Walgreens 101 By Frugal Living NW

Frugal Living NW posted a great article about shopping at Walgreens.

Walgreens Coupons:

You can find Walgreens coupons from two different sources: the Walgreens weekly ad and the monthly Walgreens coupon book (both can be found at the front of every store). Portland is a test market for the Walgreens Rewards Card program. Because of this most of the coupons in our weekly ad can be redeemed simply by having the cashier scan your Walgreens Rewards Card. Read more about the Rewards Card program here.

Stacking Coupons:

The Walgreens coupon policy states that you can stack one Walgreens coupon with one manufacturer’s coupon. Some stores will give you a hard time about this when you use the monthly coupon book. When this happens you have two options. You can print the Walgreens coupon policy and politely dispute their claims, or you can find a Walgreens that is more coupon friendly and shop there.


Register Rewards:

Register Rewards (RR) are just like Catalinas from supermarket stores with a few exceptions. They are coupons for a dollar amount off of your next purchase at Walgreens. They can be used on almost anything in the store with a few tricky exceptions.

• Register Rewards do not roll: If you purchase this weeks RR deal for Emergen-C Vitamin C Supplements you will get a RR for $3.49. You might be tempted to take that RR and use it to buy another Emergen-C for free. Alas, if you do, another RR will NOT print out.
• Only one Register Reward prints per offer: On this week’s Full Bar Fit Appetite Control Bar deal you will get a $1.99 RR. There is a great BOGO (Buy One, Get One Free) coupon that goes with this deal. However, you will only get one Register Reward, even though you bought two.

One Coupon Per Item Rule:

The most annoying part about shopping at Walgreens is that they only allow one coupon to be used per item. The Register Rewards coupons are considered “manufacturer’s coupons” and count towards this rule.

For example, if you buy Hylands Cold ‘n Cough this week you will want to use the $1.50/1 coupon available to print. If you also have a Register Reward coupon you would like to use to pay for the remaining $3.50 that will be due, you will then have 2 coupons for 1 item. The register will beep and the checker will say you have too many coupons. One way around this is to purchase a small item from the store in addition (a filler item). This way you will have two items for your two coupons.


How to Work Your Register Rewards to Your Advantage:

In order to get the most mileage out of your Register Rewards you will want separate your shopping trip into separate transactions cycling back and forth between the different Register Rewards deals. The following is an example of how this would work.

Transaction 1:

Buy Hyland’s Cold ‘n Cough 4 Kids on sale $4.99
Use $1.50/1 coupon (sent to your e-mail)
Pay $3.49, Get $4.99 RR
FREE plus $1.50 overage after coupon and RR

Transaction 2:

Buy Emergen-C Vitamin C supplement on sale $3.49
Buy (2) Fullbar Fit Appetite Control Bar on sale $1.99
Use BOGO coupon
Use $4.99 RR from Transaction 1
Pay $.48, Get $3.49 RR and $1.99 RR
FREE after RR

At this point you could do Transaction 1 again and use the $3.49 RR you got from Transaction 2 to pay for it. BUT, if you do that you will have 2 coupons for one item. You could ad a small filler item such as Hunts tomato sauce which is on sale for $.33 to get around this.