Learning from our mistakes

I made a few rookie mistakes recently in couponing. From what I'm told, it happens occassionally even to the pros. As long as you look at it as a learning experience, it's not really a mistake, right? Sure it cost me a little bit of extra money...Under $10, so it wasn't anything major, but it still aggrevated me. Plus, The awareness of what happened made me wonder how many other times I made that same mistake and just never realized it. I plan on sharing my mistakes with you, so hopefully you can learn from me, and not have to learn the hard way.

Mistake #1.
My first one, was a case of not being organized enough. I had 2 seperate orders sitting in my shopping cart, and instead of keeping them seperated (which with a 22 month old in the back of the cart, is impossible)I had everything together. The problem was, I didn't keep them seperate in my mind or on paper (which is FAR smarter!) I knew the items I had to keep apart to get the RR's, but my downfall came in that I seperated an order I shouldn't have. I was buying some Mitchum deoderant, which had a coupon in store to reduce the price to 1.99 instead of the almost 4.00 it was normally. then I had 2 catalina coupons for 1.50 off, leaving me with deoderant for a mere 49 cents. I only had one in store coupon, so I needed to leave them in the same transaction, or grab another sales ad for an additional coupon. Unfortunately, I didn't do this. So, one of my deoderants was 49 cents, teh other was much higher. I remedied the problem by returning it the following week. The downside was, I forfeited my coupon in doing so. Lesson learned. I keep all my coupons in an envelope and I have always wrote down what my shopping list is. Now I add to it by putting whether its a same or seperate transaction next to each item. Now I don't get everything messed up in my head :) Problem solved.

Mistake #2

I purchased a huge order of stuff, as I normally do, unlike most of the "scenarios" I see in the other blogs and forums. I never really understood why they did small orders, except when they were buying a bunch of the same item, then it made sense to me, because you can only get one RR per order (item, or groups of item in a RR deal).You can have multiple RR's print out as long as they are for different products. So, This particular day I had an issue with an RR not printing for a suave kids item I had purchased. The only reason I noticed was because I was trying to get two of them, so I had a seperate transaction. I asked the cashier about it, and she couldn't find anythign in the paper. I held back in getting the second one in case I read the sign wrong. It was a good deal and I didn't want to miss it if I read it right. 3.49 for the kids wash, with a 3 dollar RR back! I double checked the sign, sure enough, I read it right. So I asked one of the managers about it. They checked it out, and it was actually a misprinted sales tag, but they were willing to give it to me because it was posted. yay! Score one for me, and I was quite happy they were so nice. (so my mistake wasn't a complete bust that day!) The manager had asked if I had gotten my pepsi RR, and I assumed I did as I had a handful of RR's. He spotted one for 3 dollars and asked for that product so they could get me the correct priced RR. I was feeling pretty good, and headed home. I always check my reciepts when I get home as well as my RR's so I can see how well I did shopping. As I was going through my RR's, I discovered I indeed did not have a pepsi RR. I was ripped off by a $5RR. I called and asked what happened, if it was something I did. The cashier told me to come in and ask for Larry, the night manager, and he'd fix it if he could for me. Well, it was already almost 9 and it was at least a half hour drive. I wasn't going back anymore that night, since they were still out of some of the items I really wanted. I went back in a few days later, and got a different manager than I'd ever even saw before. She was nice, but not nearly as helpful and kind as the others. I asked her about my pepsi RR's, and discovered my flaw was that I used a pepsi RR to help pay for that purchase. Apparently you can't use an RR that you have gotten for an item from teh same company. So.. you can't use an RR for say Proctor & Gamble on any other P &G products.. which means, you can't buy gillete, or pampers, etc using an RR that you got for an Old Spice promo. If you do, you most likely won't get your RR's. oof.. lesson learned. The down side is.. some of those companies own a heck of a lot of other companes.. P&G being one of them! So, it appears there is a reason to teh maddness of the bloggers breaking things down into small scenarios. They are avoiding buying things with RR's for the same company.
It appears couponing isn't as easy as it once appeared, and there is actually some work involved.. but wow is it worth it!