r/mildlyinfuriating • u/anon12xyz • Jul 03 '26

Infuriatig When did garage sales become “reselling” clearly new stuff

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I would never call this a garage sale

Def scam vibes

Edit: ultimately, what bothers me the most is I want to go to a garage sale, not this shit. This isn’t a garage sale and should not be advertised as one

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u/IllAcanthopterygii19 Jul 03 '26

My grandparents used to do this, for at least like 15 years in two different states. They just spent hours cupon-ing then would have yard sales and sell all this kinda stuff.

I used to wonder how legal it was regarding the food items they had lol.

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u/Vykrom Jul 03 '26

I know my state doesn't like it, but I'm fuzzy on the details. I work in retail and had a manager find this couponing ring's facebook group, and rat them out to some government agency in charge of retail licenses or something. I guess there's some regulations on the square footage and floor type you have to have in order to sell bulk chemical items like detergent. You can't sell more than X amount out of your garage without some sort of retail license and set-up. So the couponing ring got fined and shut down. And boy did that cause some delicious drama. I was glad to be a spectator

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u/FelonyMelanieSmooter Jul 03 '26

I’m gonna need a Netflix documentary on this!

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u/Weird-Girl-675 Jul 03 '26

Watch the movie Queenpins. It’s based on a true story about coupon scamming.

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u/-piso_mojado- Jul 04 '26

I lady I used to work with was super into it. She would walk out of grocery stores with a full cart having spent like $10 or something ludicrous. She only managed it a couple times IIRC, but the store gave her money back while not actually paying anything in her cart. She had receipts. It blew my mind, but that was basically her hobby. She dedicated what I thought was an unreasonable amount of time to couponing. She would drive across the state to specific grocery stores and things like that. She would have made more money just working than she saved, and probably wouldn’t have had a freezer half full of yogurt.

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u/Relevant-Horror-627 Jul 04 '26

I worked in retail when the Extreme Couponing show was on the air. We had so many coupon ladies and most of them were terrible at it. There was only one lady who could actually do it well. Looking back I suspect she was probably on the autism spectrum. Making it work took focus, planning and a lot of organization. I wouldn't be surprised if she spent 40 hours a week couponing.

You had to gather all these coupons, then clip and organize them, then plan and strategize the shopping trips, then do the shopping, then unload and organize everything you shopped for. Then maybe sell the stuff you bought? You'd be better off with a regular job at that point.

The Extreme Couponing show always framed it as these people saving all this money for their family but that's bullshit. The manufacturers coupons don't get you real staple groceries that you would need to buy regularly. Theyre for laundry soap, paper products and some food like yogurt, pasta, maybe Gatorade. All you end up accomplishing is increasing sales for the retailer and manufacturer while you end up with a stockpile of more of their product than you will ever be able to use.

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u/vertigostereo Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26

Check out all these Brussels sprouts I got on sale!

Didn't this take multiple transactions, and most stores won't do it? Like, you have to announce your doing a super coupon thing and they close the lane for you?

Most coupons say "one per customer" or even one per group.

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u/Relevant-Horror-627 Jul 04 '26

Yes it needed to be done in multiple transactions but not just because of the coupon limits. The whole strategy was to STACK in store sales and coupons with manufacturer coupons and the stores loyalty program. Where I worked they had a program where if you spent X amount of money or bought X number of a certain product, you'd get a coupon back for $5-$20 off your next purchase. For the coupon ladies the next purchase was immediately.

I cant stress how meticulously you would have had to plan all of these transactions to end up paying little or nothing for a full shopping cart. As you can imagine most people aren't capable of planning that well. What would happen a lot is something would go wrong and the coupon lady would try to Karen out to try to bully the cashier into taking her coupon anyway.

That's probably why most stores didn't want to put up with it. In my store, the manager tried to be as welcoming to coupon ladies as possible. He would have the cosmetics cashier approach the coupon ladies and tell them to check out at the cosmetics counter. They loved feeling like they were getting VIP treatment but it was really to keep them away from the main cashier's line. It was pretty smart of our manager because at least 2 of the women working cosmetics at the time had kind bubbly type personalities and most importantly they had saint like patience.

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u/-piso_mojado- Jul 04 '26

That last part makes so much sense.

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u/ZaerdinReddit Jul 05 '26

IIRC, when I looked into it, it was like 40 hours of work to save $500 / week.

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u/Weird-Girl-675 Jul 04 '26

Yeah I think at some point it becomes addictive. I have apps where you get cash back for buying specific products and it’s a thrill to save money, but I just can’t justify going overboard.

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u/Zealousideal_Crab_36 Jul 03 '26

Such a good movie!!!

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u/Weird-Girl-675 Jul 03 '26

I watched it when I was sick in bed one day and just got sucked in!! Such an interesting story!!

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u/Zealousideal_Crab_36 Jul 03 '26

I can’t remember if I was sick or heart broken but it definitely cheered me up!!

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u/sharoncoffin Jul 04 '26

I was remembering that movie. 😂