Coupons, bartering grow in popularity

By NANCY TREJOS

WASHINGTON — Another sign that consumers are increasingly searching for free items is the growing popularity of coupons: Coupon redemption on consumer packaged goods increased 16.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 from the same quarter a year earlier, according to Valassis, a media and marketing services company.

Savvy shoppers know that using coupons on days when stores have double or triple coupon promotions can lead to free goods.

Rather than pay for goods, people also are bartering for them. Craigslist has reported a 100-percent increase in traffic on its bartering boards.

There are plenty of other Web sites devoted to bartering. On Swaptree.com, people trade books, DVDs and CDs and only pay for shipping.

Textswap.com lets college students trade textbooks. You can swap pretty much anything on U-Exchange.com.