Friday, July 23, 2010

Working Walgreens

A lot of people have Walgreens issues with their stores accepting coupons, overage and all other sorts of things.

yes, I have problems too. Several stores that are convenient for me (near my grandparents' house) do not accept internet printables at all, so that stinks.

There are a few tips that will help you at Walgreens, and these are not wrong, fraudulent, or illegal. It just helps prevent beeps, and therefore drama.

These tips are mostly only valid at stores that have not converted to the new registers (as I have heard the new registers do not allow overage)

When purchasing an item that provides overage, always hand over the manufacturer coupons first, and the Wags coupons last. If your store insists on doing wags coupons first, try this: Hand over the items, then the mq's. (don't have the wags q in sight). After a second of hesitation, say, oh! i forgot about the in-ad/monthly coupon! And then flip through to find it. At that point, they usually won't void the transaction to re-ring it, although some stores may do it.

If your items involve overage on mq's alone, your last q will beep, so try doing this:
Let's say I want 10 bags of Purina One dog food at $1.99/ea and want to use ten coupons for $2.00/1. My last coupon will beep because I am now over the threshold of the total purchased vs. total amount of coupons presented.

So what I do is get 11 bags. I then (somewhere out of sight of the cashier) pull out ten coupons. I make sure to get something small to eat the overage. Then I hand over all my items. 11 bags of food and one filler. Cashier scans all items. I start counting out my coupons as I hand them over, commenting "let me count these to make sure I have the right ones". then I count... When I get to the last two, I make a "huh?" sound and pretend to look through my coupons as I hand over the last two, numbers nine and ten. Then I say, "You know what? I thought I had eleven coupons, but I only have ten. I must have put the other one in a different folder (used it already, etc) Let me take one of those off and just get the ten." The cashier will then void one item. No beeps, no drama. And I get to use ten coupons on ten items. Wags gets reimbursed full face value, so there is nothing wrong with outsmarting the register like this.

I did exactly the above three times this week while trying to use up all my dog food q's at stores other than my regular store ;) I didn't have any trouble, even at the difficult stores.

4 comments:

  1. Walgreen's makes me so mad I just don't go there any :(

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  2. I always go to the Cosmetics Counter to check out when I have a lot of coupons. Those cashiers are usually excited to see my total go down and compliment me on my savings. I have only hit one snag with a Cosmetics lady who was skittish about coupons, freaked out and called the manager every time...I avoid her like the plague and I don't have to play games with anyone else in the store to get my honest, legit deals done !

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  3. You are so funny- that EXACT same transaction happened to me this weekend with the Purina 1 dog food. Had 10 bags and 10 coupons- and she made me get another bag in order for it to work. I'm not WAGS savvy yet- I tend to stay with CVS. But it made me so mad! Thanks for your advice!

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  4. LOL! I did the same scenario with the Purina One pet food! Although I wasn't as calm about it. The first cashier pushed through the beeping coupon. But in another transaction at a different store, the cashier nor the manager would push it through, so I had them ring up another bag and then said "I've changed my mind, can you void that?" They did and the transaction went fine.

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