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Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Fabuless Coupon Tip Tuesday: When Should I Shop?


We get this question at every class.

When Should I Shop?

Here are my tips:

1. Check with your local store's to see which day of the week they get shipments.
The Walgreens I shop at gets shipments on Tuesday so the product they ordered for the Sunday ad is not even fully stocked until Tuesday afternoon. So I usually wait until then to shop.
Slow store hours

2. Shop early in the morning or late at night?
The drawback to these times is that there is usually only one check lane open. That is no big deal if you are the only one in the store. If you are shopping and there is only one checker and several other customers consider letting them go first if you have a lot or items, coupons or transactions. If they have another option to check out do not worry about it.
I find that during lunch time is usually a pretty good time to shop, the store gets a little slow but the checkers are overlapping shifts.
Never shop between 5 pm and 6:30 pm if you can help it. It is the busiest time of day.
You will learn your store as you shop there more and it never hurts to ask a manager what they think.

3. Go when your kids are not with you!
It can be hard to shop with children whether you coupon or not. Little people require a lot of attention and so does working out deal scenarios. It is hard to do both. I have friends that go early before their hubby goes to work, others go late at night when the little people are in bed. You can also go when they are in school, or after school when your built in babysitter is home. If you have one of these. I like to go on my lunch break on the days I work.

4. Find a routine that works for you.
I find if I plan a certain day or two as my shopping days the schedule runs a lot smoother.

What are your shopping tips?

4 comments:

Unknown said...

What day of the week is best to shop? If I go on a wednesday or thursday the store is usually well stocked with sale items. But I hate when they put out doublers on Sunday, and I could have gotten the sale stuff even cheaper with doublers. But if I wait until Monday or Tuesday then they aren't as well stocked.

Monica said...

Great tip Jennifer! I totally agree. It seems you always have to give upsomething. I usually have to make several small trips when it is a doubles week, so I got the stuff we really needed the first day and I am going to try to see what I can get today but am worried they will be all out. They were out a bunch of things at two of the Nampa stores yesterday.

A said...

This isn't necessarily a when or how but just a Target heads up. I have had trouble with all my coupons scanning a few times there. Last time the cashier was too busy to fix it so she made me go to cust. service. They didn't know how, so they got a manager who fixed it but gave me a little coupon lecture (please note that I was 100% honest in my transactions) and gave me my money back.

So yesterday when I was there I told the cashier that I have had problems with all of the coupons coming off my transactions. So he went through them very carefully and I noticed something new. Some of the coupons that were for more than $1.00 off only scanned in at $1.00 and he had to manually increase it on the register. This may have accounted for the discrepancies in the past of what I knew I should have paid and what the end total came out to. So just a little Target tip: watch every single coupon to make sure the correct amount comes off, and have a ball park total in your head of what you should pay so you know if something is wrong.

I know this comment is long, but I also have a question: If it's the store that eats the cost of doubles, why do some coupons say not to double? That's weird to me. I wish I could have come to your class tonight and asked but it just wasn't possible!

Monica said...

Amber I wish I knew the answer to that question, but I do not. I think it is weird too!
You sound so much like our Amber it is too funny.
This sounds so much like something our Amber would say......
"They didn't know how, so they got a manager who fixed it but gave me a little coupon lecture (please note that I was 100% honest in my transactions) and gave me my money back."

Oh and when you said, Blast the other day I about fell off my chair. Our Amber is the only person I know that says, "blast"

I love it!