When did Rite Aid turn into an Irish monastery circa 795AD?*

Dear Crazy Couponers,
KNOCK IT OFF!
Sincerely,
Me

Yesterday was Monday. As in, less than 48 hours since the new drugstore sales were posted. And yet, when I went to Rite Aid and CVS last night, shelves were already starting to be cleared! Where do you come from? How are you doing this? And why?

First stop after work on Monday was at Rite Aid.  BodiHeat wraps, free after unadvertised +Ups - gone. Lays Stax, same deal - also gone. Nivea lip balm, free after Facebook coupon - nearly gone. (In their main location with the other lip balms, in the same aisle as the cough drops, they were cleaned out. Luckily I knew there is usually a secondary batch of these in the skincare aisle with the other Nivea.)

Second stop, after rehearsal Monday night, at not one but two CVSs.  The free/moneymaker Oral-B toothbrushes - gone at both locations. I could have continued 1/4 mile up the road and tried a third store, but I was 99% sure they would be out, too.

What really grinds my gears, though, is that with the exception of the Nivea, none of these deals is even raincheckable.  The Rite Aid +Up Rewards were unadvertised, so there was nothing a cashier would have done for me. And the CVS toothbrush deal was contingent upon using a coupon that expired yesterday.

Now, CVS enforces a 2-per-person limit, so I will be charitable and lay that one at the feet of stores not ordering enough stock to keep up with anticipated demand. But I am blaming vultures for the Rite Aid troubles. On one blog I saw a commenter bragging - bragging! - that she had bought 12 of the BodiHeat and 16 Lays Stax on Sunday! I guarantee you that the only reason she didn't get more is that there were no more to be had. Congratulations on gorging yourself at the expense of the rest of us, who might have liked the chance to get maybe 1 or 2 of these.

I'm sorry, but those are the Crazy people who ruin it for the rest of us. Not only do they wreck it in the short term when they pillage the shelves like hungry Vikings, but in the long run, stores have to impose restrictive limits or cut back on the best deals. Again, I'm specifically talking about snapping up limited-time deals and buying ridiculous amounts of products you don't really need, not stocking up on staples and necessities. No one is going to blame you for loading up your cart with diapers or toilet paper, but 16 packages of potato chips? Really?

Unfortunately, the only response I can think of is a campaign of public shaming. Anyone who has the gall to brag about their Crazy, shelf-clearing ways in front of me is going to get an earful (eyeful? what do you call it when you rip someone a new one online?). Play nice, kids, and learn to share.

* This is the kind of obscure historical reference I enjoy, perhaps too much. I'm a medieval history major, which makes me a complete dork, even among history majors.

Possible coupons.com virus - watch out!

If you've tried to print any coupons off of the coupons.com website lately, you might have run into a bizarre page redirect virus. Here was the response posted on their Facebook page:

There are some posts about a virus being passed around the Web. This issue is unrelated to Coupons.com. There is a Fake AVG Anti-Virus virus that is redirecting users' browsers when they visit certain websites. Users who are seeing this redirect should search the Web for “Fake AVG Removal” for removal information. We can assure you that Coupons.com is not distributing viruses of any kind.

Which set off my bullshit meter as the kind of classic non-apology apology that corporate behemoths issue whenever they have seriously messed up and don't want to take responsibility. They went on to add in the comments:

This issue is affecting less than 1% of our users; However, there is a lot of buzz surrounding it on the coupon blogosphere so we felt compelled to clear the air on any rumors out there.

While our site remains safe for people who are uninfected by the virus, we are looking into how and why this browser redirect trojan is targeting our site on those computers that are infected by it.

The "1%" comment set off the kind of guffaws that greeted Ahmadinejad's assertion that there were no gay people in Iran. It's pretty clear that a lot more people than that have been affected. Also, several people who seem far more knowledgeable about this stuff than me chimed in to state that the problem was with a malicious ad on the coupons.com site itself, and that it wasn't merely a matter of users who already were infected with a virus running into problems on the site, but with the site actually infecting people with the virus.

What to do? The easiest solution, which has been supported by several users, when you get a suspicious popup or page redirect is to use ctrl-alt-del to bring up Task Manager, then close out your browser. Clicking anywhere on the window - including the "Close" button - could possibly install malicious software.

While coupons.com gets their act together, I'm at a bit of a loss for what to do in the meantime. I will attempt to check if any of the mirror sites that host the same coupons are also affected and, if not, I will point my links there instead.

Crazy Coupon Non-Acceptance Tactics

I had a couple of incidents today with cashiers that I thought I'd share, partly to get them off my chest and partly as a public service announcement.

My first stop was at Walgreens. I was planning on buying 4 items (TP, Arnicare, Blink eyedrops, and Icy Hot). I had 4 mfr coupons, 1 store coupon, and 3 Register Rewards I wanted to use. Because of Walgreens' policy that the number of coupons used cannot exceed the number of items, I bought 4 "filler" items - Valentine's pencils that were on sale for $0.12. Eight items, eight coupons - good to go.

Or not. For some reason, the Arnicare $2 printable coupon wouldn't scan. (I admit that I have had this problem with pdf coupons - I think my printer automatically fits to page and I always forget to tell it to print actual size, so the bar code gets a little screwed up.) Grumble, grumble - but it shouldn't be a big deal. Usually the cashier will just verify that there is nothing wrong with the coupon and that I did indeed buy the product, and then enter it in manually. Occasionally, they will have to call over a manager to override the register.

Not this woman. Instead, the transaction went like this.
Scan. Beep. Scan. Beep.
Cashier: Hands coupon back to me. "I can't take this one."
Me: "Why?"
Cashier: "You have too many coupons."
Me: "No, I have 8 items and 8 coupons. Besides, you tried to scan this one second. You scanned 6 more after it and they went in fine."
Cashier: Glares. Counts my items. Counts my coupons. Studies all 7 suspiciously. "You must have gotten the wrong size."
Me: "No, I didn't." Shows her that I did, indeed, buy the right size.
Cashier: "The coupon can't be for more than the item is worth."
Me: "It cost $5.99. The coupon is for $2."
Cashier: Sighs. Scan. Beep. Scan. Beep. Looks at me expectantly, holding the coupon out as though waiting for me to break down, apologize, and take it back. 
Me: Returns her stare. I have stared down a room full of freshman learning Shakespeare against their will today. This woman does not intimidate me.

Eventually she relented and put it through. Here's what bugged me about this transaction: If the cashier had just admitted, "I'm sorry, I don't know why this won't go through," I would have just told her to set the Arnicare aside, ring me out for the rest of the items, and ask her to call a manager so I could do the Arnicare separately. Instead, she tried to lie to me to get out of accepting a valid coupon. If I hadn't been familiar with Walgreens' coupon policy, I probably would have gotten flustered and taken the coupon back. Whether she honestly didn't know and was just guessing to save face, or she was deliberately lying to get me to leave, she was the kind of cashier you have to watch out for.

Next stop, Rite Aid. I needed more ice cream (!) and I wanted to see if they had any more of the BOGO Stayfree. Yay, they did! And I still had one more BOGO coupon.

But when I got to the register, the cashier (who is actually very nice and has been very helpful to me in the past) got all aflutter when I handed her the coupon. Next thing I know she's taken it into the manager's office! When she came back, she said that there had been a "conference call" a few days ago and that they were no longer supposed to honor BOGO coupons in conjunction with a BOGO sale. They were only supposed to give you 1/2 the value of the item, since "you're really not buying any" and "the store was losing so much money."

This is where my bullshit meter started going off. First off, I double checked when I got home, and there has been NO change to Rite Aid's coupon policy. So this was clearly a decision by a manager at the store or district level. And it was a decision based on a totally faulty premise. The whole "store losing money on coupons" argument is baloney. Your store, like every other store, is compensated by the manufacturer for the full value of the coupon. It doesn't matter if I pay $3.99 in cash, or if I give you a coupon and you later get the $3.99 from the manufacturer (actually $4.07 - they get an $0.08 handling fee, too), the store still gets their money. Trying to make me feel guilty, like I am somehow ripping you off, is just another way of trying to get out of accepting a valid coupon.

In this instance, she did end up letting me use the coupon, although of course she tried to make it seem like she was doing me a huge favor. We'll see what happens next time, and I will keep an eye on Rite Aid's coupon policy in the meantime.

Whew! OK, I feel better. Like I said, part of my frustration is just in the wasted time, part comes from the feeling of being manipulated, and part of it comes on behalf of everyone who's following the rules, just trying to save some money, and getting lied to in the process.

Anyone have any cashier horror stories to share?