Discount Coupons: Treat or Trick?

The other day I went to a Japanese restaurant with my wife to have some sushi and sashimi and mustard. People here in Guangzhou love Japanese food a lot - quite a lot, I'd say. The first restaurant that serves sushi and sashimi were fully booked and we had to go on find another one.

There are many Japanese restaurants in Guangzhou, majority of which are chain stores that belong to a handful of corporations. And we finally got ourselves two seats in another store that belongs to the same corporation as the one that had turned us away with its weapon of massive diners.

The dining was not bad. We were hungry enough to wolf down dishes of sushi and a whole kilo of salmon sashimi. The only thing that I was not totally happy with was that the salmon was not as fresh as all previous eating there - I have been to that restaurant many times.

Pay time came to declare the end of our banquet.

"Waiter, check please!" The waiter I was calling was too busy to hear. And a waitress came with indifferent expression on her face and took the order away. Several minutes later she returned to my table and advised me how much I should pay. I gave her the money and she went away again. Another several minutes later the waitress cam with the change and a piece of printed paper with which I was not unfamiliar with at all - a coupon.

Ohm, a coupon! Again!

I have in my not-so-long life seen many such things, at the first glance of which one may easily be cheated. They often have very enticing calls to shopping/dining. "Cash coupon worth 20!"; "Discount coupon of 5%!", if you ever believed in those, you would have probably found your wallet was emptier than it should have been and you would have spent more.

Those coupons always have many prerequisites such as:

You must have bought 100 (or other thresholds that they may lay upon the coupons) worth of goods/foods in the store/restaurant;

You cannot use the coupon(s) on the same day of your consumption;

You cannot use all the coupons at a time;

You cannot use coupons on goods/foods that are already discounted;

If the goods/foods worth lower than the value of the coupon, no refund will be offered;

You must use the coupons before a deadline comes;

...

Read those carefully and give a second thought. And you will finally find out that you are not the one who is winning but they are!

Not all the coupons have all the above requirements. But it makes no differences: you will spend more and you will spend faster.

Why? How is that true? You may ask. Simply speaking, people are always wanting more and things that are seemingly free.

So these are the tricks that business persons are playing on us - poor and dumb goats who thought we are taking advantages. But caution! Business is cruel. And those marketing people are no foolish! They give you one dollar free and steal two or more away from you. Never ever think of yourself as wise when you took the coupons and use them. The marketers are wiser than you.

So, discount coupons, or cash coupons, is a treat for you or a trick? You will see.