Extreme couponing in Edmonton is not much of a bargain

By Heather Rastas

EDMONTON — Couponing can save money, but when it gets extreme, it isn’t much of a bargain, says a couple of Edmonton couponers.

In the TLC show Extreme Couponing, shoppers plan and plot their shopping trips to save hundreds of dollars on purchases. The people depicted on the show go to extremes to find extraordinary deals.

Sheri Landry, the administrator of the couponing blog This Bird’s Day, believes shows like Extreme Couponing are not always a good thing. “The extreme couponing and such, it’s driven a lot of people to hoard coupons and buy a whole lot of products that they don’t necessarily need,” says Landry.

Landry, a west Edmonton resident, created the blog in April of 2009.

Landry became interested in couponing after she went on maternity leave after the birth of her first daughter. The solution to going down to one income was to “start looking at different ways that we could make up for the money that was lacking,” says Landry.

This Bird’s Day provides information about couponing, deals that are going on and links to helpful coupons.

Couponing has gained more popularity since shows like Extreme Couponing have come out. The people on Extreme Couponing spend many hours per week organizing coupons and planning shopping trips.

One of the biggest downfalls of the show is that the extreme couponers are buying “hundreds of items at the time, often the same time,” says Lori Godin, the administrator of the blog Frugal Edmonton Mama, via e-mail. “You need to find the balance between the products you use, the products you buy and those sales that aren’t really relevant to you.”

Two trends to watch for in Canada are coupon stacking and coupon trains.

Coupon stacking is when you take multiple coupons for the same product with different UPCs and use them all toward the purchase of one item in a single purchase. An example of this would be if you have a manufacturer coupon and store coupon for the same chair. If you put both coupons towards the same chair when you buy it, you are coupon stacking.

With a coupon train, you sort through your coupons and take out the ones you don’t need. Then you stick the coupons you don’t need into an envelope and mail it to another couponer. That friend picks out what he or she needs, adds more unwanted coupons and sends the envelope to someone else.