Be your own coupon cop

Looking to trim your grocery bill? It’s not enough to scour newspapers and peruse Web sites for coupons. You’ve got to make sure the coupons actually work—and stand your ground if they don’t.

I found that out the hard way. My local supermarket was running a promotion: buy four containers of dishwasher liquid and get a coupon for $5 off your next shopping trip. I dutifully loaded four jugs of the stuff into my cart, picked up a few more groceries, and went to pay.

But at the end of my order, there was no $5 coupon. By the time I realized it, the cashier had already gone on to the next customer. Maybe the coupon would be mailed, I thought. Maybe it would be automatically deducted the next time I shopped.

I was hot, tired, and ready to leave. But I pushed my cart to the customer service desk and wanted to know why I didn’t get what was promised.  Turns out the offer hadn’t been keyed into their system yet.  They manually printed a $5 coupon for me, but it made me wonder: How many other shoppers loaded up on those products (it’ll take me a year to use it all) but didn’t get the reward?

These snafus happen more often than you’d think. In a recent ShopSmart poll, 55 percent of women who watch the scanner at the store see errors. There’s only one solution: be your own coupon cop. Or else all that dishwashing liquid will end up costing a bundle.