Printable Coupon Spot Blog « Printable Coupon Spot

Freebie Friday: 03/05/2010

A new feature to Printable Coupon Spot! Every Friday we will post some great freebies for you because we love freebies and think you will too!

FREE can of Parents Choice infant formula (Walmart brand)

FREE sample of Nescafe Tasters Choice coffee (Become a fan on Facebook)

FREE breakfast Panini from Cornerstone Bakery (Become a fan on Facebook)

FREE Burt’s Bees Toothpaste Sample Pack (love it!)

FREE Purex 3-in-1 Laundry Sheets (I have tried these, they are good for traveling/camping)

FREE 10.5 oz. bag of Sunchips (Become a fan on Facebook)

FREE entree from Perkins (Join eClub, confirm registration, receive printable by e-mail!)

Heidi March 5, 2010 Printable Coupon Spot Blog Facebook, Freebies

Knowing your store’s coupon policy

One of the keys to successful coupon shopping is understanding how your local stores handle coupons and what their policies are around coupons. Many stores have an official coupon policy posted somewhere on their website while there are still a few retailers that are in the Dark Age and have not adopted an official coupon acceptance policy.

I always find it amusing that stores want you to follow the rules when it comes to using coupons, but some of them do not publish their coupon policy so that the consumer can follow it. It is very much like playing a new board game that did not come with instructions.

We here at Printable Coupon Spot have put together a fabulous resource of a list of grocery, drug and national retailer coupon policies. You can find this valuable coupon resource at the following location: Store Coupon Policies

However if your store is not listed there you can do your own homework to find out what your store coupon policies are.

Here is my recommended homework assignment:

Get some paper and a pen
On each sheet of paper write the name of all the stores in your area. Do not limit yourself to the stores you always shop at. List all the grocery stores, drug stores, hardware stores, office stores and big box “mart” stores.
Contact the store corporate offices via email or phone OR go into each store and try to get a moment with the store manager and ask the following questions: (write this info down so you do not forget when you are shopping)
- Do you accept manufactures coupons?
- Do you have store coupons? If so can I combine store coupons with manufactures coupons?
- Do you accept printable coupons? If so what are your policies on accepting printable coupons?
- Do you accept competitor stores coupons? If so what are your policies on accepting competitor store coupons and what stores do you consider competitors?
- Do you double or triple coupons? If so what are your policies on doubling and/or tripling coupons?
- Do you price match competitor store sale ads? If so what are your policies on price matching?
- If an item that is on sale is out of stock, can I get a rain check?
- Do I need a store savings card to partake in special promotions and savings?
- Do you accept expired coupons? If so what are your policies on accepting expired coupons?
- Write down the name of the person that you spoke to or contacted.
Once you have your homework done and have a basic understanding of your stores coupon acceptance policy you are ready to go shopping with your coupons.

Remember to do your very best to follow each stores policy when you shop. These are the rules and parameters that the stores have set forth and it is our job as couponers to follow the stores rules and guidelines.

Most stores allow the store manager to use his or her discretion on coupon policies and to limit what types of coupons they will accept or to limit quantities. I have found that if you are courteous to the store cashiers and managers and ask them questions with the attitude that you want to make sure you are using your coupons correctly and within the company policies that the store staff will, in turn, be nicer to you with your coupons.

Heidi February 25, 2010 Printable Coupon Spot Blog

Suggestion Box

Do you have a suggestion about ways that we can better serve you, our reader, in helping you save money or improve upon our site in any way?

Would you like to see a new feature added?

Some ideas to get you started…

Freebies?
Printable round up by type (baby, pet, organic, etc)?
Online deals?
Blog reviews?
Product reviews?
Contests and giveaways?

Is there a better way that we can help you find the printable coupons that you are looking for? We are open to your ideas and suggestions.

Leave us a comment below and let us know what you think!

Heidi February 25, 2010 Printable Coupon Spot Blog

HP Printer Contest Winner Announced

First I want to thank everyone who entered our first blog giveaway contest. We had 38 entries which is a great turn out for our first contest I think.

Second I want to appologize for not announcing the winner on Friday as I was supposed to. I had something unexpected come up (a weekend visit by my mother-in-law) and as anyone who has a mother-in-law knows an unexpected visit it never a good thing. I love her to peices but that means you have to clean house <shove everything in a closet and spray Pine-Sol in the air>, make something fabulous for dinner <order take out and hide the take out boxes>, and remind the kids how to behave when company comes over <threaten and bribe them>. LOL

Anyways without further ado…. the winner to our HP printer contest is <drum roll please>

CR (Also known as Castingbread over at HCW)

I will be contacting the winner via email to confirm her mailing address to get her new HP all-in-one printer shipped out to her.

Thanks again everyone for playing and check back for other contests and giveaways in the future. And of course make sure you stay on top of all the great new printable coupons that are posted every day here at Printable Coupon Spot!

Heidi February 22, 2010 Printable Coupon Spot Blog

Blog Giveaway! Enter for a chance to win a HP DeskJet F4480 Inkjet All-in-One Printer!

Hey Printable Coupon Spot readers we are offering our first blog giveaway and are offering a great prize perfect for you you folks that are busy printing coupons! Enter to win a HP

DeskJet F4480 Inkjet All-in-One Printer (CB745A#B1H) *Read all the specs about it here on Amazon.com*

How to play:

FIRST!

To begin we need to collect all entries into the contest, so we are going to need your contact and mailing information, so that we know how to get in contact with you if you should be chosen as a winner. So first things first, please fill out the following official entry form.

- – - – - – - – - -

Name*
FirstLast
Email*
Please provide a valid working email address
Address*
Street AddressAddress Line 2CityState / Province / RegionZip / Postal CodeCountry
Please provide us with your mailing address

- – - – - – - – - -

Second!

For each action you take below you are given an additional chance to win, with 5 chances to win in total…

1. Blog about this contest on your blog, then post a comment to this post and give us a link to your blog post. (Feel free to use the image at right in your blog post)

2. Subscribe to our email digest via Feedburner, then post an additional comment to this post and let us know you subscribed – Link to subscribe

3. Follow Printable Coupon Spot on Twitter and tweet about this contest, then post an additional comment with your Twitter id. – Link to us on Twitter

4. Become a fan of Printable Coupon Spot on Facebook and leave an additional comment to this post and let us know you are a fan – Link to us on Facebook

5. Follow Printable Coupon Spot on Networked Blogs and leave an additional comment to this post and tell us that you are following us – Link to us on Networked Blogs

Details:

Contest ends Friday, February 19th, 2010 at noon MST.

Contest is open to US residents.

Winner will be chosen by random number generator based on the number of blog comments (for example the first comment to this post would be number 1, second comment would be number 2, etc.

Winner will be contacted via email and must respond to the email within 48 hours of winning to claim their prize. If a winner cannot be contacted a second winner will be chosen. Winners will be announced once a winner has been picked.

Have Fun!

Heidi February 12, 2010 Printable Coupon Spot Blog

Signing Up For Coupons, Ten Steps To Make the Process Smoother and Prevent Coupon Scams

A common question I get asked is “If a coupon listed here at Printable Coupon Spot says that a sign up is required, if the sign up is real or if it is some sort of scam?”

Well first let me assure you that each and every website we link to here for printable coupons is 100% legitimate and not a scam. We hate scams, spam and junk as much as you do! However some companies choose to offer a printable coupon when you join their website or mailing list because printable coupons are a marketing tool and these companies figure that if you are interested in printing a coupon for their product, then you are apt to want to join their mailing list in which they can send you recipes, tips, news about new products, sweepstakes they are holding and usually, more money saving printable coupons in the future.

That is not to say that your email inbox will not be flooded with emails from these companies. Here are 10 steps you can take to make the signing up process as painless as possible.

Set up a new free email account such as one offered from Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail. I personally prefer Gmail because I find it easy to forward emails and set up filters.
Once you have set up your new email address, you can either decide if you are going to check that email address for new printable coupons, never going to check it, or if you want to set up forwarding. I personally prefer to have those emails forwarded to my normal email address.
If you have decided to forward emails from your new email address you should set that up and then also set up a filter, so that all new emails that get forwarded from your new email address are placed in a folder or file so that they don’t clutter up your in-box but you can read them at your leisure or when you are looking for new printable coupons.
Use an auto fill program to so that you can, with one click auto fill the sign up submission forms. Google has one, and there are others out there as well. I personally use Robo-Form Pro as it allows me to store my pass cards for every site that I have signed up for.
Decide if you want to give these companies your real information or fake info. I usually am OK with giving companies my email address, real name, city and zip code. I know that they use this information for demographic studies and marketing. However I am a little leery of giving many of them my phone number and my physical address. Unless they indicate that they will also send me coupons via the mail, I either leave this field blank or use a made up address. And I rarely, if ever give out my phone number because, frankly, there is just no reason whatsoever for these companies to need to call me.
Before signing up for anything, read a company’s privacy policy to see what they intend to do with your information. You can usually find a company’s privacy policy in the header (top) or footer (bottom) of their website. Every legitimate website has a privacy policy (even we do!) and if you cannot find privacy policy for a website, don’t sign up and give them your information. Period.
Don’t fall for offers that seem too good to be true. There are not any legitimate printable coupon websites that offer you gift cards, free items, or vacations for signing up for a printable coupon.
Don’t jump through hoops to get a printable coupon. If after you sign up or before you sign up a printable coupon website makes you click “yes”, “no” or “skip” for page upon page of offers that you might be interested in. Click the little red X in your browsers window. These are called “co-branded” websites and their interest is not to offer you a printable coupon, but to get you to sign up for as many mailing lists and offers as possible. Usually when you get the end of all the available offers you won’t even get the printable coupon that you were promised from the beginning. It was just a scam to collect your personal information and email address!
Go ahead and feel free to opt-out. If you start getting newsletters from the companies that you signed up for and you don’t want to continue to receive these newsletters anymore, there should be a link at the bottom of the email that will allow you to opt-out of receiving their newsletters. The process can take a few days to take effect but you should stop receiving more newsletters from them usually within a week.
If there is a product or brand that you frequently purchase check their website often for new offers, sometimes the company that you signed up for does not always send out a email letting you know about new offers. Most of them do, but some don’t. Additionally you can set up further filters in your email to highlight the brands that you use often. In Gmail I use their star system to let me know that my favorite brands have sent me an email so I can check it for new coupons.

These ten steps should prevent you from falling for a coupon scam, a full email inbox and unwanted spam or telemarketing calls. Signing up for printable coupons can be a great way to stay in the know about new coupons for your favorite brands, and most companies want to offer you those coupons so that you will continue to purchase their products.

Do you know of any other tips for making the sign up process less painful? Got a question about how to do any of the above steps? Or just want to ask if a site is real or not? We would love to hear from you. Reply to this post below and let us know what you think!

Heidi November 23, 2009 Printable Coupon Spot Blog coupon tips

Rainchecks! A shoppers best friend!

Lets face it, sometimes an item that we really want is on sale at the wrong time. Perhaps funds are low that week or you don’t have a coupon for that item. Or you would like to stock up but the store is out of stock. Enter the raincheck, a shoppers best friend.

What is a rain-check?

When an item is advertised on sale, and the store is out of stock you can ask the store for a raincheck which is a slip of paper that a store employee fills out with the required information and for which you can return at a later date to obtain the product that was out of stock at a later date.

When can you or can your not get a raincheck?

In most cases if an item is advertised as being on sale via an advertisement (print ad, television spot, radio spot, etc) and the store that is advertising the item on sale has run out of stock during the specified sales dates you are usually entitled to a raincheck so that you can purchase that item at the advertised sales price when the item is back in stock. There are a few exceptions to this rule however. Retailers do not have to issue a raincheck if there is exclusionary wording in the ad. Some common examples of such wording can be:

While supplies last
Limited to stock on hand
No rainchecks

In essence if the advertisement says something to the affect that the sale is somehow limited and no rainchecks will be issued then in most cases you are not entitled to a raincheck.

Does a store have to give me a raincheck if they are out of stock?

There are consumer laws out there that regulate the issuance of rainchecks and they vary from state to state. But in essence in most states a store is required to issue a raincheck for items that are advertised on sale and are out of stock within the advertised sale dates, unless there is exclusionary wording in the ad such as the examples above. The reason why there are consumer laws on rainchecks is because some unscrupulous stores will advertise a hot item at a deep discount in order to get customers in the store. However they never carried the advertised product and instead hope that you will purchase another item instead of the advertised product. This is basically bait and switch and is illegal in most states. Consumer laws therefore have been put into place to protect shoppers from being lured into a store for a hot sale only to find no product in stock. However in some states a retailers has the option of offering either a raincheck or a comparable product at the same price as the item on sale. To find out more about consumer laws in your specific state you may wish to do a internet search on your states consumer laws.

How do I get a raincheck?

If you are shopping and an advertised item is out of stock all you need to do is go to the customer service desk and ask for a raincheck. If you are purchasing other items you can also ask your cashier for a raincheck and most of the time the cashier can issue you one. Each store has its own policy on rainchecks so you may want to ask the person issuing you your raincheck what the policy is. Some stores have an expiration date on their rainchecks, these can be anywhere from 30 days to 90 days while other stores rainchecks never expire. Some stores will ask you for your phone number or other contact information so that they can call you and let you know when the item is in stock. This is usually a practice of smaller retailers or more high-end retailers. Rainchecks can also have a limit written on them as to how many of the specified product you can purchase at the sale price with your raincheck.

5 raincheck tips!

When grocery shopping look for clear spaces on the store shelves and make a note of what it is and what flavor, size or variety that is out of stock. If for example Coca-Cola 2-liter bottles are on sale for $0.70 each but the store is out of Diet Coke, you can often ask for a raincheck just because the store is out of just one flavor. Most of the time the raincheck will be issued for the advertised sale item (Coca-Cola products) and not just the specific variety that was out of stock.
Once you have your raincheck, plan for additional savings. Find coupons to help discount the sale price even further. Getting a raincheck is a great time extender to afford additional time to the sale so take advantage of the extra 30 or more days to print, purchase or trade for coupons to go with your raincheck.
If you had a coupon to go with the advertised sale and it is about to expire, try explaining to the store manager that you wanted to buy the advertised product with a coupon but they are out of stock and you are afraid that your coupon will expire by the time the product is back in stock. Often times the manager will offer to write you a raincheck that also includes the additional discount that your coupon would have given you.
If a product that you really want to buy is advertised at a great sales price, go to the store in the middle of the sales period to see if the item is out of stock. If it is, get a raincheck. Then go back in at the end of the sales period and if the item is still out of stock go ahead and get another raincheck.
When you are at the customer service desk or cashier getting your raincheck and if the store employee asks you how many of the advertised priced items you would like to get with your raincheck go ahead and ask for multiples. If your family members love Coca-Cola, go ahead and ask for a limit of 30 or 50 and stock up.

Do you have a raincheck tip that you would like to share? We would love to hear it, feel free to leave a comment below.

Heidi November 16, 2009 Printable Coupon Spot Blog coupon tips, rain check, Raincheck

Printable Coupon Spot is now mobile friendly

I am always looking for ways to make Printable Coupon Spot better and so we decided to do a mobile version for those of you who might be like me a little bit of a tech geek. At first I was thinking that it is a bit hard to fathom users wanting to access printable coupons from their mobile phones but then I sat and thought about it. Some of you might be techy like me and have your mobile device hooked up via Bluetooth to your printer. So what I can do is sit on my couch with my Blackberry and look for printable coupons before shopping and print my coupons while sitting in the other room where my desktop is.

So if you feel like accessing printable coupon spot from your cell phone, go ahead. You don’t have to do anything, the site will automatically detect that you are on a mobile device and show you the mobile version. You can of course make the switch back to the full web version at any time too!

Enjoy!

Heidi

Heidi November 11, 2009 Printable Coupon Spot Blog Mobile Website

How to save paper when printing printable coupons

Let’s face it, some printable coupons waste a lot of paper when they print because just a small portion of the paper contains the actual coupon. While the rest of the sheet of paper contains either an ad or is just blank. That can end up with a lot of extra paper waste. But there are tips that you can utilize so that all that extra paper does not go to waste.

Print on both sides of the paper

The best way to avoid the paper waste associated with printing coupons is to print on both sides of the paper.

Once you have printed one coupon on one side of the paper, flip the paper over and insert it in the paper feed of your printer and print the next coupon on the back side. Make sure that you not only flip the paper over but turn it upside down too so that you don’t print on the backside of the first printable coupon you printed.

Don’t use premium paper

There is no reason to use your best printer paper for printing coupons. Keep on hand a small pile of scrap paper, perhaps the printouts from your child’s school or whatever scrap printer paper you have on hand. Just print your coupons on the reverse side that does not already have any printing on it. It does not matter what color paper you use, pink, green, yellow or blue, they all will do the trick!

Make use of the scrap paper

If you just can’t seem to get the hang of printing coupons on both sides (don’t worry getting the paper in the printer in the right direction can be a pain and even the best of us end up making mistakes and print the second coupon over the top of the first one because we did not get the paper in the printer correctly!) the next best tip is to be creative with the extra paper scraps. I like to trim ten to 20 sheets paper scraps and then staple them together creating a little book of paper which is perfect for giving to my children to color on. They enjoy writing and illustrating small story books. Keeping a few of these paper books in the car as well as some washable markers can make a boring car trip a little less… well, boring! I also like to keep a few scraps of leftover printable coupon paper on my desk near the phone for jotting down notes and messages. Sure beats buying notepads or Post-its! Even if there is printing on the reverse side of the scrap paper the blank side is still usable for scrap paper or notebooks.

Recycle It

If all else fails, be kind to the environment and place your printable coupon scraps in the recycling bin. Even when I have reused the paper in the ways mentioned above there is still little bits of “Coupon Confetti” that I put in the recycling bin.

Do you have a tip for saving paper when you print printable coupons? Share with us by posting a comment below!

Heidi November 9, 2009 Printable Coupon Spot Blog

Welcome to Printable Coupon Spot – The internets premier source of FREE printable coupons!

Smart shoppers know that the key to saving money is to never leave home without a coupon for whatever they are spending their money on. Here at Printable Coupon Spot we aim to provide you with the printable coupon resources you need to save lots of money. All of our printable coupons are 100% FREE. So take a look around and we hope to help you save some cash!

We offer hundreds of printable coupons for grocery purchases, hotels and entertainment, restaurants and nationwide stores!

Heidi November 8, 2009 Printable Coupon Spot Blog

Printable Coupon Spot

Freebie Friday: 03/05/2010

Knowing your store’s coupon policy

Suggestion Box

HP Printer Contest Winner Announced

Blog Giveaway! Enter for a chance to win a HP DeskJet F4480 Inkjet All-in-One Printer!