Coupon Q & A

Joanna asks:

"...I was wondering if you have a certain time that you recommend shopping. The frustrating thing about couponing for me is when I spend the time collecting my coupons and then I get to the store and that item is totally sold out. Do you have this problem? I've been trying to buy Charmin toilet paper for two weeks but every Krogers I go to is sold out. Same thing happened today with dryer sheets. So is there a best time to shop or is this one of the downfalls to trying to get deals?"

I do run into that problem from time to time, Joanna! And it is frustrating. Last week I had a really good coupon for Charmin, but the shelf was cleared. I haven't been there this week yet, so I don't know. Sometimes it's just a matter of who gets to it first.

Soon after I started shopping at "my" Kroger store, I asked one of the nice stocker guys when they restock their shelves. Now I know that they get their truck in Wednesday evenings and restock early Thurs. mornings (sometimes if we stop there after church Wed. they are already working on it). After I learned that, I switched my shopping day from Tuesdays (when it seemed they were always sold out of what I wanted!) to Thursdays - and now it doesn't happen so much. I would suggest finding out when your store restocks, and plan your shopping for soon afterwards if you can.

Another thing you can do is to ask if they have any more in the back (a hot item like that, I doubt it, but you never know), or ask for a raincheck. You want to make sure the raincheck price is for the final sale price - if it's a Mega Sale item, it needs to be for the "after reward" price, if that makes sense? They may write on it that you have to buy the certain number of items to get the price, I'm not sure.

I hope you're able to get what you're going for, and with the low sale price! Couponing can be tricky sometimes :)