The Couponing Year in Review....My List of Deal FLOPS in 2009

Now that we are safely into 2010....
Here is my Rant about what I consider to be the DEAL FLOPS of 2009.  I kept it to 12 items.  Wish I had less to report in on.lolol

COUPONING DEAL FLOPS & FAILURES FOR ME IN 2009.

1.Natural Dentist Rebate

THIS is the ONLY Rebate I sent away for in 2009 that DID NOT HONOR THEIR OFFER.
A great big Phhhht!! to you Natural Dentist. Your products are WAY overpriced and work like crap! This is one consumer who is NEVER BUYING another of your products. I hope your company goes belly up and fast!

Me disgruntled?
Nahhhhh....

2. KFC GRILLED CHICKEN GIVEAWAY

Offering a Free Meal to anyone in America on 1 certain Day to advertise your new healthier chicken option. How did you think this would NOT turn into a Major Cluster Copulation?lol

What a big fiasco that probably ended up costing KFC millions more than they had envisioned and caused hard feelings with the public. They did do a good job of damage control though by offering subsequent FREE MEALS with a FREE DRINK a few months later.


3. LEE JEANS GIVEAWAY

In December Lee Jeans held a Giveaway via Facebook for a FREE Pair of Jeans. They gave away in the neighborhood of 150 pairs a day for most of the month.  I'm not sure what the deal was, but the Way to Enter the Giveaway changed after the Giveaway began, so Lee made a rules change on the Giveaway. This led to an unfair advantage for some entrants, so Lee declared that if you entered the contest before a certain date and time, you are an automatic winner.

This has been very confusing for the entrants and has led to a lot of hard feelings among the public.
This will cost Lee Jeans massive amounts of product and has done damage to their business's image.
And in case you are wondering, I entered but missed the cut-off under the Original Entry Rules by 45 minutes to get a free pair automatically.lol

4. BEE Md REBATE

A new cough drop product, Bee MD, offered a $1 Mail-In Rebate this year. After you paid for the postage, the ink to print the rebate form and the cost of an envelope, your gain was about 50¢. A full price rebate would have been worth sending away for, not 50¢. Thanks for nothing Bee MD! Luckily Rite-Aid offered this item as a FAR(=Free After Rebate) plus you didn't have any mailing costs associated with the rebate if you sent for it online.


5. KMart Kellogg's $5 CEREAL GIFT CARD REBATE

Back in March or April, Kmart offered a Kellogg's Cereal Catalina Deal. You had to buy 10 boxes of Cereal and submit in a rather short time frame receipts, form and 10 UPCs to qualify for a Whopping $5 Gift Card. $5....not even cash but a KMart Gift Card. Lots of product to buy and mailing costs for $5GC. Not such a great deal, but if your KMart held Double Coupon Events, you could have gotten the 10 boxes of cereal for cheaper during the DCE and saved the $5 GC to use during a subsequent DCE, it was an ok offer.


6. ConAgra "GREAT TASTE BIG SAVINGS OFFER"

Don't quite remember what I had to buy for this....5 certain items?.....but I sent away and there were no FREE Item Coupons or any Cash Rebate involved. All you got was 5 coupons for items I don't buy/use much if at all and the amounts were crappy too. Of the big corps. out there, ConAgra has not impressed me with any of their offers-EVER! Kraft, Kelloggs, Unilever offer some good ones....ConAgra, notsomuch.

ConAgra....feh!


7. The lack of FREE TURKEY DEALS at area Grocery Stores

Use to be, it was a given that once Thanksgiving time rolled around(and sometimes at Christmas too), your local grocery stores, both big and small, would offer some kind of FREE TURKEY DEAL. Either you had to spend a certain amount during a certain time period at their stores or you had to buy certain items and be a frequent/loyalty card shopper to qualify. In the last 2 years, 2 years that have seen consumers earnings fall and food prices rise significantly, these Holiday Free Turkey deals have all but vanished. Locally the best you can do is a reduced price for Turkey with a qualifying purchase at Price Chopper. The only Grocery Chain I found offering FREE TURKEY when you spent $Xs was Acme and that is NOT a local chain here. Luckily, it was also running at the same time as a Spend $30/Get $15 Catalina Deal at Acme, and since I went to Acme for that Cat Deal, I got a free turkey as well.

The WORST Thanksgiving Scheme locally was at WEIS. During the pre-Thanksgiving time period you could qualify for a % off 1 Shopping Trip. The more you spent during the qualifying time period, the larger your % off that Shopping Trip. The Shopping Trip & % off Discount had to be taken within a short time at the end of the qualifying period too. So you had to spend something like $300 on groceries and then the week after you qualified by buying $300 worth of food, you got a 5% discount on your next trip. Now, maybe it's just me, but if I have bought $300 of groceries, I really don't need A LARGE AMOUNT of food in my next shopping trip, so coincidentally, my actual savings on the 5% discount trip won't amount to very much saved. Buy $300 in food......make your discount % trip and spend $100.....get $5 whole dollars off. In the end you've spent $400 and you've saved $5....which is a Savings of only 1.25%!!! When they gave FREE TURKEYS out instead, figuring $.99 a lb. on a modest sized 18lb. turkey, you were saving $17.82 for those qualifying purchases.
Thanks for NOTHING WEIS!

Which leads us to #8 on the list....

8. The Local WEIS Grocery Store

Not only does the WEIS chain hold crappy Thanksgiving Promotions and half-hearted Catalina Deals or better yet, Catalina Deals for items when their are NO AVAILABLE COUPONS for these items, but my local WEIS store is even more stingy with savings.

In this enlightened computerized digital age, my local Weis store has an owner/manager who REFUSES to ACCEPT INTERNET PRINTED COUPONS! My guess is that since the local teeny tiny independent Grocery Store in our town also does NOT accept IP Qs that they feel they don't need to honor these valid forms of couponage either. But the head scratcher here is that 1--every other Weis store in the chain DOES accept IP Qs and 2--the WEIS Website offers printable Coupons that I can't print and use at my local WEIS location! Yes, their own website says, "Here! Have these coupons and use them at Weis." and the store management says, "NO! You can NOT use those coupons here!"

Why does WEIS Allow this store to remain part of their Chain?
Whatever.....WEIS has lost a lot of my business over this year that other Grocery Stores are more than happy to accept.

9. Local WALGREEN'S

First they did away with the Easy Saver Rebate Program mid year and as of now have NOT replaced it with anything.

My other problem with Walgreens has been 2 fold....1-having LARGE AMOUNTS of employees who do NOT know the Coupon Policy or how the REGISTER REWARDS really work. The people who run the store, the MANAGERS here on the whole, have NO CLUE how it works. The worst thing is they misinform the staff and the employees give out wrong information constantly. I have been in line and heard some of it first hand. Oh brother!lol I can guess that the arguments and embarrassment these employees cause some non-confident customers works against Walgreens profits. Some customers choose not to go back and find somewhere else to shop. I have found overall, the employees that are most likely to actually know how to take coupons properly and know how the Cats work are the full time Cashiers! They are also the only employees that are TRAINED in how to run the registers, the Managers are mostly clueless on how to operate a cash register correctly!lol

And 2-never having the Register Reward Items on the shelves. The RR item Deals run hot and cold for me....some weeks what's a deal is great and some weeks I couldn't care less about getting a deal. It really doesn't matter though since no matter what RR Deal item I want, it is always sold out. Locally, it's probably a case of too many customers wanting their deals and not enough stores to stock it. We only have 2 Wags within an hour's drive here. This area is not lousy with Walgreen's yet. I am hoping that if they have a few more stores locally, it will be easier to get in on some of their deals. Let's just hope they train their employees on how the RRs really work.


10. Local TARGET...or lack thereof

Target makes the list for basically the same reasons as Walgreens. 1--employees who are clueless on the coupon policy or even worse, employees who don't care about the coupon policy and enjoy giving people who use coupons a hard time! Now that Target has officially come out with an "In Writing" Coupon Policy it's a little easier for couponers and we don't have to stand there and let some coupon-hating cashier look down their nose at us! We can just whip out our copy of the Q Policy, look them in the eye and INSIST on our coupon discounts at the register.

2--Again, there is ONE Target here for 50 miles so unless you are there waiting in line for the doors to open on the morning a sale starts, you are SOOL on finding that deal on the shelves. I won't be held hostage like that so I generally avoid Target unless I happen to be over there. I NEVER expect to get any deal at Target so I am never dissappointed anymore when it happens.


11. TERRIBLE Coupons in Local Newspapers

Living in an area where the Marketing gods give us bad coupons or don't give us coupons at all for certain products is not something in my control. It sucks and it's something you have to find a way to work around. It causes me at times to have to spend more to buy Sunday papers from other regions or to have to spend money ordering from a clipping service or off of eBay.


12. ME+No Restraint on Which Deals I Did=Overspending & Waste

Buying things just because they are FREE or buying things for FREE or cheap to get something else for FREE has got to be my Shopping Achilles Heel. At least now I recognize this is a problem for me, so I can be aware of making better choices.
In 2010 I hope to be more aware of whether my shopping choices are wise or not.

So what do you consider the Deal Flops of 2009?
What did you buy that your regret you spent the money on now?
Leave a comment and let us know what the losers were for you.

Sluggy