Walgreens takes a little more thinking but does pay off if you give time to learning it.
They have their weekly flier
Then they have their monthly coupon booklet
Plus you can stack either of the 2 above with a manufacturers coupon
The difficult part about Walgreens is they do not have a "SET" coupon policy and the individual managers at the store can make their own specifications.
Register Rewards print out of the Catalina machine at the end of eligible transactions. Those can be used just like cash on future transactions.
Here is where it can get tricky.
You cannot use more coupons than you have items at Walgreens so this is where you will see coined phrases on different websites that refer to "filler" items.
For example:
Say you want to purchase the Profusion Razor that is on sale for $9.89
Use the $4.00 manufacturers coupon that is out
brings your total down to $5.89
If you have Register Rewards you will not be able to use them on the above purchase because you are using a $4.00 manufacturers coupon already so on this order if you wanted to use a $6.00 register reward you would need a filler item.
The secret to filler items is you want them to cost as little as possible.
For example this week they will have $.19 pencils -- great filler item -- grab one.
So your new transaction will look like this
$9.89 -- razor
$.19 -- pencil
-$4.00 manufacturer coupon
total $6.08 + tax
use a $6.00 register reward
pay $.08 + tax out of pocket and get back a $5.00 register reward for purchasing the razor
Of course if you are new and do not have any register rewards you will have more Out of pocket (OOP) expense at the beginning when you are getting started.
Now another important thing to always remember with Walgreens
It is very important the order you hand the coupons over to the cashier. They will try and take them all from you but it is ok for you to hand them to them 1 at a time or in the order that you want them scanned.
For example (this deal is not currently running but has in the past so I am going to use it as an example)
Reach toothbrushes $4.79 ea
They had a coupon in their weekly flier for $3.00 off per toothbrush (limit 6)
So here is the Scenario I did
I purchased 6 toothbrushes for $4.79 ea = $28.74
I had BOGO coupons so I used 3 of those which took off $4.79 x 3 = $14.37
Then for the other 3 toothbrushes I used $1.00 manufacturers coupons $1.00x3= $3.00
Then I handed them their weekly flier coupon (make sure and give this to them last especially if there is overage which there was in this instance). This coupon took off $3.00 x 6 = $18.00
So here is how it all worked out
$28.74
-$14.37 - BOGO coupons
-$3.00 - $1.00 manufacturer coupon
-$18.00 walgreens in ad coupon
Profit $6.63
Now -- they will not give you back cash and let you walk out with a bunch of items. So you need to make sure you have other products that eat up your overage.
Always take a calculator with you especially if it is a good week and you will have some overage possibilities.
HERE IS ANOTHER VERY IMPORTANT THING TO REMEMBER
Walgreens will not let you use more manufacturer coupons than you have items. Register Rewards (RR) are considered a manufacturers coupon.
So before you check out lay 1 coupon on each item to make sure you do not have more coupons than you do items. If you do the coupons will beep on you and not scan correctly.
1 tricky part though -- If the coupon says Save $1.00 when you buy 3 -- you have to lay all 3 items with that coupon and will not be able to apply register rewards to those items. It took me a long time to figure this out and I kept thinking my register rewards were going into the tax, but it was because I was using coupons that applied to 2 items and I was thinking the second item I could apply a register reward to.
I actually need to give the credit of figuring that out to my oldest daughter. She started to see a pattern so we tried it out last week with the Twizzler coupon and sure enough it beeped. Picked up 2 more cans of tuna for filler items and Wah La! It worked.
So -- this is long and may seem scary but once you do it for a few weeks it will start to come naturally to you.
If they run the same Register Reward deal 2 weeks in a row -- MAKE SURE -- you DO NOT use the register reward you earned from that item the previous week. If you do -- IT WILL NOT -- print you out a new register reward for the item you just purchased.
If you have any questions just give me a holler and I will do my best to help you out
