The “Your Money” section of KUSA / 9News has a section listing grocery coupons.   Today they featured it on the front page of their site, so searching for some crazy deals I clicked and found $1 off Frosted Flakes.   (Yeah I know it’s not great, but I’ve never clipped a coupon online so was curious what it looked like.)

In order to print coupons from this site, (linked through 9News.com) they require you download and install “couponprinter.exe” to your computer.  I abstained, being savvy enough to know it’s a bad idea to download random executables.  I really don’t think one of the top consumer/news sites in the city should be affiliated with this, or prompting folks to download shoddy third rate apps.   Even if it’s not malicious, programs like these are not designed well, hog space, and rarely leave your PC in better shape than before.

Here’s what a contributor to TechSupportForum.com had to say when asked “Should I Install this?”

Maybe and maybe not. That’s not much to go on, really. If they are telling you that you HAVE to install the program to print some kind of coupon, then I would be suspicious, since you really don’t need to.

I’ve seen one out there that claims it is the only way to make a machine-readable bar code, but that is a lie. I print out machine-readable barcodes all day long from Word, of all things, LOL!

Someone sent me a coupon printer exe file one time and I decided to run it on one of my Virtual Machines, and when I went to install it, it told me that it does not allow itself to be installed on a virtual machine. HUGE red flag!!! About the ONLY things that do checks for VM before installing are malware apps…

Personally, the last time I ran into this, I sent an email to the company and told them that I refuse to install any untrusted 3rd party program on my machine just to print a coupon. The coupon was for $1.00 off their product. A week letter I got a letter of apology from the company, indicating they have received many complaints about that and apologize for any inconvenience, are looking into it, blah blah blah, AND they included a nice shiny FREE coupon for their product!

So instead of saving a dollar and doing who knows what to my machine, I wound up saving almost 9 dollars by getting the item for free That’s my advice!

This site rates it even more infaborably. Needless to say I agree, and think this is a terrible idea.