At Walgreens there are several ways to maximize your savings. As always, start by matching your manufacturer coupons to items on sale in the weekly ad.
There are three additional ways to save at Walgreens:
1) Easy Saver Rebates Near the front of the store you will find Walgreen’s weekly ads along with an “EasySaver” booklet. Inside the EasySaver booklet is a list of rebates for the month. There are usually several free-after-rebate items which you can sometimes pair with a coupon to actually make money! Watch for sales during the month on items included in the EasySaver booklet. Many items will be free after rebate with the sale price or paired with a coupon.
The great thing about Walgreens EasySaver rebates is that you can submit them online and earn an extra 10% back if you elect to receive your rebate in the form of a Walgreens gift card.
It takes 4-6 weeks for your first rebate to be processed. Once you receive your gift card you will be able to use it on the free-after-rebate items for the next month plus earn another 10% when they recharge your gift card with that month’s rebates. You can check the status of your rebates online as well.
You may want to pick up a couple of the EasySaver booklets because they also contain store coupons that are good all month long. See #2 below on how to use these to maximize your savings)
2) Coupon Stacking Look for coupons in the weekly Walgreens ads and/or the EasySaver booklets. These are store coupons which can be combined with manufacturer coupons. This enables you to use two coupons on one item which really lowers the cost or potentially making the item free! (please see below about how to use coupons)
3) Register Rewards (RR) Register rewards are coupons that print out when you purchase certain items that you can use like cash on future purchases at Walgreens. A recent RR worked like this:
Buy $30 worth of Kimberly Clark products, receive a $10 RR. Huggies diapers were on sale for $10 per pack so I purchased three packs and received a $10 RR coupon to use on anything at Walgreens. RR’s are usually only good for a couple of weeks so make sure you use them before they expire!
The only caveat to RR’s is that you can’t use them to “roll” the offer. If I had used my $10 RR to purchase 3 more packs of diapers, another RR would not have printed because the system recognizes it. You may, however use them on a different RR deal if there are any available.
You can use coupons along with RRs but make sure that you have equal number of coupons as items. Keep in mind that RRs count as coupons in the Walgreens system which doesn’t allow more coupons than number of items. For example, I bought three packs of Huggies and had three manufacturer coupons plus my RR. It would not accept one of my coupons because I only had three items and four coupons. To avoid this, I should have thrown in a pack of gum or other low priced item to “trick” the system.
All of this can be very confusing at first but trust us! It’s worth it and actually becomes fun and addicting after awhile!
If you have any questions, please feel free to email us and we’d be happy to help!
Val says
Is there a certain way to hand the coupons to the cashier? Should I give her manufacturer or Walgreen’s ones first? Thanks for all the help.
Mindy says
Val-
Yes, there does seem to be a trick to this as well. We have found that handing the coupons to the cashier in the following order results in less confusion:
1. Register Rewards
2. Manufacturer Coupons
3. Store Coupons
I’m glad you asked!
Anonymous says
How about if I have coupon like $1\2 how it counts?
Mindy says
Anon-
You would receive $1 off 2 products, but it acts as if you only have one coupon per item if you’re asking in reference to how many coupons needed per item. Does that make sense? This can get confusing. 😉
A Family Completed... says
Can RR be used right away after purchase? Say you bought the 3 packs of huggies and got your $10 reward; could you then in turn pay for that purchase and use it for a second purchase right away?
Mindy says
Yes, you can definitely use the RR on the next transaction after you have paid for that transaction.
Sunnymommie says
wow!! I want try that but I still confuse how it working..I have CVS card and I still not understand how to use it .. my goal in 2011 ( that time my both kids will be at school and i want to keep busy myself at home ) want learn doing coupons and try get lot free stuff at cvs and walgreen 🙂 I will keep read your blog til i finally understand.
thanks!