Coupon Etiquette

The Intentional Mom Planning System is where you need to start with our incredible collection of product options. It will help you establish the basics for your life & home so you’ll finally have a plan, save yourself time, and go to bed feeling like you accomplished something every day (because you did). Save up to 60% HERE!

In my life, using coupons is a necessity, and it has been a learned skill.  Combining coupons with sales to get items I need inexpensively or even for free has been a life saver on our tight budget.

I have learned some amazing tricks along the way, many of which keep the shopping trips a positive experience for me, the clerks and managers, and the fellow shoppers.

Prior to getting deeply involved in using coupons, I never would have thought to shop at drugstores for grocery items, but I have learned that these stores are not only great for toiletries, but they are in fact a great place to find groceries, paper products, and even school supplies and gifts at times.

What follows are skills that you will appreciate, and so will those around you.  Rest assured that learning to use coupons takes time, but if you are patient there are great deals to be had.  There are several people who post great deals for the upcoming week as the weekend nears, use these websites to get a plan in place and to find the best deals that are out there. Moneysavingmom,  Wildforwags, and Hip2Save are among my favorite sites for that.  Check out their sites for the deals, but following these tips will be a huge asset to the great deals you will be getting.

 

• Do print the deals directly from the site so you can reference exactly how the deal will work while in the store
• Do plan on going early on Sunday morning to ensure the shelves aren’t cleared by others before you
• Do have all your coupons separated by store and bundled together to avoid shuffling through them at the checkout
• Do shop by yourself.  Kids are great, but kids are very distracting when you need your head in the game
• Do grab a store ad on your way in the door for reference
• Do be friendly to everyone who works there, make small talk, get to know them – they are often great people.  I look so forward to my weekly visits to the drugstores to see my friends
• Do keep items in your cart organized and grouped together for ease at checkout
• Do cross reference your list with the ad you grabbed on your way in
• Do ask for help finding something if needed, but be sure to be polite
• Do politely ask for permission to do more than one transaction if applicable
• Do no more than two transactions if the clerk is someone you do not know
• Do no more than four transactions if the clerk is someone you do know
• Do place only one transaction on the counter at a time, but,
• Do make clear that you will be using the remaining items in your cart in the next transaction to avoid confusion
• Do place like items together on the counter
• Do give the clerk manufacturers coupons before any store coupons
• Do read your coupons ahead of time to avoid committing coupon fraud, or to avoid doing something that would prohibit the transaction from happening the way you think it will as best you can
• Do pay attention to coupons that allow only two or four like coupons to be used in the same transaction
• Do kindly question something that didn’t seem to go right, asking a question about it rather than stating the way you assume it was to go
• Do apologize for something that didn’t go right or if you messed something up that needs to be fixed
• Do apologize more than once for making a mistake
• Do step aside in between transactions if customers get in line behind you
• Do step completely out of the way to sort things out if you discover an error after your transaction has already been completed

 

• Don’t clear the shelves, don’t even come close
• Don’t question the authority of an employee you don’t know, politely ask for clarification and accept the answer.  Come back to ask someone different about it in this case
• Don’t come up to the register until you are ready and have everything straight
• Don’t hold up the line, let someone with fewer items go ahead of you if applicable and you have a cart full
• Don’t clear the shelves, did I mention that? 😉
• Don’t leave your cart outside after unloading
• Don’t forget to thank them for any help, or just to thank them in general

These are all things that I have learned and that have served me well through the years.  There is a lot to keep straight, especially when you shop at more than one drug store, but starting small and going slowly will help.  If you find it helpful, make a second or third trip just to bite off smaller chunks at a time.

Drugstores can be a great resource for so many things, but do everything you can to make your shopping trips pleasant for all who are involved.

Looking for more on coupons? You might like Coupon Storage, Stress-Free Gift Shopping, or How You Can Score Big at the Drugstores.