Shopping Horror Stories...

Well, not a horror for me, but for everyone who is not me wishing they were...


I have a story for everyone (well two really). About two and a half years ago, I was AD SHOPPING... you know where you get the grocery store ads in the mail and then you actually LOOK at them and see what is on sale. One week, Albertsons had corn on the cob on sale for 8 ears for $1. Since I was still living in my apartment at the time and had very little freezer space, I decided to get a rain check since they were so cheap (back when they had no expiration date)... anyway, I put the rain check in my purse and went on my merry way. About six months later I was on the ward activities committee and we were wanting to have a ward bbq with chicken, hamburgers etc. ... and corn on the cob. One problem. It is WAY out of season and about $5 for a pack of 4. Not a problem for the AD SHOPPER. She still has her rain check. So I go to Albertsons and ask if the rain check is still good and the manager told me it was, so I picked up 16 packs of corn but the total would have been around $80, but with my rain check it was only $8. Now I am not good with math or anything... but that is about a 90% savings there. I became known as 'the corn lady' in the Albertsons produce section because of that one shopping trip.

*****

Anyway, I think I have earned a new nickname tonight, but this time at Safeway. We can call me 'the granola bar lady'. Yet again, I was AD SHOPPING (CONVERT TODAY!!!) and put a star by all the goods that were on sale that I would actually use. I got through the ads for Safeway, Bashas, Albertsons and Frys, then when I finished drawing my stars, I pulled out a piece of paper and began writing which stores had what deals so I went through the ads again, this time only looking at the stars. Well, I write down the Safeway deals first, then went on to Bashas, and noticed that they had a manufacturers coupon for Quaker Granola bars ($3 off 5 or more) and I remembered that Safeway had the same Quaker Granola bars on sale for buy 2 get 3 free.

Now, the Safeway deal by itself was great, but adding in that coupon from the Bashas ad made it even better. So today after school I headed over to Bashas to get a couple more ads to stock up on a great deal, but they only had one more, so I have two $3 off coupons. I send my husband to Safeway to get the goods while I am at the school open house, but he did not have the Safeway card (and they don't let you borrow theirs) so he just came home. So once I came home I picked up the coupons and heard him mention something about another $1 off coupon boxes, but that my coupon was better so he didn't bother... so here is how the rest of the story goes.

Got to Safeway, found the Granola bars, put them in my basket, then saw those coupons he was talking about, $1 off two boxes. What the heck, I will give it a try. Grab five of them (since I am getting 10 boxes) and head up to check out.

They scan the Granola Bars, comes to 29.90. Ouch! People really pay that kind of money for granola bars?

Give them my (mom's--- thanks, you can have some of the goods it you want) Safeway card number and the total drops to 11.96.

Give them the coupons. Total drops to $5.96 from the Bashas coupons and then down to $.96 after the coupons I picked up in the store. Now, I could do the math, but it was already on the receipt so I won't bother, I saved a total of $28.94, or 97%. That completely blows CORN LADY out of the water, wouldn't you say?

Now if you think about it, I got 10 boxes of 10 granola bars each. Since I paid only $.96 for 10 boxes, that means I paid less than 10 cents per box, which means I paid less than one cent for each granola bar.

Anyone want to pay me to go grocery shopping for them?