I have a routine; each Saturday I check online to see how many coupon inserts will be in my local Sunday newspaper. This allows me to gauge how many papers I’d like to purchase but there are some catches here.
Last year I’d checked online, seen how many inserts there were supposed to be, and went to my local Fry’s to get my Sunday papers. The problem was that every paper I’d checked didn’t have the correct number of inserts. I went to three more Fry’s and found the same thing so I went to some convenience stores as well; same thing! I made a call the the Arizona Republic (my local paper) and I was advised that they often run out of certain inserts so they deliver papers to the local grocery stores without all the inserts. They also stated the only way they could guarantee you got all the inserts was to sign up for their home delivery service. So now we come to a new saga in the era of the extreme couponer…..
While out purchasing my latest local Arizona Republic Sunday paper at the store I was informed by another shopper that the Arizona Republic is now limiting the number of Sunday papers they will deliver to a single location.
This sounded absurd since people do in fact PAY for the home delivery so I called the Arizona Republic today. I spoke to Alexandra and initially she didn’t’ think there was a limit but she checked with a supervisor and it’s a good thing she did. There is now a delivery limit of six papers per household.
I’m not an extreme couponer by any means but I do often help other members of my family by purchasing news papers for them so that they may also have coupons; this means I buy multiple papers. Depending on the number of coupon inserts I will buy anywhere from 4-8 papers at a time. The Arizona Republic is now telling couponers they should take their money and shove it because they won’t be getting more than six papers delivered. This just doesn’t seem right because one minute they are demanding you have the Sunday paper delivered in order to get what you are paying for, and then the next minute they are slapping your hand saying “you can’t have that many papers!”.
This seems like a pretty stupid business move on their part if you ask me…..
Free Papers? Do tell! I’m in the Phoenix area and curious where to snag these.
Great article!
Thanks for your comment Kim! Most cities in Arizona offer small free papers such as the Mesa Tribune, Chandler Tribune and the AhwatukeeTribune. Those free papers often contain FREE COUPONS!
We stopped taking the AZ Republic because of their editorials but I do miss the coupons. I go to the store to just buy the Sunday paper (twice) and no coupons. I will stop doing that now. I think they will fold soon because they have tried to go all digital and people have stopped taking the paper. Advertizers quit paying to put things in failing papers.
I am so sorry to hear about the experience you had buying papers at the store. I complained about this once and they informed me that the only way to “guarantee” you get coupons is to have the paper delivered. Honestly, this seemed more like a scam than anything else and when I asked them why the news stand I got the papers from had a big red sign stating there were coupons, they ended up sending me coupons for free papers!