I just signed up on Coupons.com, since it was free and the site's privacy policy promised not to sell or trade my personal information. After some initial trouble with the software, I finally was able to print out a set of coupons, and here's what I noticed:

1. Of the 81 coupons offered for this week, only four were for products I thought I might use. Although most of the coupons were for food products, they seemed to be mostly products that I wouldn't want to buy, like heavily sugared breakfast cereal, prepackaged snack mix, overpackaged microwave baking mixes with a disposable bowl in the box, etc.
2. I suspect that even the four I did download won't end up being used. Two are for a dollar savings on "any flavor/variety" of Muir Glen or Cascadian Farms products (organic packaged goods), so they might be useful if I can combine them with a decent sale before they expire at the end of July. The other two were real long shots: $1.00 on "any General Foods International product" (a line of packaged coffee drinks) and 75 cents on "any variety Oatmeal Crisp cereal." Both of these are so overpriced as a rule that they would have to be heavily discounted to be a good deal even with the coupons. And three of the four coupons are specifically marked "DO NOT DOUBLE OR TRIPLE" (not that stores in my area double coupons anyway).
3. The site attempted to print out several coupons that I hadn't selected; I had to shut off the printer to avoid wasting paper and ink on these.

So what I'm wondering is, is this coupon site really worthwhile, or is it going to turn out to be a waste of time and paper? I use very few coupons in general because I don't get a local paper, so the only coupons I can usually get for free are the ones I can pick up at in-store displays. This site was appealing because it would provide the coupons at no cost, but now I'm not sure if it will even be worth the effort.

What have your experiences been with coupon sites? I know there are some that charge a monthly fee for use; do these sites offer good enough deals to pay for themselves? Does it depend on what kind of products you usually buy, or on what kinds of prices your local stores normally offer? I find it hard to believe that a subscription site would pay for itself, since I've noticed that in most cases, a name-brand product with a coupon still won't be as cheap as the store brand unless you can combine the coupon with a good sale. Have other people found these sites to be useful? If so, which ones are the best?

Most of my groceries are store brand, so online coupons usuall are not available for these products. On the off chance that I do find a few good coupons, the site always wants me to download software that usually won't load on my computer. Does anyone know of a free coupon site that doesn't require downloads?

Dear Orbisongirl,

I've had pretty good luck calling the 800 numbers for different food companies and requesting free coupons. General Mills/Pillsbury mostly. I've gotten coupons for Aurora's food that way. Aurora is my very spoiled kitty.

I get the free Kraft Foods magazine and it has coupons in it. I also get some newsletters from Kraft and I ended up being asked if I wanted to try their new products. That means 1 Free coupon and 2-$1 off coupons. I get the chance to have these coupons offered to other people (I have to have email addresses to give to Kraft Foods), but so far no one has wanted me to do it for them. If you'd like to take part, please send me a PM. The current offer was for Bagelfuls, a new frozen bagel like thing loaded with cream cheese.

I also get some of the free samples from the Walmart site.

Hope that helps !

Generally speaking: no.  If you are truly shopping frugally, then you will be buying more store brands than the national brands and sites like Coupon.com usually only carry large brands, often all from the same company (e.g. mostly Quaker/Tropicana/Pepsi products, for example), which we rarely bought (also the main reason why we didn't sign up for Upromise, brands we just didn't use qualified and stuff we did use didn't).  If you do buy those then by all means, print the coupon.  If not....but the sites, if free, are good to keep around and check what they offer from time to time.  If you happen to see a large brand name product on sale and it's a good sale, then that would be a good time to check and see if the coupon is available to take advantage of the discount.

 If your grocery store uses a card or little keychain pass to get the savings at the checkout, check out their website.  Kroger, for example, allows you to load virtual coupons onto the card (paperless coupons) that will be deducted at checkout should you buy that items.  When we were living in the United States, Kroger was doing this also for store brands, but I just checked out the site now and that is no longer the case.

 If you are not getting coupons via the Sunday paper, you can also get coupons from

(a) the actual package (look inside, they are often hidden and not indicated on the outside.

(b) from samples.  I would sign up instead for free samples, from either sample sites or by just checking out the product online. 

 Hope that helps.