Reader Question of the Day: How Many Items Can I Buy With My Coupon?

I get a lot of comments on the blog asking me questions about different topics.  Lately, I’ve noticed the same one has come up more than once, so I figured that it might be a good idea to do a post to explain it in more detail.  Here was the question:

If I have a coupon for $1 off 3, can i use 3 coupons and get $3 off 3?

The simple answer is No – you can not.  Let me explain this in more detail below.  First, let’s use a coupon as an example:

1 – Coupon Value.  This part of the coupon tells you how much you will save when you redeem the coupon.  In this case, you will save $1 off of your purchase.

2 – Quantity to Purchase.  This tells you how many items you must purchase in order to redeem the coupon.  In this case, it is four (4).  That means, when you purchase 4 dog snacks, you will save $1 total.  In this instance, that means you will be saving $0.25 off of each bag of snacks.

3 – Coupon Limit.  Here it says that you are limited to using one coupon per purchase.  In this case, 4 products is the amount you need to purchase to use the coupon. Since you are limited to using one coupon per item purchased, that means you have to purchase 4 and can use one coupon.  A good thing to remember is that your cashier must always scan the number of products as indicated on the coupon in order to use it.  So, if that shows 4 products, they need to scan the 4 products and then they can use the coupon.

Why can’t you buy 4 and use 4 coupons and save $1 off of each one?  In that case, it would be using more than one coupon towards an item as the amount of savings towards each item will actually be $0.25.  In order to save $1, it would mean 4 coupons towards that single item.  As mentioned above, the number of products scanned must equal the number on the coupon.  If you scan 4 products, that is what the coupon says.  If you tried to use 4 coupons, that would mean that 16 items would need to be scanned for all 4 coupons to be able to be redeemed.

What about twin packs – how can I stack or use more than one coupon on these products?  A simple thing to remember when it comes to redeeming coupons is that the cashier must scan the same number of bar codes as the coupon says.  Let me show you a couple of examples:

Example 1:  Coupon is for $1/2 and you are purchasing a 2 pack.  You can not use this as the coupon requires 2 bar codes to be scanned.  In the case of a twin pack, the cashier is scanning only one bar code.  You would have to purchase 2 twin packs so that 2 bar codes are scanned as required by the coupon.

Example 2:  Coupon is for $1/1 and you are purchasing a 2 pack.  You can still only use one coupon as the number of bar codes being scanned is one – which matches one coupon.  If you have 2 $1/1 coupons, then that requires 2 bar codes to be scanned, which means you would need to purchase 2 twin packs in order to use 2 coupons.

It can be confusing when you are new to using coupons.  Just keep asking questions and you will be an expert in no time at all!