Ok, so have I mentioned before that we get sucky couponage where I live?
I posted a very mild rant about it before, located Here.
On Sunday, I bought my usual multiple newspapers. The number of papers varies from week to week, but I seem to average about 6 papers per week. There was only 1 coupon insert this past Sunday, but there were some good high value coupons in it, so I bought 9 local papers.
I hiked up to the Mini-Mart later and bought 4 more, but at this Mini-Mart I can get Philly newspapers, so I spent the extra .50¢ they cost me.
I spent last night collating the pages, stapling and cutting out all those coupons. Since the way the coupons are arranged in the inserts is different paper to paper, I had to do two sets of collating, stapling & cutting. I ended up with 2 stacks of coupons-1 from the local paper, 1 from the Philly paper. I was just floored at how bad the coupon count in the local paper was that I did this--I took all the coupons out of the philly stack that we didn't get in the local paper also. Here is a photo of the two stacks with identical couponage. The stack on the right is LOCAL Qs, the stack on the left is PHILLY Qs.
Note that the stack on the right/LOCAL is from 9 papers, the stack on the left/PHILLY is from 4 papers. Logically, the stack on the right SHOULD BE about TWICE as high as the stack on the left, and it is.
Now let's add on all the coupons that the Philly paper users got that weren't in the Local paper, shall we? Remember....local on right, philly on left.
The Philly stack is now HIGHER than the local stack AND that stack has coupons from HALF as many papers!!!
Or let's look at it from another visual perspective.
The stack on the left above has all the unique coupons in BOTH the local & philly papers.
The stack on the right above has all the unique coupons that ONLY came in the philly papers.
For all you 'numbers' people....
There were 35 unique & individual coupons in my local newspaper on Sunday.
There were 35 unique & individual coupons in the Philly newspaper on Sunday PLUS 45 Additional unique & individual coupons.
LOCAL PAPER.....35
PHILLY PAPER....87
I spent $1.50 for 35 coupons locally.
I spent $2.00 for 87 coupons from Philly.(The paper was only .25¢ more, but the mini-market charges you a .25¢ 'fee' also.)
Now I know Philadelphia is a much larger advertising market & the most populous city in PA.
But we live outside of the 7th most populous city in PA.
The couponage disparity should NOT be like this!
About the ONLY advantage to living here/getting local coupons is that we usually get $1/1 Toothpaste Qs when most of the counrty gets .50¢ or .75¢ Toothpaste Qs.
I guess the advertisers feel that we don't take as good care of our teeth as the rest of the country and they NEED to encourage us to buy MORE TOOTHPASTE than other people.
It's kind of insulting if you look at it that way, huh?
;-)
Sluggy-wondering who I complain to, to get some Coupon Parity around these parts!
Try checking out my locale. We have one local grocery chain that has run out every national chain that tried to compete here. Other than that we have Super Target and Super Walmart. That is it. No competition at all. No double coupons. Nada. Zip.
ReplyDeleteAnd the national coupon inserts that come in the Sunday paper? Lots of those items are not even carried at our store because they push the store brand and that's it.
I try to give my business to the farmers' markets, a local online organic grocer, and Whole Foods where I can (and when I can afford to) to make a point.
It's frustrating trying to come out ahead on the savings thing!
My q's are awful too. I had in my local paper only 11 total coupons. And they are all low value coupons. I hear ya on the "unfair" coupons.
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