Extreme Couponing Pissing Stores Off, Retailers Are Fighting Back
The extreme couponing craze has gotten shoppers across the US piqued, and if you haven’t seen the show, some of the more skilled bargain hunters have clipped and saved their way to primetime on TLC. (To be fair, you don’t really have to do all that much of note to score a primetime show on TLC, and I’m currently awaiting a call for a show about extreme bloggers, where we detail our exciting Dr. Pepper and sriracha fueled lives behind an iMac screen.)
The shows are equal parts inspiring and maddening to shoppers who watch and do wish they could bring home a cart full of deodorant and diapers for negative $1.16, yet resent what seems to be a wasteful obsession that not only sweeps product from store shelves, but also creates a bit of in-line hassle for non-extreme shoppers who just need milk and bread. Interestingly, stores are willing to encourage a bit of the latter to discourage the former, as their tolerance of extreme couponers is expiring. (Harrrrr.)
TIME examined the measures stores are taking to combat the trend, quoting one Kroger rep who cited inconvenience for regular shoppers due to extreme couponing:
“We want all customers to be able to get the products they want when they are shopping in our stores,” a Kroger spokeswoman explained to the Detroit News.
The site adds:
The Detroit News profiles one extreme couponer who admitted her quest to buy 34 containers of chocolate milk at once was “a moneymaker,” since she intended to get 11 cents back each by combining a coupon with her local Walmart’s sale price. While the store manager did allow the shopper to score her $3.74 cash back, the process was, according to her, deliberately annoying. Each container of milk had to be rung up as an individual purchase, and the cash back was doled out 11 cents at a time, along with 34 separate receipts.
The Detroit News also cites another supermarket rep who says “nothing makes a customer angrier than an empty shelf.” Do you think it’s time stores give extreme couponers the boot so as not to inconvenience the rest of us?
