Spent the last few months digging into why coupon codes fail so often, and it comes down to three things:

1. Expiration lag — most coupon sites scrape codes once and never revisit. A code that worked last Tuesday might be dead today, but it's still ranked #1 on Google.

2. Single-use vs stacking — a lot of retailers let you stack a site-wide code with a category-specific one, but almost nobody tests combos manually because it's tedious.

3. Geo/account restrictions — some codes only work for new accounts or specific regions, so the "it didn't work for me" complaints in comment sections are often just mismatched eligibility, not a dead code.

The fix isn't finding more codes — it's testing the ones that exist, in real time, at the actual checkout, and applying whichever nets the biggest discount. That's the whole thesis behind what I've been building with ShopBuddy.

If you're someone who shops around for tools, home goods, or just tries to keep grocery/household spend down, curious what stores you find the most frustrating for codes — trying to prioritize where to go deep next.