PRACTICAL VIEW : It Takes Time to Save Money With Coupons

Coupons are familiar cost-cutting devices for frugal food shoppers. Now the concept is infiltrating the beauty world. Offers for free products as well as skin-care and makeup treatments are popping up in fashion and beauty magazines.

Cosmetics companies use the coupons to introduce new items to loyal customers and to attract new buyers. Top-ranking brands like Shiseido, Princess Marcella Borghese, Prescriptives, Institut Jeanne Gatineau and Chanel have offered freebies.

Some coupons require little time to redeem. To receive a free tube of Chanel’s Cils Magiques Instant Lash Mascara, a coupon holder need only proceed to Bullock’s. At the chain’s South Coast Plaza store, for example, a Chanel salesclerk promptly handed over the sample.

But other coupons prove more time-consuming to cash in. One from Princess Marcella Borghese offered a free lipstick and a skin-care and makeup application. The coupon’s fine print explained that appointments were recommended, though not required, for the skin-care and makeup treatments.

At the Borghese counters at Bullock’s and Nordstrom, the clerks said they were out of the lipsticks. The Broadway had some in stock, but only a few of the new shades on the countertop were offered for free. And at all three stores, the only way to collect the skin-care and makeup treatment was by appointment.

If time is money, an hour spent hunting down a new lipstick is precious currency. To avoid frustration, read the fine print and call the store to find out if products are in stock.