I recently heard about Shortcuts.com, a new coupon website where you can add electronic coupons to your customer loyalty card, and I was intrigued. Normally I don’t bother with coupons because I never remember to take them with me, and they tend to expire before I get around to using them. Plus there is something really frustrating about pulling out a coupon, only to find out that it has expired. But Shortcuts.com seemed to get around most of the issues I have with coupon clipping, so I decided to try them out.

The interface of the website is clean and easy to use. I signed up and typed in the code from the customer loyalty card for my local grocery store (actually it’s a little plastic bar code on my keychain). That was it. Then I added all the coupons I wanted by clicking the “add” button next to each coupon. There were only nine coupons available for the Smiths store I had selected as my primary grocery store — so I ended up adding all nine. I assumed that they were successfully added to my account, but to be sure I cruised down to my local grocery store to put my invisible coupons to the test.

I grabbed a couple boxes of Go-gurts and headed for the self-checkout. Sure enough, after scanning my snacks and the bar code of my Fresh Values card, a $1 discount was added to my purchase with something about shortcuts coupon in the description. Nice. From what I have read, this electronic coupon service is free for both customers and the stores that use it. The cost is passed on to the coupon manufacturer.

My favorite part is that if a coupon expires, it just disappears from your coupon inventory. No more keeping track of which ones are still valid. If these kinds of coupons end up being implemented more widely between stores and manufacturers, it could really take off. Hopefully the idea will catch on, and someday maybe I’ll have more than nine coupons to choose from.