Anyone Out There Use Coupon-Clipping Websites?

Smart Money lists the five best coupon-clipping websites as follows:

• Coupons.com
• CouponCabin.com
• CouponMom.com
• RetailMeNot.com
• SmartSource.com

We don't use any of these and I'd be interested in hearing your personal experiences with them (please -- no company representatives saying how great the company is.) My wife clips coupons from the Sunday paper, store ads, and mailers, but we don't belong to any online coupon-clipping service/site. But we probably should, right?

Anyway, I'm interested in what you think about these sites. Are they worth the time and effort? What are the pros of your favorite site? Or maybe what you disliked about a coupon site.

And don't limit yourself to these sites alone. If you have others you like/don't like, please share your thoughts on them as well.

Comments

[Angie]

I have used retailmenot several times. Thats the site I always check for promo/discount codes on online shopping. Has a comment section for each coupon code where people can input whether or not it worked.

[David]

I agree with angie above. I can't speak to the other sites, but whenever I'm doing some shopping online I run a quick google for coupons and retailmenot pops up with something useful mroe often than not.

[Hank]

My wife clips coupons from the newspaper, but I never thought about clipping them from online sources. Thanks for the heads up.

[Dave]

The other money saver that many people don't use when buying online is the "click-thru" earnings. There are websites that pay you a % of your purchase for linking you to the website you're buying from. For instance, you want to buy flooring from Homedepot.com. If you start at mrrebates.com, you will get a check for 4% of your purchase back. Mrrebates is willing to pay a portion of the money they receive from Homedepot for "directing" you to their website.

I bought floors from Homedepot.com this way and received a check back for $75. Not bad for one extra click!

Rewardsdb.com is a good site to show you rates from the various "Click-thru" sites.

[Pauline]

retailmenot is great and has saved me a couple of bucks on my online purchases. When buying online, it's worth it to me to do a quick 3-minute check to see if there are any random coupons out there that could save a couple of dollars.

[MonkeyMonk]

I rarely use the sites that make you print out coupons for in-store use but I don't think I've bought anything online in the past couple of years where I didn't at least do a quick search to see if there were any promotion codes available.

We did most of out Xmas shopping last year online and literally saved $100s (both in discounts and free shipping) by using promotion codes and online coupons.

[Jacqueline]

I use them all! I also like that mypoints.com is now affiliated with coupons.com - every coupon now earns me points that I can redeem for gift cards. And I've found that the coupons I print online are generally better than the ones in the Sunday paper (higher value, etc).

[Dotty]

I was thrilled to see this post -- I actually just received my coupons from an online source today! I'm in Canada, and I find that www.save.ca has some pretty decent coupons, ranging from .50 cents to $5 off. Unfortunately, Canadian grocery stores don't tend to include coupons in their flyers anymore, so I've turned to this alternative and find it really great. Save.ca is fabulous because you can pick the coupons that you want and they'll mail them to you free of charge.

Since I'm on here, I've got a question -- Does anyone have any tips on saving money on razors? Does anyone know if it's more cost effective to buy disposable razors, or to buy the kind that you reuse the handle, but purchase new blades? Also, is there really a difference between mens and womens razors? Store brand versus company brand? I find them all expensive, and frankly, I'm too cheap (and weak) to wax anything! My friend Graham says I can have his used ones, but that's gross...
Thanks!

[FrugalMom]

I've done most of my shopping online with discount codes. Actually I prefer to shop online except for clothes and groceries, since the online stores generally offer better prices and more choices. Besides the coupon sites, I've also been checking sites like ableshoppers.com for deals.

[WiseMoneyMatters]

We use a coupon site called CouponSense.com. It doesn't really have it's own printable coupons but rather tells you where to find coupons (whether in Newspapers or Online) for certain products and which stores are doing sales on those items. It's pretty neat but really only practical for those in the Southwest region due to the stores they track.

It saves us tons of money. I think this last week, the store actually paid us to go grocery shopping after all the discounts and coupons. It was crazy.

[WiseMoneyMatters]

We use a coupon site called CouponSense.com. It doesn't really have it's own printable coupons but rather tells you where to find coupons (whether in Newspapers or Online) for certain products and which stores are doing sales on those items. It's pretty neat but really only practical for those in the Southwest region due to the stores they track.

It saves us tons of money. I think this last week, the store actually paid us to go grocery shopping after all the discounts and coupons. It was crazy.

[Kristen]

I definitely use both newspaper coupons and online printable coupons from most of the above sights. It is a quick easy way to scroll through and see if there is a coupon for something you regularly buy. I believe most of them are updated weekly and a lot of them are the same as the newspaper coupons. However one word of caution, there is many more restrictions on printable coupons/internet coupons. Some places won't take them at all, some places limit how many you can use, and a lot of them cannot be doubled or tripled. But if you are just looking for an easy way to save here and there they definitely work well.

[margo]

i LOVE retailmenot.com. it has EASILY saved me over $500 this year. highly recommended.

[RLZ]

I use retailmenot whenever I make an online purchase. It has saved me a lot of money. Almost always you can get some sort of discount - free shipping or a % off your order.

I also use CouponMom. If your wife shops at Meijer, she will probably like the site. It is totally free to join and it matches all of the weekly sales with the coupons from the newspaper (listing the coupons by the date of the newspaper they were in). She can check off the items she would like to buy from their list and then click 'display selected items', and it will show just her list along with the total price of the items on the list. I usually copy the list into Excel (so I can make modifications - quantity adjustments and additions of items not on sale) and use it to do my weekly grocery shopping. I definitely recommend this site too.

[Liz]

This is somewhat off-topic but I thought of it when Dave above said that he gets money back on click-thru purchases. I signed up for igive.com that donates a percentage (amounts vary) of your purchases at a ton of widely used stores online. You just download the program and whenever you shop online, it donates automatically. I recently got an email saying they were sending my favorite charity (www.galileeschool.org in case you were wondering :)) a check for almost $100 for purchases that I made! And I don't do much online shopping. What a fantastic way to give back by just spending what you are already spending.

And Dotty, I personally buy the cartridges for my favorite razor on ebay. Purchased in larger quantities, they end up way cheaper than at the store.

[Liz]

Uh, I think I forgot to say that igive.com donates to whatever charity you designate. :)

[Jenny]

Shortcuts.com is neat site if you have a Kroger (or affiliated) store nearby. The coupons are electronic and tied to the loyalty card you scan at checkout - so no printing. I really wish they'd add more chains though.

[Jim]

I've checked out coupons.com before and it seemed OK. I didn't use it much because I found out quickly that my Winco grocery store didn't take internet coupons. :(

I hadn't seen retailmenot before. Thanks for the alert on that one, it looks like a good site.

Jim

[thad]

This reviewer seems to think Coupons.com has some privacy issues that should be of concern to people....
http://www.benedelman.org/news/082807-1.html

[Dotty]

Thanks Liz!

[cherryblossom]

Just found this one when I was doing a search for my local store. Its basically a forum where people share info about coupons and sales.
www.afullcup.com

[Jason]

I fix pc's for a living, and just wanted to add in that many people are infected with adware/spyware from many coupon sites. (too many to list) If the website says you need to install a special free coupon printer program, RUN! If it is just asking you to install adobe flash or adobe reader or some other program that WILL WORK FOR ANY WEBSITE, its ok. Rule of thumb is if it won't work on any website, its probably adware/spyware.

[irina]

Sometimes, I buy coupons on eBay. When I need to stock up on something. It can save me $20-50, because I buy 20-50 of $1 coupons.

Crystal at http://moneysavingmom.com does a good job to report on current coupon, sales strategies.

Another coupon site, is http://hotcouponworld.com if you really want to dive in coupon world. You can buy, sell and trade your coupons there. Plus, see what sales are coming that can be combine with coupons.

[cmfalken]

I also have bought coupons on eBay and use moneysavingmom.com and the grocerygame.com. Grocery Game has a small membership fee, but it avoids all the research and clipping, so worth it to me.

@Dotty, your question about razors - I buy the cartridges in bulk on eBay. Saves a lot of money, and I only have to buy them once a year or so (do the same with Brita water filters and any other replacement products like that).

[Success Professor]

I agree with the comments about retailmenot. It has certainly saved me money.

[Bruce]

I've used CouponCabin a few times for there printable coupons at the brick and mortar stores.
After seeing the aricle, I tried CouponMom, even though they require you to install software to manage the printing of their coupons. But, you do not select coupons for a store. You provide a zip code and then select products. But the coupon is for that product at a specific store. You don't know which store in advance of printing it. I picked 2 coupons for the same product. They were for different stores, and one I never heard of. Not going to use this site, so I uninstalled the software. Also, it does not work with Opera. I then checked coupons.com and SmartSource and they looked like they worked the same as CouponMom. These two also do not work with Opera.

retailmenot has a lot of old coupons that don't lead to printing. So I am sticking with CouponCabin, but I also have had good success with
http://printable-coupons.blogspot.com/

[Lin]

I use some internet coupons, but it can be a real pain in the neck to get stores to take them.
The best feature on CouponMom is the coupon database. Plug in the name of a product, and it will show you which Sunday fliers will have a coupon, and the amount and expiration date. I now use it when I want to match up sales/coupons...

[Terry]

Shoppinggenius.org is another good site. List coupons and sales for hundreds of stores. mainly online coupons