5 Reasons Your Coupon Beeped

5 Reasons Your Coupon Beeped

So you’ve grabbed all your sale items, matched them with the perfect coupons, and headed to checkout. All is going well and then it happens – your coupon beeps! What happened?! Well, there are a coupon reasons for that dreaded beeping sound:

1. It’s expired! 

Let’s start with the obvious (or maybe not-so-obvious if you missed it) because we’ve all been there: You spot a sale and think “Score! I have a coupon for that!” So you throw the item in your cart, pull the coupon out of your wallet, and happily strut over to the checkout lane, only to be met with a loud BEEP! You check the coupon again – you have the right product, right? Yep! Ugh but that pesky expiration date.. Sometimes it’s written so small. Oh well. Better luck next time

2. You exceeded the (usually stated) coupon limit.

This is the one that always gets me. You’d think after years of couponing I’d pay closer attention to the fine print, but somehow I always forget about coupon limits. Manufacturers know you love their coupons, and sometimes they want to bless us with high value coupons but stick a limit on there so we don’t go crazy – maybe a limit of 4, or in stingy manufacturer cases, just 2 or 1. Once in a while, there will be no limit stated on the coupon but it beeps after a certain number anyways because it’s accidentally been coded to. In these cases, the store employee will usually override the system and manually enter the coupon. But not always.

3. You missed a key word.

Wording, wording, wording. In the currency of coupons, it doesn’t matter what is pictured on the coupon, it matters what the words say. A good example of this is with Suave products. Suave has two lines with similar names and similar looking bottles – Suave Professionals and Suave Essentials. Generally, the coupons for one will not work on the other product so you need to pay close attention to the wording.

4. It’s for the totally wrong product.

Whoops! I recently brought up a jar of salsa to the checkout and wondering why my Chi Chi’s salsa coupon wasn’t working. I only got one so I knew I didn’t exceed a limit, and the coupon didn’t expire until October. Turns out I accidentally grabbed Pace salsa. My bad.

5. Just a system error!

Maybe the coupon was coded wrong, who knows. Usually as long as your item fits the product description (see #3), a cashier will be happy to help you out.