SQUEEZING myself between six shopping trolleys, I spot a scrunched-up
receipt poking out of the metal frames.
Popping it in my bag, I move to the bushes next to the car park and grab four
more scraps of paper tangled in branches.
A car rushes by and the gust of wind it creates throws three more slips into
the air.
This is wombling — and it’s tough work.
Womblers get their name from the Seventies children’s TV characters The
Wombles, who found new uses for the rubbish they picked up on Wimbledon
Common.
Today’s Womblers are super scrimpers who gather discarded supermarket till
receipts and use them to get money off their own shopping.
Asda customers can get a voucher for money off their next shop if their goods
could have been at least ten per cent cheaper elsewhere.
Although it is technically fraudulent to claim someone else’s discount, anyone
can pick up an abandoned receipt, wait a few hours then enter its barcode
online — and print out a coupon.
Stephen Auker, 58, from Keighley, West Yorks, is part of a 5,000-strong
Wombling community who pride themselves on making cash while tidying their
neighbourhood.
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He tells me: “Yesterday was very windy so I sat in a car park for seven hours
waiting for the receipts to blow towards me.”
Stephen claims he makes up to £200 a month and his habit pays for roughly 60
per cent of his annual shopping bill. Wombler Stuart Smith, 40, from
Tamworth, Staffs, reckons he’s saved £5,000 in the past five years.
Inspired by these top Womblers, I headed to Asda to see how much free money I
could get.
It wasn’t just the arctic chill of the Old Kent Road in Bermondsey, South
London, that was painful. A lady driver yelled: “Why are you crawling around
on the floor? Lost something?” Embarrassing.
There was a gold mine of rubbish near the car wash but many slips were too
soggy to read.
Scavenging from bins is against Womblers’ rules. When something is placed in
one, it legally belongs to the owner of the bin.
Inside the store there’s a cache of receipts around the checkouts — but very
few have the eight items or more needed to claim.
After six hours I’ve had enough. I retire to a computer with 25 receipts to
punch in the barcodes. Some were unusable because the rain had smudged the
ink.
I tot up my booty. It comes to a miserable £5.02. Awful.
Was it worth it? Not really, but at least I’ve made back the money I spent on
my lunch.
Pick it up
Stuart’s top Wombling tips:
1. Don’t look in bins for receipts.
2. Use a good-quality litter picker.
3. Find spot in the car park where things get blown.
4. Don’t neglect hedges and fences along supermarkets’ paths.
5. Avoid raising suspicions. Don’t spend all your coupons at once.