I got a coupon in the mail from retailer X the other day. “Special 20% off all purchases of $200 or more by Dec. 31” See reverse side for details.
So I actually read the details on back. And at the end it said:
“This coupon is redeemable for 1/20 of 1 cent.”
So if I gathered 20 coupons together, I could exchange it for a penny?
So if I gathered 2000 coupons . . . a dollar?
Does anyone actually redeem coupons for the cash value? Why do they even print this information, what is its purpose?
Cecil Adams explains this in a short column from 1978.
Please note the second link is given despite a merciless exposé of my mathematical inadequacies appearing therein.
I had a friend in high school got a kick out of attempting Outrageous Stunts just to see how The Man would react. Once he stuck a mailing label and a few stamps on a Nintendo cartridge to see if it would get delivered (it did!)
Anyway, one time we were walking home from school and he found a big pile of coupons in the parking lot of the local grocery store. He decided to pull one of his famous stunts and walked into the store with 20 of them and went to one of the cashiers.
“I’d like to redeem these twenty coupons for the cash value!” he declared.
The cashier said “Okay,” took the coupons, counted them, and handed him a penny.
Needless to say, he was rather disappointed.
I always thought you had to redeem the coupons from the manufacturer not the store.
So if you had a Stove Top Stuffing coupon with 1/20th of a cent, I thought you’d have to get 20 such coupons and then mail it to whoever makes Stove Top