Walmart Has a New Coupon Policy

From the Salt Lake Tribune. Like I care...but you might.

"I stopped by my local Walmart store today, and heard the big news: Walmart has a new coupon policy. DealSeekingMom.com has a nicer-looking version of the policy here that you can print out. There are two key parts of this policy, in my opinion. First, Walmart clearly states that it not only will accept a coupon that's worth more than the item being purchased, but that the store will give the customer the difference.

Here's how that works: Today, I used a coupon worth $3 on dryer sheets that were priced at only $1.87. The difference of $1.13 was applied to other items in my shopping cart, per the new policy. If I hadn't purchased anything else, the $1.13 would have been refunded to me.

Second, Walmart will now accept competitor's coupons that state a specific price. (This doesn't include coupons that offer percentage-off discounts or buy one get one free coupons.) But this is still good news, because it's an expansion of Walmart's price-matching policy.

If you're headed to Walmart with coupons, though, you'll want to have a printed copy of the new policy with you, because I'm sure it will take some time for store personnel to adapt to the changes."

Some policy--they're clearly trying to avoid having to pay out large sums of money to shoppers who hyper-coupon. The only way to get any money back is to limit your purchases, and get the deepest discount possible on each. Walmart has already lost ground to the likes of humble dollar stores, and is now trying to limit further losses, yet still keep shoppers, even if it has to rely on government money (food stamps and WIC) to do it.

This is Wally's way of counteracting hyper-couponing--to spread out the monetary gains through discounting your entire order, instead of giving properly accumulated cash back. Watch out, Jill Cataldo, because it won't stop with Wally! This will spread to other stores, and will eventually make couponing (even hyper-couponing) futile as a savings tool.

Look at what stores and brands have already thrown at us as a means of discount defenses: expired foods, couponing fine print, jacked up prices right before a "sale", shorter expiration dates, purposely mismatching store sales with coupon expiration, only having low-quality junk (non-nutritive) foods and needless products or activities discounted, or just plain not carrying the item it advertised--and this includes Groupon and other discount marketing devices. Now they're not giving you money back that you may have earned through diligent couponing.