Alright, here’s all the information you’ve ever wanted to know to help you understand shopping at Walgreens. Please let me know if I’ve missed anything or if you have any questions.
Walgreens Weekly Coupons:
These are included in the weekly add that comes in your Sunday paper or located inside each Walgreens store. These look like any other coupon and always advertise a price (ie: Dawn Dish Liquid 99¢) and most have a limit on how many items you can buy with the coupon. You must use the coupon in order to get the advertised coupon price. If the coupon says Dawn Dish liquid 99¢, limit 4 then you can buy 4 Dawn and use the one coupon. Once the coupon is scanned it will subtract a certain amount that will make all 4 Dawns 99¢. If you buy more than the limit then you won’t get the sale price for all the items. You don’t have to cut them out! Just show the cashier the coupon you want to use and they will scan it or type in the coupon code. Most often it’s one coupon per transaction but not one per customer. So, you want 8 Dawn Dish Liquid at $.99 but the coupon is for 4, you can do two transactions and get the sale price, 4 soaps per transaction. Most often the cashier will just re-scan the same coupon for as many transactions as you’d like. YOU CAN COMBINE THESE COUPONS WITH MANUFACTURER COUPONS FOR AN EVEN GREATER SAVINGS.
Walgreens Register Rewards:
Walgreens Register Rewards - RR - are manufacturer coupons that print out when your transaction is complete (Walgreens version of the Catalina). They are coupons that can be used on your next purchase. When doing a deal that earns Register Rewards you CAN use coupons! Coupons have no effect on the deal. If the Reward doesn’t print then you either bought the wrong items/not enough items or there is a problem with the system/Catalina machine. Usually the manager will resolve it. When you earn a Register Reward you can use it to buy other items that earn Register Rewards, BUT NOT ON THE SAME DEAL.
Here’s an example of this from Money Saving Mom: “…a few weeks back, they were running a Proctor and Gamble Buy $25, Get $10 in RR promotion and they were also running a Unilever Buy $20, Get $10. With store coupons, manufacturer's coupons, and the Register Rewards, I was getting most of these items for almost free (and paying with the out-of-pocket from my gift card, of course!). However, I couldn't do the P&G deal over and over using the $10 RR to pay for my transaction after coupons, since the computer is programmed to not print out another $10 RR on P&G products if I paid for with the $10 RR I got from purchasing them last time. Make sense?
So, you can either just do the deals once, or you can do the deals multiple times and pay out of pocket and then save the RR's you collect each time and use them on groceries or other items later. Or, your best option is to do what I did: Do multiple transactions and alternate between the P&G deal and the Unilever deal. This way, you can keep rolling the RR's over and over and paying very little out of pocket (well, out of your gift card!).”
Coupon Order:
The best order to give the cashier your coupons is Manufacturer Coupons, then IVCs, then Walgreens Ad Qs, then Register Rewards. That way there is a possibility for overage (not all stores will allow it though). For example: Gum is regularly priced $1.19, use a B1G1 coupon which will deduct $1.19 then use the Walgreens Weekly Ad Q that makes the gum 2/$1 which will deduct $1.38 from your order. That means you get the gum free plus 19¢ overage.
You must have as many items as you have coupons:
Walgreens registers will not let you use more coupons than items purchased (excluding Walgreens Ad Qs & IVCs). So, you can buy 1 item, use an IVC and a manufacturer Q and it will be fine, but if you try to use a RR too it will not let you. Add a cheap candy or pencil to your order and the register will accept the coupon. If you want to buy 1 item you cannot use 2 RRs to pay for it because the number of coupons is exceeding the number of items. However, some people have not had any problems with this. Let us know your experiences and we’ll try to determine what each store in our area does.
Thanks to moneysavingemom.com and couponing101.com for their helpful information.
