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Friday, March 27, 2009

The Overage Police


Ugh! Have I ever mentioned how much I don't like shopping at Wal-Mart? Not only do I spend more if I'm not careful, I have had some really bad experiences using coupons there. Today was no exception.

I had just written a post about overage (HERE) and planned to use a few coupons to score some overage at Wal-Mart. The overage-producing coupons from newspaper inserts scanned without a glitch. The high-value Internet printable ones ($10 Glucerna - HERE, $4 Knox - HERE) beeped, and the cashier had to verify the amount of the coupon. When he tried to give me my total, the screen said COUPON LIMIT EXCEEDED - CALL MANAGER. So we had to wait for the Customer Service Manager to come, freeze the register, and take FOREVER to figure out what was wrong.

It was all about overage! Wal-Mart has a corporate policy (or so the CSM said) that they can't take printable coupons that create overage. They can't even adjust them down to the value of the items. They just plain can't take them. So I had to wait for them to remove the items and coupons from my total. (Did I mention that it was making us LATE meeting my husband for dinner!?!? Did I also mention that they didn't take the Knox off my total... they charged me a SECOND TIME for them!?!? I now have to make another trip in to get back the $1.34 x 4 for items I never took home.)

Then I took the same coupons to Kroger in hopes of getting some overage there. No luck. However, they were able to manually put in the amount of the items so I could get them free.

Lessons Learned....... Wal-Mart does allow overage, but only for coupons that come from the newspaper inserts. Internet printables can't be worth more than the items, or you can't use them at all. Kroger doesn't allow overage on Internet printables (not sure about coupons from inserts), but they will adjust the coupon down so you can get items free.

I hope that my frustrating experiences today will help you have smoother sailing through the checkouts!

2 comments:

Rebekah said...

Do you usually have problems with internet overage at walmart? Last week I went and there wasn't a problem, though when I went on Thursday there was a bit of a snag. I used several coupons (buddies, johnsons sleepytime, glucerna, huggies) but it wasn't until she scanend the knox & pace coupons and it beeped and then she started looking at all the rest of my coupons (all were internet printables and almost all had overage).
Long story short(because she wouldn't let me help straighten it out and she kept moving the coupons around), in the end she scanned a couple of them twice (found out at home) and ended up owing me $3.15. Thankfully the CSM was pretty good about it, but it could have gotten ugly real fast.

Jennifer said...

I have NEVER had any trouble with Wal-Mart. I also used the Knox one. I wonder if it's the one that's causing the trouble. It's the only one that was going to create some major overage for me. Talk about disappointing! I am glad to hear that you were able to get your money back. That gives me some hope for my stop tomorrow. I definitely want my $5 back! At least it's not just me! :)