Coupons now good for Carrs

If you had asked two months ago which store I would absolutely not shop at because of couponphobia by the store, I wouldn’t have even hesitated before giving my answer. Carrs was definitely the store I avoided using coupons at — at all costs.

The last couple of weeks, however, have seen a significant change in how Carrs/Safeway does business, especially in the couponing arena.

At the beginning of June, Safeway Corp. introduced a new coupon policy where a lot of things that previously made couponers want to run in the other direction have been taken out, and many improvements have also been introduced. Some of the changes introduced, and to me the most exciting, are:

• Carrs will now accept Catalina coupons from other stores (the ones that print at the registers as you are checking out), so long as they say “manufacturer coupon” on them, are not overly blurred and are for a specific item. This means coupons for money off on your next shopping order or Register Rewards from Walgreens are not accepted.

• Carrs will now accept valid manufacturer coupons with another store’s logo on them. This means you can print off manufacturer coupons from the Target site and go use them at Carrs. I haven’t had a lot of luck at other stores accepting those because of the Target logo appearing on the coupon at least four times.

• Carrs will accept coupons printed from the Internet and will adjust down the price on a coupon so you can get the item for free if you have a high enough value coupon (no overage will be given, of course). This takes the place of a previous rule (which was utterly ridiculous) where Safeway would not accept an Internet-printed coupon for more than 50 percent of an item’s value. This is a great improvement because now we can finally use high-value Internet printed coupons at Carrs again.

They will not accept “free” Internet printed coupons due to high instances of fraud with free Internet-printed coupons.

A copy of the new coupon policy can be found at safeway.com/ifl/grocery/Coupons-Policy.

I would suggest everyone go, print this and bring it with you when you shop at Carrs. This way, if you get a cashier who doesn’t know the new coupon policies (and there will be some) you can show what the policy says. This has cleared up any confusion for me when I have used the newly accepted coupons there and I find it an invaluable resource to have at my disposal.

Erika Buswell runs a blog dedicated to coupons and deals in Alaska, alaskanbargainhunter.blogspot.com, and lives in Palmer with her husband and two children.