Coupon girl

BH has been doing quite well out of all the coupons flying around these days, which must be taking quite a bite out of the bottom lines of the big grocery chains, assuming that is that they did not push their prices up by the appropriate amount before they started issuing the things. And even if they did, it still makes sense for retired folk such as ourselves with time to think about such things, to play the game.

So I decided that I ought to join in and I am now the proud holder of  a 'My Waitrose' card, which I flashed at the self checkout machine some days ago with the result illustrated: one penny discount on a bill of more than £25. BH does much better than that both at Sainsbury's and Tesco's, who between them account for most of her grocery spend. And then today the same thing. One penny discount on a Waitrose bill of nearly £20.

However, there is a possible point of interest. I mainly use Waitrose to buy whisky (blended not that malted stuff), wine (mostly European rather than colonial, ex or otherwise), bread flour (white and brown), dates (stoned. Waitrose seems to be the only place which stocks dates pressed into small bricks and sold in a clear plastic wrapping, rather than attached to a plastic stick as if they were on the vine tomatoes, dipped in fructose and sold in dinky white foam plastic boxes) and dried yeast. The point of interest being to see what sort of offers they send to my email account now that their self-checkout computer should have connected my email address to my debit card to my 'My Waitrrose' card. Will I start getting emails about their wonderful, artisanal, oak smoked flour from Craster? Or about their Pouilly-Fumé, lovingly smoked in the same Craster smoke house?

But I should not be making fun of them. They are, by today's standards, quite a decent grocer and they probably pay their permanent staff something more than the minimum wage.