Monday, March 28, 2011

Kroger to end double/triple coupons

OK, I'll admit that I haven't been updating in a while, but I haven't had much to update.  I'm still couponing and saving about $20 a week on my grocery bill.  I've paired down the blogs I normally read because it was just getting too overwhelming (If I missed 1 day, I'd have over 1,000 posts to sift through).  I follow a few that are super in-depth and ones that are store specific and local.  I just don't have the time to keep up with EVERYTHING and all, yknow.

All in all, I felt this to be something important to make further known.  Kroger has announced that in Houston and the surrounding areas, they will be ending their coupon policy of doubling and tripling!  How insane is that!  I have to admit that there are 2 reasons I frequent Kroger - the doubling and tripling of coupons and using the fuel rewards.  Kroger is further away from me than my Wal-Mart and now Wal-Mart has adapted their policy to allow for overage on any coupons!  Let's see... Kroger stopped allowing overage (thus pocketing the money from the manufacturers) and now they're stopping tripling and doubling coupons.  Where am I more likely to shop?  My answer?  The more coupon friendly location!  

I'm not going to go into all the details because quite frankly I'm not versed enough in them, but Stephanie from Katy Couponers has a post with all the details she's found out so far here.  You can also join the FaceBook group Kroger Couponers to follow what's going on.  And if you'll like to change your shopping habits to Wal-Mart, might I suggest the blog I Heart the Mart.  They've posted their take on Wal-Mart's new policies as well as early tests to see how well it works.

My opinion is that Kroger is shooting themselves in the foot with this new policy.  What do you think?

2 comments:

  1. They "think" they are going to save that $2-25 an order ... WRONG ... it's going to COST THEM the several hundred dollar gross sales before Qs on that order + prescriptions, fuel sales, etc.
    But, since kroger apparently has such brilliant marketing people crunching these numbers, I'm sure they've considered that [sarcasm FULLY intended].

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  2. The thing I can't get over is all these stores seem to forget that they're getting an additional amount for these coupons, normally $.08 each. I know it's not a lot, but if you figure in that at the grocery checkout I'm using about 20 coupons (low balling) and it takes me 10 minutes to check out, that's an additional $.96 an hour average *they're* earning just to take the coupons. Also, if you figure whoever processes them to be sent to the clearing houses processes 1,000 an hour (this is a guess, a lot of coupons are going to the same place, so being a data processor myself, this would be super low) that's an additional $80 an hour! I highly doubt that they're spending $80 an hour in the cost of the additional 2 minutes to scan my coupons at checkout, having someone gather the coupons, and having someone process the coupons. Multiply this by the thousands of Kroger stores doing this daily and you've got hundreds of thousands of dollars earned just by coupons! So, are you going to tell me, the consumer, that we're eating into Kroger's profits by giving us the bonus of doubling and tripling the coupons? They should be more upset at consumers that don't use coupons! They're the ones costing the corporation potential earned income.

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