no money to buy anything. There was only one extreme couponer I saw on that show that donated anything to anyone instead of just hoarding ... he would send care packages to the troops full of his couponing bonanzas, which I thought was great, but more of them should be doing that instead of hoarding stuff that can go to waste if it expires before they use it up.