Clipping services may not be best buy

After checking out some online resources and realizing exactly how few coupons we get in our Sunday paper compared to the Lower 48, you might wonder where we can get coupons that people Outside receive in their Sunday papers. There is always the option that if you have relatives who live in the Lower 48, they can send coupons to you weekly (or when they can). My mother fills this gap for me when she finds the time to do so (and it is much appreciated). If you do not have relatives who live in the Lower 48 though, there is still hope: coupon clipping services.

The legality of coupon clipping services is still in debate. On every coupon there is wording that reads “illegal to sell, duplicate, copy or transfer.” Many argue that coupon clipping services “sell” coupons, thus making the services illegal to use. What the coupon clipping services say that they sell is actually their services; they are not selling you the actual coupon. They charge you a surcharge by coupon to “clip and ship” your coupons to you (usually .05 to .25 per coupon depending on coupon value). What is going on is that the coupon clipping services are taking advantage of a legal loophole where they are selling a coupon without selling the actual coupon.

Your ethics will have to decide whether you use these services. My own personal opinion is that they are a good way to get coupons that are not available to us in Alaska, but they are expensive. The cost per week for shipping is about $5. Some have a minimum amount that you have to purchase per coupon, so unless you really want spend 10 cents to $1 for coupons, sometimes it might not be worth your while.

Some of the well-known coupon clipping services are:

• The Coupon Clippers (www.thecouponclippers.com).

• The Coupon Master (www.thecouponmaster.com/index.php)

To get the most coupons for the least amount of money, a lot of people who use these services have started to use one site, “Coupons and Things By Dede” (www.couponsthingsbydede.com). This site sells the full newspaper inserts from the central Florida area and you can get a full insert for 25 cents a week (so if you ordered the Smart Source and the Red Plum insert it would be 50 cents a week). It costs more than $5 to ship your inserts however, so if you are going to go with this service, I’d suggest going in with friends to pay for this weekly service or if you really want to get into coupons obsessively, buy enough inserts to make the $5 shipping worthwhile. You do receive a significantly larger amount of coupons than you would find in local papers.

I personally do not currently use coupon-clipping services. I find the costs for shipping to be too prohibitive and find that Internet printable coupons are closing the gap with printed coupons more and more, making saving money easier for Alaskans.

Erika Buswell runs a blog dedicated to bargain hunting in Alaska (alaskanbargainhunter.blogspot.com) and lives in Palmer with her husband and two children.