There are several stores which I have a love hate relationship with and CVS is one of them.
To be blunt, I think that if you do not use coupons CVS is one of the highest priced retailers around.
However, if you play the drug store game with them, it is also one of the best stores to keep getting stuff for free. What is problematic is that the stuff isn't necessarily the stuff you need, and many times you need to get stuff to get stuff.
Tonight I obtained a 1L bottle of Crest Scope mouthwash for the purposes of this post.
The regular price at CVS is $5.49-$5.59 (depending on the store).
Same bottle is $3.92 at Walmart, $4.09 at Meijer.
Using coupons though, CVS ended up paying me to buy their overpriced mouthwash.
Couponing at CVS is complicated. For starters, not everyone gets the same coupons.
Their free rewards program is called Extra Care. After you sign up you can either use your Extra Care card or your phone number to access your account. You can scan your card or enter your phone number at one of their red coupon machines in store to get your weekly coupons or see them in your account online.
If you are doing things purely digitally then you will need to add the CVS coupons you want to use to your account. You will also see manufacturer coupons that you can add digitally to your account. Manufacturer coupons will not print out at the coupon printer so everyone has to add the ones they want digitally to their account. Everyone has access to the same manufacturer coupons and a select number of CVS coupons every week. After that, the other CVS coupons in your account are personalized to your spending habits based on an algorithm. For example, if you want shampoo coupons you may need to buy some shampoo first before you start getting shampoo coupons in your account.
CVS coupons that print out at the red coupon machine are called Cash Register Tape (CRT) coupons. They are called this because if you don't scan your card when you first enter the store then the coupons will print out on your cash register receipt after you make a purchase.
CRT coupons come in a couple different varieties.
There are spend threshold coupons, such as $5 off a $20 purchase, or $4 off a $12 cosmetic purchase.
There are percent off coupons, such as 30% off a single item, or 20% off all cosmetics. Percent off coupons can only be used on non-sale items. When using multiple coupons, the percent off will always come off after all your other discounts. For example, if you have a $10 item and you use a $2 manufacturer coupon and a 30% off coupon, the 30% will come off of $8, not $10.
There are straight dollar off coupons.
Technically, you can use one manufacturer coupon per item purchased. Sometimes though, if you have a coupon that is $x off y items (like $5 off 3), the coupon will only attach to one of those items and if you have another coupon for the item that will attach too. You can use as many CVS coupons as applicable in a transaction. This can make the register math very complicated. I tend to do many small separate transactions because of this. When your transaction gets too big some coupons do not play well with others and if something doesn't go as planned it's harder to catch.
One of the keys to shopping for free or nearly free at CVS is Extra Care Bucks (ECBs). This is what I call fake CVS money. You earn ECBs by purchasing items in a promotion. Most ECBs expire a month after they are earned so you will need to either spend them to earn more ECBs or have a good exit plan on using them before they expire.
I thought the best way to further explain CVS was to give a real life example. One of the nice things about the CVS website and their app is that you can practice what you're going to buy before you actually set foot in a store so you can play around with all the possible coupon combinations and see what will work and what won't. So, without further adieu...
After you are logged in, when you click on the items you plan to purchase you will also see all the coupons that apply to the item as well as the promotion it is eligible for.
The $5 off 3 Crest coupon, $2 off 1 Crest coupon, and the $1 Scope coupon are manufacturer coupons available to everyone. The $2 Oral Care coupon is a personalized coupon in my account so you may or may not have it.
I put 2 Crest toothpaste and 1 Crest Scope mouthwash in my cart to see which coupons would attach.
I can now see that my total for the 3 items at regular price was $13.07
The $10.30 in savings includes the sale price of the items plus I see that the $5 off 3 Crest, the $1 off Scope, and the $2 off Oral Care all attached, giving me a pre-tax total of $2.77.
I will then earn a $3 ECB for the toothpaste and a $3 ECB for the mouthwash, thus "earning" $3.23 ($6 ECBs - $2.77 spent). In real life it will be a bit less than this due to tax.
I then went to the store and did the same transaction.
The only difference in store was that the $2 Scope coupon attached instead of the $1 Crest toothpaste coupon, making my pre-tax total $1.77. Total spent out of pocket was $2.38 and I now own (2) $3 ECBs so I came out $3.62 plus 2 tubes of toothpaste and a liter of mouthwash ahead.
I will pocket the ECBs to get some things I need later this week. The rest will be given away.
Plus, I got a $6 off $30 CRT print. I can use that! Stay tuned.
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