Not Just Coupons, FREE Coupons.

This is more of an expansion on my original coupon post. We all know that coupons can save you hundreds of dollars a month when used the right way. But, have you ever seen a coupon for a free item?

Yes! These extremely valuable coupons really DO exist, and I've even used several of them and currently have about 5 free item coupons on hand. There are a few different ways to receive these coupons: firstly a few companies let you request the "sample" as I mentioned before and they send it to you in the form of a Free coupon. For instance, Kraft Mac and Cheese is giving away Free Macaroni and Cheese coupons to the first 200 people every day through March 4 who enter in their information at 12 PM EST. But just FYI, you have to be really quick to enter because all 200 are usually gone in less than a minute. The best method to win this one is to already have the page up before the time it starts, and just keep refreshing the page until they open up the giveaway. Auto-fill add-ons or Roboform make it a lot easier to get your entry submitted in time since they fill out the form for you within seconds.

The other two methods of receiving free coupons involve contacting companies directly by either praising a product or sending a complaint. Generally speaking, if you're complaining about a product you're much more likely to be sent a free coupon as a form of reimbursement for whatever problem you had with the product. Make sure you keep the receipts to items because you'll most likely be asked for the UPC of the item you bought as well as proof of purchase if you email a company with a complaint.

Now unless you're a compulsive liar and have no integrity whatsoever, you most likely won't want to invent complaints to email companies just to get a few easy freebies. So the best route to take is to just ask the company directly. Tell them what you like about their product! Give them suggestions! Let them know you've never actually used their product before, but it looked interesting and you'd like to try it out! If you want, add to the end of your email that you'd really appreciate it if they had a few extra coupons they could spare. Some companies are nice enough to include a free product coupon or two. And even if none of the coupons they send are for a free item, they're usually of pretty high value, and hey! a coupon's a coupon, right?

The easiest way to contact companies is through the "Contact Us" option located usually at the bottom of a company's website. This way they ask you to fill out your information first so that you don't accidentally forget to include it in your email.

I'll be compiling a big list of companies that I've emailed personally that have sent me coupons, including companies that threw in FREE coupons. In the meantime while I work on my list, here's a company for you to email that sent me a coupon for free pasta. (: