Did you know, there are numerous voucher coupons available out there that you can either request be sent to you by post, or print off on your own printer at home? There are! Companies want you (the consumer) to try their products, so they put out all these coupons so that you will be able to try the product at a lower cost to normal, and probably lower than the brand you normally buy. Their hope is that when you’ve tried their product you’ll like it so much that you’ll keep on buying it.
The thing is, even if you don’t want to try the product that’s being advertised on the coupon, it’s often worth sending for it, or printing it off as many of the supermarkets will accept coupons even if you are not buying the product!
I know, it sounds mad, and it appears to kind of go against what the company is trying to do in wanting you to buy their product, but the way it works is this. If a supermarket (Asda, Tesco, Sainsburys etc) accepts the coupon from you for say 50p off a chocolate bar worth £1. As long as they sell more of that brand of chocolate bar than they take coupons for it, they can send the coupon to the company that manufactures the chocolate bar, and in return they will receive not just the 50p for the value of the coupon, but also a penny or a few pennies as a handling fee. This might not sound like much, but when you consider that the chocolate bar might only be making them 5p anyway, getting an extra 1 or 2p for it x however many coupons they’re sending in does make it worth it for them.
How does this benefit you? – Well quite simply it means that if you are lucky enough to have a supermarket near you that is willing to accept coupons even if you haven’t bought the product, it means you can get the value of those coupons off your shopping. So instead of a bar of chocolate that you don’t want, you get 50p off your shopping.
Some supermarkets won’t do this, they’ll only accept the coupon if you buy the product. Others will accept 1 or 2 coupons per shop regardless of whether you’ve bought the items or not, and some will have other rules like maybe they’ll say they’ll accept coupons but only to the value of up to 10% of your shopping, or only up to a maximum of £3. These rules vary, and they can vary from branch to branch, not just from supermarket chain to supermarket chain.
How do you know which supermarkets have which rules? Well that’s a tricky one, and generally it involves being a little bit cheeky and also being willing to ask. Try taking a few coupons with you and when you get to the checkout, asking ‘can you take any of these?’ and just hand them over. The person on the checkout will either look through them and hand them back, or scan them depending on their rules. Can I also add here that even IF you’ve successfully used coupons many times in that store before, if a cashier hands them back to you and says they can’t accept them, then it’s generally not worth arguing! In my experience doing so can actually make them clamp down more than just accepting that on this occasion you’re not going to get lucky, and then trying again the next week. For this reason, it’s always worth making sure you take the coupons with you that are going to expire soonest so that you’re less likely to waste any if you have to wait a week or two before anywhere accepts them again. Also, don’t try to get greedy. Take a few coupons, maybe 1-5, don’t try to hand over 20 every week or again, you may find them clamping down harder because of this.
