Couponing Question: Will A Doubled Coupon Get Me Overage?

Diana emailed with a question about coupon doubling:

I was wondering about how a couponing trick would work. This morning, there was a coupon for Suave deoderant for $0.75 off 1. Often King Soopers sell these deoderants for $0.88. If the store doubles the coupon to a dollar, will I get the full $1 value or will it double to $0.88?

In most cases, it will only double up to the price of the item, so the coupon would scan at $0.50 and the “multiplied” coupon would be $0.38, making the item completely free (aside from sales tax) but not give you an “overage”.

The exception is that sometimes when an item is included in a Buy 10, Save $5 event or similar, you may actually get overage, since the item advertised as “$0.50 when you buy 10 Mega Event items and save $5” rings up as, say, $1.00 and then an additional $0.50 (as part of the instant $5 savings) comes off at the end.

In that case, since the individual item rings up as $1.00 and the instant savings to get it to $0.50 as advertised comes at the end, when the $5 instant discount comes off, the $0.50 coupon would double to $1.00 and you would actually receive $0.50 in overage.

Here’s a step-by-step example:

Deodorant – $0.50 each when you buy 10 and save $5
Rings up as $1.00 shelf price
Use $0.50/1 coupon that will double to $1.00, making it free
Gain an additional $0.50 per item savings for buying 10 and getting the $5 instant discount
Net cost at checkout: “profit” of $0.50

That’s how it works at King Soopers and usually at Safeway, as well.  Note that in the case that your final total is negative, stores may or may not give you cash back.

Here’s more answers to questions about couponing!