2012 Jewel-Osco Freezer Deal begins Sunday, February 5th!

If you’ve ever thought about getting that second freezer (which many Super-Couponers find invaluable for stocking up on meats, frozen vegetables, and other frozen foods) start thinking about hitting Jewel-Osco for their annual Freezer Deal! Jewel-Osco confirmed on their Facebook wall that the freezers will be on sale Sunday!

In years past, the freezer has been a 5.3 cubic foot Igloo brand. This year, it will sell for $159, with $159 worth of FREE product coupons coming back to you when you buy the freezer. (frozen foods and other food items, as well as some non-food grocery items too.) Blogger Chris over at Deranged.me has done her homework and gotten a copy of the list of coupons included with this year’s deal. The coupons expire on June 30th, 2012. To maximize your savings, hold onto them as long as possible, matching as many of them as you can to Buy One, Get One Free sales in the store — then, you’ll take two home free instead of one!

So… get ready to hit the store this weekend if you’ve been thinking about getting a chest freezer to hold your expanding frozen-food stockpile!

Last year, longtime reader “Your Jewel Cashier” (who, yes, is a Jewel cashier) sent a great list of tips for freezer day to share with readers planning on adding a freezer to the family…

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KEY POINTS ABOUT THE SALE

Your Jewel card is required to make the purchase.
Each store will have approx 50 freezers to sell (bigger stores will have slightly more)

The ad will clearly state-
Limit one freezer purchase per customer
Limit one MFR coupon and one STORE coupon may be used toward freezer purchased.
[Note from Jill: The store coupon being referred to here would be in the instance that a shopper has a “$10-off-$100” coupon from a mailer.]

KEY POINTS ABOUT THE FREEZER

As always, freezers SHOULD NOT be loaded on their backs for transporting purposes, they should be kept upright at all times.

Please remind readers to not bring their HONDA CIVIC or FORD FUSION to buy the freezer and then expect the 17-year-old bag boy to fit that square peg in a round hole?!?!?!?!

(Laugh all you want, but this happens numerous times in every store every single year! And then the customer insists that it will fit if you take it out of the box, then it gets scratched up, or the car does, and the customer gets mad at us! Borrow a truck, guys! You should see it, it’s like a clown car experiment gone wrong!)

The freezer must be plugged in and LEFT ALONE empty for 24 hours to regulate its internal temperature before attempting to fill it.

This is another interesting phenomenon we watch every year. The customers that buy the freezer and 100% of the food all in the same day at the same time never read the owners manual, which clearly states you can’t fill it until it’s been plugged in for 24 hours (at least that’s what mine said when I bought it 3 years ago.)

Now we all know they aren’t going to fit that food in the overhead freezer of their refrigerator, and sure enough, they either call back a day or two later and complain that their freezer isn’t working and the ice cream is soft. Or a month later they are returning food saying it’s freezer burned like it had frozen, thawed, and then froze again. And I want to say, “YES! That’s why the freezer came with instructions!”

One final personal note to those purchasing the freezers this year:

I know most of us couponers are used to going through self check out when doing “deals”. But if I may, PLEASE if you are getting all, or even half of the free items in one order, please, please, please:

1) go through a traditional lane
2) give the cashier your Jewel card and your coupons FIRST before starting your order. You have no idea how much stress and time this saves EVERYONE involved. EVERY SINGLE ONE of those free coupons is set to “beep” with a price prompt, meaning if the cashier gets your coupons at the end of the order they will have to look up every one of your free items on your receipt one by one to find the price. IF the items are on sale with the Jewel card they will have to manually do the math to see the sale price and then manually key in that price as well as write it on the coupon for accounting purposes.

If you give them the coupons first, they can go through and write down the prices as the items scan which eliminates all the time and effort of having to look each price up. This generally eliminates most all mistakes, the need for manager intervention, and about 10 minutes off your check out time.

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If you have any additional questions about the freezers, you may enjoy reading last year’s freezer discussions, where you’ll find many other answers (a lot of the same questions get asked each year!)

2011 Jewel-Osco Freezer Deal

2010 Jewel-Osco Freezer Deal

2009 Jewel-Osco Freezer Deal