Once upon a time, 61-year-old Molly Perry went into a Fayetteville, North Carolina grocery store, ignored the sale ad, grabbed more than $500 worth of stuff – and didn’t use a single coupon! What is she, Fayetteville’s richest retired nurse??
No, she was just the winner of a contest that awarded her a two-minute shopping spree.
As reported by the Fayetteville Observer, Perry showed up at the Carlie C’s IGA on Thursday morning, wearing a track suit and sneakers, ready to run through the store and load up on all the free things she could cram into a cart. Actually, the rules allowed her up to two carts, and no more than $100 worth of meat and a maximum of $500 in products.
So did she stock up on 500 bottles of Kraft dressing, a good deal at just $1 in the store’s sale ad this week? Or a thousand biscuits, on sale for just $.50? No, she went for the expensive stuff, like Tide detergent, toilet paper, canisters of coffee and packages of steaks and chicken, as onlookers shouted, “Grab! Grab!” and “Scoop it! Scoop it!”
Eight minutes into her two-minute shopping spree (the official timekeeper apparently counted verrrry slooooowly), she unloaded her two carts and her total came remarkably close to the $500 limit – $500.32 before tax. But, in contrast to the big totals that go down, down, down on “Extreme Couponing”, her total didn’t budge. Free stuff or not, the “Total Savings $0.00” is enough to give a couponer nightmares.
