We have a Walgreens and CVS in town. I haven't shopped Walgreens for ages it seems, Rite Aid is my go to drug store of choice for deals and I've been out of the CVS game for so long that I'm excited to be living near one again but haven't yet started shopping there regularily.
I was excited to print two coupons last night that would yield me free BIC Triumph Pens at Walgreens, and figured that would be an easy enough transaction and I would get my freebie couponing fix! I browsed the store before checking out (of course) and was happy to find a few other things to ad to my cart. In the toy aisle I found some Christmas remainders, mini Webkinz called Lil Kinz in holiday gift bags priced at 2/$5.00. I also noticed in the weekly ad as well as other online blogs that there was a good toothbrush/toothpaste deal to be found so I dug through my coupon file and found a B1G1 coupon that had not yet expired... In theory my oop total should have been around $6 + tax but its never quite that simple.
The cashier insisted that she couldn't take my BIC pen coupons because the item was sale priced at $1.99 and the coupons were for $2.00 off. I was polite but firm and said I thought the Walgreens coupon policy was to price adjust the coupon down to the sale price, apparently they're not "by the book" at this Walgreens because she said no, another cashier said no and when I asked to speak with a manager about it he also said no, that wasn't their policy but that he would do it for me "just this one time." I don't like inconveniencing people. Really, I don't. But from all my time invested in following coupon bloggers I know that when I get an item for free from a store, they're not loosing money. They are reimbursed by the coupon company and generally people end up spending additional money during their shopping trip, not just walking out with bagfuls of freebies!
Unfortunately, the cashier had a tough time figuring out my coupons, the sale prices and the "total" she came up with was over $10. I asked her if she could re-check to make sure everything calculated right, because I thought that was a little high and she ended up having to bring the manager back over, void the entire transaction, pull the coupons out of the drawer and re-ring everything up with the manager taking each item by item and explaining how to do the coupons. I think they still ended up over charging me by $1.00 but at that point, I was thankful to get some good deals.
The breakdown of my transaction ended up looking like this:
Lil Kinz $2.50
Lil Kinz $2.50
Triumph Pens $1.99
-$2.00 Q
Triumph Pens $1.99
-$1.99 Q (adjusted q price)
Reach Toothbrush $2.00 (this is where they messed up I think, the manager had her price adjust the price of one toothbrush from 2.99 to 2.00. The in-ad coupon I used was for $2.00 off, not changing the price to $2.00)
Reach Toothbrush $2.99
-$2.99 Q (B1G1 free)
Anyway... my total with tax was $8.14
I'm thrilled to have the opportunities to get items free or close to free, and the Lil Kinz will be great (inexpensive!) gifts repackaged into non-Christmas gift bags. I'm not quite as cuthroat as some couponers out there, but this is just one great example of how sometimes you've just gotta roll with the punches.... and I think I'm going to take the advice of many coupon bloggers out there and print off the store coupon policies to keep in my coupon binder that I'm going to create!
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