Myths abound regarding grocery coupons, especially the variety offered to buyers of products like dog food. By the way, the said coupons are just tickets, specially printed and issued to prospective buyers – who are then promised that should they present the coupons when they eventually go shopping, they would be awarded certain (often very considerable) discounts.
Now one of the myths about the grocery coupons offered to buyers of products such as dog food is the one to the effect that ‘the coupons don’t work.’ This is a lie that is told to people who have not given the coupons a try. They are told that upon presenting the coupons at the point of purchase, something will always crop up as an excuse for not being given the inherent discounts. Now there is no doubt that there are some ‘fake coupons’ out there. But those tend to be very few and far between. Most grocery coupons we see are genuine, provided of course, that you present them before their expiry (or before the end of the promotional campaign of which they happen to be a part).
Another myth about the grocery coupons offered to buyers of products such as dog food is the one to the effect that ‘they are not worth pursuing, because the discounts inherent in them tend to be inconsequential.’ Now without a doubt, there are grocery coupons that avail very small discounts, sometimes in the 1 to 3 percent range. But then there are also grocery coupons availing very substantial discounts, sometimes in the 20 to 30 percent range. So the generalization is not justified. And then again, even where the discounts available are very modest, they are still worth pursuing, because at the end of the day, they still amount to absolutely ‘free money,’ which is otherwise hard to come by.
There is yet another myth about grocery coupons offered to buyers of products such as dog food, to the effect that the amounts of money you save through these coupons are, in fact, amounts of money that you later have to pay for ‘in other ways.’ The belief here is that the product vendors offering the coupons can’t let themselves incur losses, and that they would always trying to find a way of regaining what they ‘lose’ in some way. But the truth of the matter is that many product makers are able to finance the discounts inherent in their grocery coupons with their marketing budgets (because the issue of those coupons is, at its core, a marketing strategy). So they don’t have to find ways of making customers, whom they are trying to attract or retain anyway, pay for those discount costs through the ‘backdoor.’