How To Read Your Grocery Receipt: e-coupons

Time for another segment in the How To Read Your Grocery Receipt series!  Today we’re looking at the mystery of e-coupons and where these digital coupons show up on your receipt.

E-coupons usually come off next to the product itself, not at the bottom with the rest of the paper coupons and other discounts.  I said usually, though, and if you’re reading a long with the How To Read Your Grocery Receipt series, you’ll know that all of these tips are usually-but-not-always!

In the above Safeway receipt, you can see that there was an eCoupon for $1 that came off for the Nature Valley Cashew Roasted Granola Bars I purchased.

4@2.50 NV Casher Roasted 10.00
RegPrice 13.96 CardSav 3.96
Mfr eCoupon 1.00-

Now, I have no clue if this was a [cf] or a [shortcuts] e-coupon, and I’m not sure why it doesn’t show that.  But I saved a buck!

And here’s a King Soopers receipt.  You see a couple of lines that say this:

SC  BC Au Grati (1.49) 0.78-P
MC  Scuts-BCPotatoe 0.40-P

This is a [shortcuts] e-coupon for 40¢ off Betty Crocker potatoes that came off when I bought a box of Betty Crocker Au Gratin Potatoes.  Note again that this e-coupon showed up next to the product and not at the bottom with the paper coupons.

Now, all that said, I will said that there have been times where I’ve seen e-coupons come off and show up with the paper coupons, not next to the product.  So, if you’re checking your receipt and looking to see if an e-coupon discount came off, make sure to check the bottom, top, middle, and maybe even the back of your receipt! ;)

If you had an e-coupon loaded to your card that should have come off and didn’t, the best thing to do is to contact that particular e-coupon company’s customer service.  The store’s customer service doesn’t have a record of what e-coupons are loaded to your card, so they probably won’t be able to help you.

A few times in the past, I’ve had [shortcuts] e-coupons not come off and contacted their customer service through their website and they credited me the amount of the-coupons.  The “credit” came in the form of instant savings on my next order – basically they put a “coupon” on my card that would come off no matter what I bought so that I would then receive proper credit for the e-coupons that didn’t come off the first time around.

There are limits as to how much they will reimburse you, though, so keep that in mind.

Got a question about e-coupons?  Feel free to ask in the comments!

Related:

• How To Read Your Grocery Receipt: scanned coupons and double coupons

• How To Read Your Grocery Receipt: sale discounts and regular prices