OK, I know the first time you walk into a drugstore that does rewards back on certain purchases and stacks coupons, things can get confusing!! I will post a link to each drugstore’s coupon policies at some point! ?
I’m going to try and explain this the best way I can. It took awhile for it to snap for me!
Wags:
Wags (Walgreens) gives you Register Rewards (RR’s). If you purchase an item for a specific price (ex. $5), and the weekly ad says you can get back $4RR’s, it’s LIKE you get the product for $1. Really, you pay the $5 out of pocket (OOP) then a coupon prints out good for $4 on your NEXT purchase.
That’s why you should experiment and decide if you’d rather buy everything on sale you’re interested in during the week in one transaction, pay the full amounts OOP and spend your RR’s the following week. Doing this, I’ve spent like $60 OOP, but I’ve gotten back like $30 in RR’s to use the next weekend.
OR, you can plan out your separate transactions. When you do this, you will have to pay OOP for the first transaction, then you can use your RR’s on your next transaction. Doing that eliminates the amount OOP you pay at one time. I will post more about this as well to show some examples.
Things to remember at Wags:
You can only use the amount of coupons for the amount of products. Example, if you have 5 items you’re buying, you can only use 5 coupons. Filler items help! Filler items are cheap items throughout the store like mints or erasers or something. These come in handy because you can use two coupons on one single item at Wags AS LONG AS one is a manufacturer coupon and the other is a Walgreens coupon. You can get Walgreens coupons from their weekly ads and their monthly books in the store. Bottom line, make sure you have as many items for the number of coupons you want to use.
On RR’s, you can only get one RR deal per product. For example, if Carmex is being advertised as buy one, get $1 RR, you can only buy ONE. If you try and buy 2 Carmex tubes, only $1 RR will come out.
The same goes for using the RR. If you use a $1RR FROM Carmex ON Carmex, you wont get another $1 RR. I learned that lesson the hard way! ?
OK…I think that’s Wags wrapped up.
Onto CVS
Extra Care Bucks (ECB’s) are pretty much the same as RR’s.
The only thing is that ECB’s are logged onto your CVS card. That means you can only do the deals once a week. They wont let you get a deal and get ECB’s back then go back and do it again another day. I learned that the hard way too!!
They do have a coupon kiosk in their stores. You can scan your CVS card three times a day to score some coupons that can be good for various free items or money off when you buy certain things. I’ve gotten free candy bars and bandaids mostly. I don’t think I shop their enough to get the good stuff!