Guess what a manager told me today?

[Mama Stu]

I was at a HyVee Drugstore today and they had the Ocean Spray Box Drinks(like Crystal Light) on clearance for 2/1 and I had 1/1 Qs. Now, I would have had no problem with them adjusting the Q or getting two boxes for every Q. I was not expecting overage in any way.

The manager told me that the shelf price already had the coupon I had in my hand subtracted off, and that to let me use it would be double couponing I told him that the regular HyVee grocery store had them for .99 and the coupon self adjusted. So, then he said "well if they were .99 I would let you use the coupon". WHAT????? So, it's double couponing if they are 2/1 but not if they are .99.

I finally gave up and left them there. Sometimes you just can't fix stupid

[$Saving!]

OMG - you know, the ones who know the least about coupons show their hiney every time!

And they don't have a clue what they're saying either

If only they knew how stupid they sounded. But you know the saying ...

If ignorance is bliss, that's one happy idiot there!

[434Teresa]

I would have ask him why he did not already have all the q's in the cash regester and ready to mail off for the refund then? shelf price is shelf price come on who dose he think he is? I would call the main office about this..

[clippyclippy]

...just when I thought I'd heard it all!

[crmommy]

OK, I am NOT in any way trying to defend HyVee. I think I can explain what the manager meant though (i think it's wrong but i understand it) In many of the stores they get tearpad coupons and some managers are annoyed with tearpad takers so they actually run the coupons through the registers (offset with another procedure) and then they discount that many of the product. So if they had 100 coupon for an item for 1.00 off, they would run the 100 coupons through the register and have the system flag a price adjustment after 100 of the item sold and they would raise it back up. It is "technically" double dipping, BUT the customer never knows that or should be told they can't use a coupon on it. Only a few store personel know it's even done. This also explains why you can't find tear pads and peelies at certain stores but can at others. It is completely up to the Store Director and his or her assistant on how to handle them. Hope that makes a bit more sense to a dumb procedure.

Needless to say I get coupons at some stores and know which ones use this procedure to get a bigger discount

[Mama Stu]

I understood that was what he had done, but here is one of my problems with the store doing that.
1#, if they submit all of those coupons, but don't sell all of the product then they are committing coupon fraud.
2# It should have said somewhere on the display the coupon had already been taken off the price.

I ended up calling corp. and talked to an assistant vice president who was super nice. He told me his wife coupons too, so I think that helped. He said that honestly they spend millions of dollars trying to get customers in the store, and then they are going to haggle over .50 or a $1. He was having a meeting with all of his store directors that Thursday and was going to discuss this practice with them. I know this particular store won't change, because a friend of mine had a similar problem awhile back, but I did notice the store director had at least put up a sign stating that the price was after coupon already subtracted.

I just won't shop in there anymore except for picking up my prescriptions. The regular HyVee in town is wonderful and very coupon friendly.