How-to of the Week: Double Coupons

What does it mean to "double coupons?"

Double coupons and sometimes triple coupons is a promotion that is offered by the store. The store will take your coupon for $0.50 and take $1.00 off your purchase. This usually gets taken off automatically by the register. You will see 2 deductions of $0.50 off on your receipt. The manufacturer is offering the face value of the coupon. The "doubled" amount is giving by the store as a way of attracting more shoppers.

Most stores will double coupons only up to a certain amount, whether it be $.50, $.75 or $.99. Any coupon more than that will not be doubled. My local Stop & Shop doubles up to $.99 so a $.75 coupon is worth $1.50 but a $1 coupon only deducts $1.

There might also be a limit to how many like coupons they will accept. For example, if you buy 5 boxes of chocolate chip cookies and use five $.75 off coupons only the first four would double. The last one would still be accepted for only the face value at $.75. You could, however, use 3 $.75 coupons and 2 $.50 coupons and all would double because they are different.

Some coupons say "do not double" on them. Most of these will still double at the registers unless the bar code begins with "9". It is up to the cashier if they want to manually take off the double amount.

Make sure you take a look at your store's coupon policy. Knowing the policy will make shopping & checkout much smoother.