After hearing reports from several of you that King Soopers was not allowing the use of printable coupons with another store’s logo (such as this one or this one), and that they were indeed being rejected by the computer system itself, I emailed King Soopers to find out if they’ve changed their policy. Here is what I found out:
I wrote:
Regarding printable coupons that say “redeemable at store name” on them – such as this one (redeemable at Walgreens) and this one (redeemable at Walmart) – I’d always been under the impression that these could be redeemed at any store, and since they were manufacturer’s coupons, any store would be reimbursed by the manufacturer for them.
In the past week or two, I’ve gotten reports from readers that several King Soopers stores have changed their system so that these types of printable coupons now beep and aren’t allowed to be manually pushed through. Is that becoming a company-wide policy? If so, I’d like to know the details so that I can inform my readers and do my best to point them toward coupon usage that is in compliance with the policy; but I wasn’t sure if this was select stores or what.
And here’s the official response:
These are considered competitor coupons because there is some sort of agreement between the retailer and the manufacture. Since the coupons are for a specific retailer, they are not in our system and that is why they are beeping. It is our policy not to redeem competitors coupons.
So, there you have it. It does seem that there has been a change in their computer system, because these types of coupons did not beep previously; but apparently they have changed it so that they are no longer accepted.
What does this mean for you as a shopper, and me as a coupon promoter? Well, obviously, it means that you should not use a coupon that has another store’s logo on it at King Soopers. That’s pretty simple.
As for me and my team, we will do our very best to make sure that we do not provide a coupon matchup that promotes the use of a coupon with another store’s logo on it at King Soopers. I can’t promise that it won’t occasionally happen, since it’s not always obvious when a coupon will have a store logo on it, but we will do our best to help you comply with this policy.
You can read more of the King Soopers coupon policy here.
Look for King Soopers deals for next week to be posted in a bit!
$1.99 for Pantry Essentials (gallon) at Safeway
Well that does not surprise me. Their customer service has seemed to have gone way downhill. Just a friendly reminder, Safeway DOES take competitor coupons :) I still shop at all 3 stores and more but, Safeway by far is my favorite and their customer service is 99% awesome when I am there (one guy I prefer to avoid if possible….ha ha)
Does anyone know if this also is the same for catalina coupons?
Yes, I believe it is – those have been around longer and in my experience, they generally won’t take them.
Today at King Soopers i used my Catalina coupons and ‘redeemable at Walmart’ coupons and I had this fabulous cashier who said “I’ll take all coupons, I don’t know why the other cashiers raise a fuss, after we send in the coupons we actually make money on many of them”. I wanted to hug her!
They are definitely getting stricter. I stopped in to pick up Coffee Mate Creamer with a printed coupon for buy one get one and was told that King Soopers doesn’t take any printed coupons for free items…
now THAT is ridiculous. I wonder if your cashier was just misinformed. I’ve used BOGO and free coupons at King Soopers with out any problem
There’s a lot of misunderstanding among cashiers about the difference between printable coupons for free items, and printed coupons for buy one, get one free. Sorry you had trouble! :/
It was the store manager that informed me after the cashier questioned her :(