Basic Coupon Lesson Number Six: Mastering the Pharmacies

Mastering the Pharmacies
The basic premise at all the pharmacies is that you spend a certain amount and you are offered “rebates” on certain purchases. The rebates vary at each pharmacy. For example at CVS your rebate is immediate and comes in the form of what is called ExtraCare Bucks (referred to as ECBs). With CVS these can be used almost as cash with a few exclusions to make future purchases. (Refer to the bottom of them for details on exclusions.)  Essentially they are store credits and can be used in conjunction with any other store coupons and manufacturer coupons.

With Rite Aid Your Rebate is sent to you at the end of the month after you request it in the form of one check. So you get this back literally as cash to use on anything you want in the future.

Both CVS and Rite Aid now have loyalty programs which you will want to sign up for to get every deal possible and accumulate points in order to get future rewards. Sign up for CVS extracare card here and Rite Aids Wellness + Program here.  Walgreens is working on a loyalty program and is currently testing it in certain markets.

Walgreens provides rebates immediately as well and in their store they are termed Registry Rewards (referred to as RR). These however, are Manufacturer coupons that can be used on future purchases of most everything in the store with a few exclusions. The fact that these are Manufacturer coupons and not a form of store credit or store coupon complicates future purchases just a little because if you have manufacturer coupons for every item you are purchasing and you want to use registry rewards you will need to find a filler item to have that Registry Rewards used. This is because you can only use one Manufacturer coupon per item purchased.

The trick to the pharmacies is to stick to purchasing products that only provide rebates then use those rebates to make future purchases lowering your overall out of pocket. The pharmacies are complicated and take time to learn but doing these deals along with your grocery shopping will greatly reduce your overall expenses especially in the areas of health & beauty and pharmacy on a regular basis. The pharmacies may also be a good place to get things that are not usually on sale or rarely like pop, ethnic hair care products and milk.

CVS and Rite Aid also frequently come out with coupons for $x of $xx purchase examples like $4 of a purchase of $20 or more, $5 of a purchase of $25 or more etc. This too helps on purchasing again the things that rarely have coupons. Rite Aid guarantees a monthly one through their VideoAdPerks which is how you access most of their store coupons. CVS randomly rewards you with them through their scan machine or via email.

A quick example of how this works is a while back CVS offered Powerbar Gel Energy Bites for the sale price of $2.49 and you got $2.49 in Extracare bucks so free after ECBs. Previously there had been a sample for these and that came with a $1 coupon. So if you used the coupon you paid $1.49 and this was actually a $1.00 money maker. You could then take those EBCs to buy something else and “roll” your ECBs or use it to buy Milk or something else you need.

Each Pharmacy has its own tricks and nuances and they all take practice. See more details on each CVS Coupon Policy, Rite Aid Coupon Policy, Walgreens Coupon Policy.  These contain the coupon policy some more specific tips and links to some more 101 guides for each pharmacy.

This week’s task:
Review the Pharmacy Guides listed above
Check out pharmacy deals I’ve linked to here