Retailers Afraid of Extreme Couponers? News Flash: Most of Us are Just Average Couponers

Retailers worry that every couponer will turn extreme, but that’s not the case. In fact, Coupons.com released an educational program called Real Life Savings–it’ll puts coupon savings into perspective and shows that most people do not typically save 99 percent at the store. Scroll down for link and details.

Wednesday debuted the second season of TLC’s Extreme Couponing show, and it ushered in a new wave of fears from retailers who say they are afraid couponers will empty their shelves, use fake coupons at self-checkouts, and steal newspaper inserts. Evidently all of this has been done, but I’m sure it’s been done way before Extreme Couponing was even a glimmer in TLC’s eye.

The reality is this: most of us couponers average 40 to 60 percent off of our grocery bills–mostly the lower end of the scale and we are overjoyed if we ever hit 60 percent savings. Most of us get one darn newspaper a week, use Coupons.com and Couponmom.com, and hope our friends remember to give us unwanted Catalinas and inserts. Most of us do not, hear me…DO NOT have one or two years of toilet paper stashed in the basement. Nor would we want that much toilet paper, anyhow! (What if the basement flooded? Yuck!)

TFF is happy to show you a fantastic link we stumbled across. The link brings you to Real Life Savings, a series of Facebook videos from Coupons.com that shows and educates others about how real life coupon savings works. This is more like what really happens in the world of couponing. (We especially like Suzy and Sherri’s video.)

And does TFF think the folks on Extreme Couponing are a bit…weird? Heck yes! But we are happy to learn new ideas from the show, too.

~TFF