Bad experience with printables at Kroger

I just feel the need to blog about this because it's annoying and embarrassing and I'm tired of it happening, but it's an industry problem that needs to be fixed on a larger scale.

Today I went to Kroger with three printable coupons that were, obviously, all legit. Two for Goldfish crackers and one for Almond Breeze. I bought exactly those three things and handed over the coupons. The cashier looked sideways at me and said in a very rude manner "You printed these yourself? We don't take these. We don't take these because you printed them."

I am not good at handling these sorts of situations, but I told her I'd used one the day before (she said "At THIS store?!") and that Kroger corporate policy is to take them (which I admit, I am not positive about - I have emailed Kroger for clarification). I then said "I don't want any of the items if I can't use the coupons" which she sighed heavily at. She finally consented to call a manager, rolling her eyes as she did so and as I said "I want to know for the future, so I know not to bring them again." And a manager strolled over, smiled, and said oh yes, we take them, we just don't take coupons for "free" stuff or buy-one-get-one-free coupons. (Mine were for 50 cents and 55 cents.) So the girl said oh, fine, wouldn't look at me, and scanned my coupons.

COMPANIES! You MUST figure something out so that legitimate users of printable coupons do not get treated like criminals. Ugh. I know it's easy to forge and/or copy a printable coupon, but someone with a color printer at home could rather easily do the same with a newspaper coupon if s/he wanted to.

But it's more about how I've been treated when using these legitimate coupons. There's a way to say "I'm sorry ma'am, I am not sure if we take these, let me ask a manager" instead of being nasty and rude to me. There's a way to say "We've changed our policy" and to apologize for any inconvenience.

I'll still use printables - the deals are just too valuable to me. But I'm not planning on going back to this particular Kroger store again.