Write to Mrs. Moneysaver with your money-saving questions!
Dear Mrs. Moneysaver,
I’m new to using coupons, and I’m not totally sure where you can and cannot use coupons. Are you allowed to use internet coupons- and coupons in general- at Walmart?
Thank you!
Wondering Walmart
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Dear Wondering Walmart,
One of the hardest parts about beginning to coupon, in my opinion, is figuring out all the different coupon policies.
Yes, Walmart accepts coupons, including those printed from the internet. According to the Walmart coupon policy, printed coupons should be legible, able to scan at checkout, say “Manufacturer”, and include a valid remit address. Basically, if it’s a legit coupon and the cashier is scanning it correctly, you should be allowed to use it. (Though don’t ask me how many times I’ve seen cashiers trying to scan coupons incorrectly…) If I share a printable coupon on Mrs. Moneysaver, you can assume it’s valid and can be used at Walmart, since I try my absolute hardest to ensure I don’t share fradulent coupons.
Though Walmart’s corporate policy says internet coupons are accepted, I have heard a zillion stories (and experienced it myself) of stores telling couponers otherwise. If your local Walmart says they don’t take internet coupons, I suggest (very, very politely) pressing the issue until the matter is resolved.
First, print off the official Walmart coupon policy and take it with you when you shop. If your cashier says they don’t accept internet coupons, present the corporate policy print-out. If that doesn’t work, (very, very sweetly) ask to speak to a manager and show her the corporate policy.
If this tactic doesn’t work, then I’d call Walmart’s corporate office and ask them to clear up the issue for you. I’ve heard that this works like a charm!
Make sure you stretch your money spent at Walmart as far as you can- For The Mommas and Bargain Briana each have great lists of Walmart bargains available.
Happy Couponing,
{ 3 comments }
Thanks!
What do you do when they are scanning it incorrectly…what’s the right way?
Is there a trick for getting internet coupons to print so they DO scan?
.-= Teri´s last blog ..Overnight Guests =-.
Since most internet coupons have two barcodes, I’ve found they’ll almost always scan the first time if the cashier covers one of the barcodes with her hand (usually the left one) while scanning the other one. More experienced cashiers seem to do this automatically.
As far as getting them to print, I recommend making sure the color is set to 100%- no gray scale or anything like that, though it would save ink. Also, the less wrinkled a paper coupon is, the easier it is to scan. I always try to keep my internet coupons as unwrinkled as possible.
If the coupon is from a reputable source like coupons.com, smartsource.com, redplum.com, ecentives, one of the General Mills sites I often link to, or a “bricks” URL, you can be awfully sure it’s legit. If for some reason one of these won’t scan, I’d ask the cashier to try scanning again or ask for a manager perhaps. Sometimes it just takes a few scanning attempts until it’s scanned “just so” and works.
I just want to caution you guys about SmartSource.com coupons. There have been a fair amount of fraudulent coupons floating around there to the point where my Shoprite have temporarily stopped taking them altogether. I had a couple of coupons that I felt sure were fine (I had checked the latest online lists of fraudulent coupons, and I had made sure that they included all the right information on them together with the brand new watermark/background that SmartSource made to make fraud harder), but they still wouldn’t take them. Last time I went there, they even called out some manager to look at a couple of my non-SmartSource coupons, that, again, looked perfectly okay to me. So you can’t be sure about coupon policies at stores; they change all the time. Walmart is probably different though, as they seem to stick to the same policy for all stores, unlike Shoprite or Pathmark (where they only take a total of 2 online printed coupons per person per day). I guess the answer is just to keep checking and updating information on coupon policy for different stores.
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