<strong>Dear Jill:</strong> My local supermarket sent a coupon mailer to me, and inside was a coupon for a free tube of toothpaste from a name brand. The coupon was interesting because it did not specify a size or variety, only that it was good on “any” toothpaste of this brand. So, I picked out a fancy one with extra whitening properties and whatnot. This tube of toothpaste was $5.49, which I never would have ordinarily paid for any toothpaste. When I got to the register, the coupon beeped and did not scan. The cashier looked at the toothpaste, looked at the coupon and said because the coupon did not say exactly what kind of this brand of toothpaste it was for, she overrode the register and applied it.

Did I do anything wrong, or was this the right thing to do? What would you have done? <strong>— Shae C.</strong>

The word “any” certainly presents a lot of possibilities to a coupon shopper. Coupons for any size, any flavor or any variety of a product open up many purchasing options. That said, when a coupon states it is valid on any kind of a product, there are occasionally times when the company creating the coupon does not make it valid on all varieties of a product, even when the coupon states “any.”

Without getting into all of the specifics, the bar code on a coupon is coded to include the details of the product it’s intended for. When the coupon is scanned at the register, the register validates a qualifying item has been purchased, and then the coupon’s discount is applied.

If a coupon is scanned, and the register cannot locate a qualifying item to match the coupon, the register will reject this offer. This is what happened to my reader when she purchased the toothpaste in the above example. The register did not see the shopper had purchased the “correct” variety of toothpaste, so the register rejected it.

That said, it sounds as though the cashier did the right thing. Consumers have no easy way of ascertaining what the bar code on a coupon is coded to work on simply by looking at the code itself. We must rely on the wording on the coupon, and in this case, I agree “any toothpaste” is just that.