Last year I won a $50 Gift Card to a local independent grocery store in a nearby town. I blogged about it HERE.
Well, since it's been almost a year since I got the Gift Card I figured it was about time I actually went to this store and commenced to spend the bucks.
This grocery store is part of a loosely affiliated group of independently owned/operated grocery stores. Seems they 'share' the same loyalty card program(you can use your card at any of this brand of store)but their gift cards are store specific(meaning I can only use the gift card at this store, not the other stores in the brand).
Well the sales ad for this 'brand' of store this week was pretty decent.
There is a Buy 7 Quaker Oats products, get an instant $3 off your transaction Deal plus there is a Spend $20, Get a $5 Catalina on Heinz products(like I didn't get enough ketchup at Weis last week!lol).
I also had 7 Qs to use with that Quaker Deal and the on sale Classico Pasta Sauce(being a Heinz product)was included in the Heinz Cat Deal, plusI had $1/2 IPQs left to pair with the deal/sale AND $1.50 off Meat WYB 2 Classico Sauces ManuQs.
Add in that the Classico sauce was part of the Heinz Cat so I'd also get a $5 Cat outta the deal too!
I was going to pay $3.50 for 7 Quaker products and $15 for 10 jars of Pasta Sauce plus get $7.50 in Meat for free and get a $5 Cat.
So I decided to venture over to this grocery store today and check it out. It's what you might call an 'urban center market'....translation=heavy car traffic, narrow parking lot, even narrower aisles with oversized shopping carts inside an older not-very-well-kept-up building.
ick.
So I walk all the way over to the end of the building where the Customer Service is tucked away, far from the entrance and get in line to ask about the coupon policy before I start throwing products in my cart. Always a smart thing to check on the policy at a store you haven't shopped at yet, ya know?
Then I spied the coupon policy prominently displayed(ok, this is the first thing they have done right in my book!)and began reading.
And let me say that this was NOT a good read.
Nope.
Lots of coupon rules....the list was long.
And they lost me at the first 2 rules--
1. Only doubling 3 of any 'like' coupon and only up to .50¢
2. NO computer generated coupons(aka internet coupons).
Well isn't that just ducky?
No Quaker Deal nor Pasta Deal for me today.
Crap.
This makes the 3rd local store that doesn't take IPQs.
I had a back-up plan in case the coupon policy was a dud....which it was.
So I got some on sale deli cheese, some fresh veggies on special and then went looking for a certain frozen veggie mix we love(also on sale) plus the corned beef briskets that were marked at $2.27lb.
I found fairly quickly that they don't carry the veggie mix we like either and there was not one single brisket in the entire dingy little store!
Ugh.
So I spent a whole $8 on my $50 gift card and it sure took some trying to spend that much!
At this rate the gift card will still have buckies on it by next March....
Sluggy
