Extreme Couponers Could See Problems At Store

The TLC show Extreme Couponing has taken the nation by storm.  People from all walks of life have begun the habit, but retailers are starting to catch on and that could spell disaster.

What people do on the show Extreme Couponing is nothing short of amazing. I mean walking into a grocery store and buying over $1000 in food and other things and walking out only having spent only pennies has my jaw to the floor evey single time.

My fiance and I even started to clip coupons and check out the weekly ads to save some cash.  We found that you can't really replicate the success of the people on the show because most stores around the Albany area don't double coupons.  I mean, it's not like we were spending 30-40 hours a week cutting coupons like the people on the show, but it saved us at least $20.  I even saw that Price Chopper is going to start doubling coupons, but not above .99cents.  That really puts the breaks on a lot of those save a dollar ones.  You win this time Price Chopper.

Retailers across the country are losing out as these people save though.  So some big stores have put new coupon regulations in place.  I first saw this in Yahoo Finance this morning.   I also started to notice that in the Sunday paper there weren't coupons sometimes.  Could that be because the places you buy the paper are the ones who lose out when you use coupons?  Possibly.  Now with new regulations at some pretty big name stores, it will be harder to get "extreme" with your savings.

At places like Rite Aid you can't do something that would save you tons of money anymore, combining buy one get one free offers with other money saving offers on the same product.  If you watch the show this is what ends up saving these people big bucks.  No more at Rite Aid though.  Targert is also fighting back.  You can't combine a manufacturer coupon with in store buy one get one free offers.  This is a tactic called "stacking".  Well it won't work anymore.

I guess it won't be long before extreme couponing becomes even more difficult.  It was a nice loop hole for a while but with all the national exposure, I'm not surprised it is slowly coming to an end.