Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 29, 1990 TAG: 9005290174
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
She proved it recently by strolling through a Richmond Ukrop's, filling a shopping cart with groceries that came to $109 at the cash register, and then pulling out coupons enough to cut her bill to $4.69.
That amount was for the state sales tax, which can't be couponed away.
"It becomes almost a challenge at times to be able to save at the supermarket," she says. "It's also fun to see if you can beat them at their own game."
Behind the shopping cart, Samtur approaches a new supermarket the way a general looks over a battlefield. She carries a divided file folder in which cents-off and free-product coupons are divided by categories, so she has to be organized in her attack.
Before long, she is nearly hidden behind a mountain of groceries a typical shopper would buy.
Although many of the products aren't the packaged foods and cosmetics usually associated with coupons and refund offers, she somehow has coupons to cover it all.
There are coupons from a barbecue sauce maker that cover meat, for instance. There are coupons that promise $2 off the total grocery bill. There are coupons you'll never see in a newspaper or magazine.
They come by mail from food companies and are available to anyone who takes the trouble to buy the company's product and send in the required part of the label or package.
Manufacturers, mostly the national brands, continuously make offers of cash refunds, free gifts such as beach towels and sneakers, and free-product coupons.
But it's more time consuming than glancing through the Sunday paper and ripping out a few coupons that look good.
To be a serious couponer and refunder, you have to be part workaholic and part packrat.
Samtur says she still spends about eight hours a week clipping coupons from newspapers and magazines, organizing the coupons by category, saving packaging materials to use as "qualifiers" and "proofs of purchase," preparing and sending away 100 to 120 refund packages a month.
The rewards to someone who does all that, uses the coupons strategically in conjunction with local store sales, and constantly switches brands to get the best prices, can be a savings of 30 percent to 40 percent of the grocery bill - plus maybe $50 in cash, which more than covers postage, and a steady stream of "free gifts."
It takes a couple of months to save up enough coupons for a totally free trip to the market, Samtur says, so most people use the freebies as they come in to reduce their bill.
There are people all over the country who live for refunding. They have coupon exchange clubs, they subscribe to newsletters and can spend hours discussing such "POPs" (proofs of purchase) and "SMPs" (specially marked packages).
You can go too far with all this, Samtur admits.
There have been some recent cases in which coupon-crazy zealots stepped outside the law to cash in on deals by sending in refund applications under fictitious names. Some have been arrested for using counterfeit coupons. There are even instances in which renegade refunders have purchased cash registers to fake receipts to qualify for cash and knick-knacks.
Connie "Coupon-Connie" Arvidson of Boca Raton, Fla., reportedly was raking in $40,000 or $50,000 a year on illegal refunding schemes before she was recently sentenced to 27 months in prison for mail fraud.
Samtur says the couponing crooks who "get greedy" are a tiny minority. Most serious couponers and refunders keep their lust for booty in check by trading coupons and "qualifiers" instead of making up names and trying to cash in twice on the same offer.
"Nobody wants to kill the goose that laid the golden egg," Samtur says.
In her case, the real golden egg turned out to be sharing the expertise she has aquired since she clipped the Lipton Cup-a-Soup coupon in a New York City teachers' lounge 17 years ago.
Back in her teaching days, colleagues noticed her passion for tearing off soup labels and asked her what she was up to. She saw the possibilities.
Soon Samtur had distributed her first issue of "Refundle Bundle," a newsletter that attempts to give all the particulars of every current refund offer.
Her book, "Cashing In at the Cash Register," has sold more than 500,000 copies. She and her husband, Steven, also run a company that buys subscribers' unneeded coupons and sells them to other subscribers by product category.
But Samtur says she rarely uses the coupons that are recycled by her company.
"I still clip 'em," she says. "I still get the same thrill."
by CNB