Walmart Is Cracking Down on Customers in California Who Use These

Walmart might not be the trendiest store in America, but there are a lot of fantastic reasons to shop there. It’s the one place where you can do your weekly grocery shopping, buy new tires, pick-up your prescription and grab a toy for your niece’s birthday party. 

You may also choose Walmart because it’s close to your home or because you love the variety of brands they carry. But for most people, the appeal of California’s 280 or Idaho’s 26 Walmart locations is their low prices. Thanks to the ridiculous inflation we’ve experienced in all sectors, people are looking for bargains. Luckily, Walmart’s looked at retail trends and determined that they could drop prices on certain food items like eggs, apples and deli snacks back to where they were before the pandemic. 

READ MORE: 11 Items You Should Never Buy At An Idaho or California Dollar Store

While that’s great news, the store also quietly rolled out some new rules to keep customers from taking advantage of coupons to lower their prices even more. 

Walmart’s Latest Coupon Policy

You might be scratching your head going “But, I’ve never seen any Walmart coupons.” You’re not confused, you’re right. The big box retailer doesn’t support its own coupon program, but they will accept paper coupons from a product manufacturer. Those could be physical coupons that you find on the outside of the box or print off the internet on your. As long as it's on paper and has a GS1 barcode, you’re good to go. 

Get our free mobile app

They’ll still accept those, but according to Coupons in the News, Walmart updated its coupon policy in late 2023 to prevent shoppers from abusing their policy on overages. Simply put, that means that Walmart would sometimes give you back cash or apply overages to other items in your order if your coupon was larger than the price of the item. Under the new policy? No more. Sorry, extreme couponers. 

What If My Coupon Won’t Scan?

Too bad, so sad. With the new coupon policy in place, Coupons in the News reports that cashiers and managers no longer have the ability to override the register that rejected it. The fancy registers are the know all, end all. 

Finally, the Arkansas based store has decided to limit shoppers to four identical coupons per household unless the coupon instructs them otherwise. 

This might not be the end of the world for regular shoppers who weren’t even aware that Walmart accepts coupons in the first place, but for hardcore couponers that have been using these loopholes to make a little extra cash for years, it is a bit of a surprise. If you want to read the full coupon policy, we grabbed it for you HERE.