Customer service

§ January 23rd, 2010 § Filed under Uncategorized § No Comments

Not many businesses here can survive the competitions without providing excellent customer service. Few weeks ago, I ordered a steam cleaner from Amazon, it was shipped via ground UPS. UPS lost the package (might be mis-delivered to a wrong address). When I called Amazon, they immediately sent out a replacement for next day delivery without extra cost and apologized for the inconvenience. There is a reason why Amazon has been a successful business model for many years!

In the digital age, they are a lot more venues for disgruntled customers to blow off steam about bad service or deficient products.  Anyone doing business in the current world of instant Internet feedback, whether it’s on blogs, Twitter, Facebook or via other social networks should read : Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000.

After being here for a year, the employees at my favorite grocery stores here knows my name. I love the good deals they offer and their friendliness towards my coupons use. The attendants at the self checkout machines loved to see me getting stuffs for pennies and called me the ” genius who got groceries for free”.

When I first started doing all the coupon deals last year, the employees were suspicious and checked all my coupons carefully. They were also a  couple of instances, I had to call their corporate office to train them about specific coupon use. I was very impressed with their customer service. They called the store, sorted this out with the manager and had him called me to apologize each time.

Right now, they are a lot more people who are drawn to doing all the coupon deals due to the economy. The employees are much better trained, it’s usually a breeze to shop at the stores. When there is a killing deal that pays me to take stuffs from the store, the employees are used to seeing me there everyday spending 2-3 hours at the store. Some of them pulled me aside to ask for tips, they wanted to learn how to do the deals too!

Some employees don’t understand the concept of coupons and they think the store is losing by giving out all the groceries for FREE.  Well, I may have gotten the groceries for free, but the store is not giving them out for free, the manufacturers are paying for them! Why the manufacturers are giving them away? The marketers are not dumb, what better way to develop brand loyalty than giving their products out for free to try, then get hooked and pay full price for it later? Fortunately, the store that I frequent has a wise manager who told them the reason they have a job is because they have customers who are happy to shop there and whether the customer pay with cash, credit card, check or coupons, the store sells the products and gets paid in the end !

Stockpiling perishable food

§ January 20th, 2010 § Filed under household, slice of life § No Comments

Stockpiling is an essential part of coupon shopping to save money, as you buy things when they are on sales, not when you are out of them. Instead of running out to the store to buy things at their normal price when running out, I shop out of my pantry and freezer.

The landlord provides us a 2-door refrigerator with the top freezer compartment. We somehow managed to “squeeze” a chest freezer and an upright freezer into our tiny apartment. The chest freezer was from a deal at our grocery store, yes, we got it almost free with coupons!

The outside and inside of the refrigerator.

The refrigerator is usually more packed than this, I am trying to “empty” it a bit before leaving for Malaysia in February. They are more yogurts in a plastic tub that I left them in what people here called the “Polish refrigerator” – the outside freezing cold weather.

The outside and inside of the chest freezer.

We use the chest freezer for meat. They are currently fill to the rim. The hams and turkeys that are free with coupons before Christmas are taking too much space! I have the meat separated by paper bags, one bag for pork, one bag for seafood, one bag for chicken, one bag for turkey and one bag for beef. I still have a few 2lb bags of shrimps and 30-40 bags of Franks I got in March/April 2009 inside there. The meat can last a long time in the deep freezer especially when they are vacuumed sealed.

Really glad I burned some Catalina coupons to get this vacuum sealer. It makes stockpiling perishable food and meal planning in advance much easier. With the ability to pick up fresh, seasonal fruits, vegetables when the stores are running deals or they are abundant of wine tags to get them for FREE. The vacuum-sealing allows me to use these foods when I choose, rather than rushing to use them up or waiting too long only to find they have gone bad!

The outside and inside of the upright freezer.

The upright freezer is currently filled with frozen vegetables, fruits, ice cream, breakfast food (waffles, strudels, breads) milk and pizza. The content varies from month to month as the deals differ. A couple of months ago, when milk was free with coupons, we have lots of of milk in the freezer, and didn’t have to buy milk for the last six months. Everything in this freezer is either FREE or they paid me to take home. What you see is a tip of the iceberg of what I actually bought at the store. When they paid me to bring home ice cream during a promotion in the summer, I bought more than 180 tubs of ice cream but only brought home about 20 tubs, gave/donated most of them away. The ice cream craze got me $200+ in coupons to buy other groceries/necessities.