Using Coinstar to Splurge at BI-LO

This is a guest post from Coupon Teacher. I want to thank Coupon Teacher for sharing this post on how you can cash in your coins at Bi-Lo without a fee and receive a gift card!
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I rarely go grocery shopping. I always spend more than my wife, “Coupon Teacher”, wants me to! She was recently asked to check out a Coinstar machine at BI-LO, so I was happy follow along with her and try it out too! I thought maybe I would get some good snack food out of it. Follow #NoFeeCoinstar and #CBias on Twitter for more details about my wife’s shop and the no fee promotion!

I had used Coinstar a couple of other times, but I was shocked when I found out the cash fees were almost 10%. So, I had been wasting a little money I didn’t know about. I mean sometimes it is ok to pay for convenience, but it isn’t something I want to do all the time. So when my wife told if you choose a gift card there are no fees, I was almost as excited as she was! That discovery might pay for a snack for work now and then.

The machine was easy to use and the terms were clear. They even double checked to be sure I understood I wasn’t getting cash back.



My “half” of the spare change turned into $20.12, which was actually a little more than my wife got. I can get a lot of man stuff for $20! (Or so I thought.) I was secretly happy that my total was more than my wife’s total, because I knew she would get more for her money.



I found some snack foods, juices, and lighter fluid, while my wife shopped for things she wanted that were on sale. I will admit, I lost count of how much I was spending. It isn’t often someone let’s me loose in a store to buy whatever I want. I had $20 didn’t I?



Check out was easy, except I went over my gift card value by $16. My wife wasn’t upset (this time). We were able to use our spare change to offset the costs of my splurges!

Want to see my whole trip? You can check out my Google+ story!

If you want to learn more about Coinstar, you can check them out on Facebook or Twitter. And in case you wondered, BI-LO is on Facebook and Twitter too!

I have been paid (at Coinstar’s request) to try and blog about Coinstar’s products/services as part of a Collective Bias shopper insights study. All opinions are my own.

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Disclosure: This post is being hosted on my blog as part of a Coinstar and Collective Bias campaign. I was compensated for hosting this post.