Renuzit Aroma: Natural Crystals With Premium Fragrances

To buy or not to buy: Not to buy.

For me, this was the typical impulse buy. It is a new product. I had seen a coupon for it – I actually had it in my coupon box. Then, I noticed it on the shelf – there were only two left and it was easy to notice because of the unusual almost empty spot on the shelf. And it was on sale. I didn’t think twice before picking it up.

Through a window in the box you can see a glass jar containing a bag of crystals. I quickly sniffed at the box with the red crystals. No smell. I sniffed at the box with the green crystals. Nothing. Couldn’t the manufacturers put a scratch and sniff patch on the box? They could have, but they didn’t – they didn’t lose anything so far as I still purchased the product. I put the red crystals in my basket.

I cut the bag and poured its contents in the glass jar. They are very pretty. The smell, however, was very strong and extremely fake. The kind that gives you a headache. I wouldn’t say the smell was berries, but I couldn’t tell what it was. I had to hold my breath and go in another room to read the instructions.

Oh, you can adjust the amount of crystals to pour in the jar. Maybe I wouldn’t have destroyed the bag during opening, had I seen a zipper on it. But the bag is not reusable in any way. So now here I was intoxicated by the strong, fake smell, needing to get a zipper bag to store some of the crystals.

Then I thought, wait, there has to be a lid for this jar! Guess what, there isn’t. Why isn’t there a lid? Mystery. Not to mention that the smell causing stuff is dyed juice on the surface of the crystals, that wipes off everything and stains. Do not purchase if you have chidren, they will want to taste the “candy”! Do not accidentally spill the crystals or touch them when pouring into a zipper bag.

How could this product be improved? Keep the jar, keep the crystals, keep the non-reusable bag and keep the coupon inside the box. Add a pretty lid with a vent on it, that can be opened or closed depending on the desired strenght. And add a scratch patch on the box so people know what they’re bringing home.

Add a comment March 7, 2009

eCoupons: The Best Of Both Worlds

If you want to get a decent price on your groceries at any store, including at Kroger, you must have a shopper’s card. This red piece of plastic can save you hundreds of dollars a year and it costs nothing to get one. The latest way you can make this card work for you is by addig eCoupons to it.

E-Coupons are discounts that will apply on select products at check-out. They require no clipping, storing, flipping through and finding. You won’t forget them home: if you have your card, you have your coupons. The best part is that these coupons, which can usually be found in printed form in the same period of time, can be used together with the paper coupons. Let’s say I had a $0.55 off coupon from Sunday’s newspaper. Then, I load a $0.55 ecoupon for the same product onto my card. Ta-daaaa! $1.10 off that product.  How awesome is that!!

The system is not perfect and some problems do exist. Sometimes, these coupons will not apply to the respective product. Nobody can explain why, it’s just that “the system” has a mind of its own. This can be fixed by shooting a quick email to customer service and they will reinburse you for the value of that coupon, if you give them the receit number, shopper’s card number, and value of the coupon. Sometimes, the scanner will not recognize a scan bar and the cashier will manually put in the price. If this happens, again the coupon will not apply and you can’t prove to the customer support people that you actually purchased the right product for that coupon to apply. Lastly, these coupons do not double as the regular printed ones and you don’t have them in front of you when you shop, to see if they are still valid or if they expired.

Go online to Kroger.com. They have two digital coupon programs and they both require registration.  Register to have access to both eSaver and P&G coupons. Make sure you input the correct card number, as all the cents off will be loaded onto your card. Then browse through the list of coupons they offer at the time and click “Add”. It’s that simple.

Add a comment February 5, 2009