Grab a cup of coffee and get comfortable, because I have a lot of deals to report!

I don’t get up to Walgreens too much, primarily because it’s a 15 minute drive away from me in the next town over, and with gas prices as they are, it seems silly to drive around chasing deals unless they’re really good. But I made a little shopping expedition yesterday that was well worth it!

Stop #1: Walgreens

Total spent: $1.22 on a gift card, and $29.23 out of pocket. But, I will get back $35.24 in rebates, plus a 10% bonus of $3.52 because I choose to have my rebates put on a gift card, AND I got a $10 register reward – yielding $18.31 profit!

View Receipt – I didn’t include the second half of the receipt, because it listed my debit card information; but you can still see how I worked it.

Here’s a breakdown of what I got, and how I did it. Big thanks to Money Saving Mom and Wags to Riches for posting about these deals!

First of all, I took advantage of this $10 off a $40 Walgreens coupon. This coupon is only valid after all other manufacturer’s coupons, meaning you must pay $30 after all coupons in order to use it. But there’s loads of free rebate items at WAGs this month, so I basically used the rebate items that I would have bought anyway to get me up to $30, and then chose another $10 of stuff that I then got for free! This coupon is only valid on the 12th and 13th, so if you have a Walgreens nearby, check it out today!

So I purchased:

3 bottles of Robitussin. If you buy 3 bottles, you receive a $10 register reward towards your next purchase, and if you sign up to print these $1 coupons, you can get all 3 for $8.97. I basically used the $10/40 coupon to pay for the initial investment in the cough syrup, and got the register reward back. I was happy to take advantage of this deal, because cough medicine is so expensive and I never have any when I need it – so of course I end up spending a lot, because who want to go deal hunting with a flu?

1 bottle of toothpaste – free after rebate, plus overage because I used a coupon from the monthly P&G insert

1 bottle of heartburn medicine – free after rebate

1 lip balm – free after rebate

1 nail polish – free after rebate, plus overage after I used a $2 off coupon from a recent insert

1 box of Excedrin – free after rebate

1 bottle of hair styling spray – free after rebate

6 boxes of South Beach bars – these are on sale this week for 2/$5. There are coupons you can print here for $2 off a box and if you buy 6, you qualify for a $5 rebate. So spend $3 for 6 boxes, and get back $5! Check out Common Sense With Money for the full lowdown on this awesome deal!

1 ghostie candy dish – I needed one more small item to get me to $40, and I chose this!

Stop #2: Safeway

I stopped at the Safeway in this town, because I had bought mine out of stock in the Glade plug ins, and this was the last day before my coupons expired.

Total spent: .18 cents
Total before coupons: $34.65
And I got back $16 back in ONYOs towards my next order!
I also earned a .10 power pump reward, bringing the running total to 12.

View Receipt – I had to fold it over and scan it twice, because the receipt was so long.

I got:

4 scented oil plug-ins
4 gel plug-ins
4 Halloween cards
2 boxes of band aids
1 package of floss

But I still had more coupons, so I went through the line a second time:

Total: -7.29. Whaaaa?
Total before coupons: $51.85
Got back $22 in ONYOs!
And I earned another .10 power pump reward, bringing the total to 13.

View receipt

Yes, the total was negative $7.29. How could that be? I’ve mentioned before that I never try to get cashback in overage – I always, always plan for the overage to be absorbed by other items, for a multitude of reasons. I calculate my sales to the penny, and always double-check my math. Well, the unexpected happened. I had several “Buy one, get one free” coupons for the plug-ins. The coupon is free, up to a maximum value of $4.99. The plug-ins are on sale for $3.99, so I assumed that it would work the way it normally does – the coupon prompts the cashier to enter the price. Well, the coupons scanned, but they didn’t prompt the cashier to do anything – they automatically took off $4.99. Naturally, this pushed the register into the red. The cashier said, “Well, I’m going to go with what my computer says!” and totaled it out. We both looked at the receipt, and she pointed to my pre-coupon total and said, “See, your total was this much, but you had so many coupons, it pushed it into negative!” Then she cheerfully handed me $7.29. I’m usually fairly savvy about coupon redemption, but I didn’t know what to do in this instance. The cashier looked at my receipt, and said that it was correct. But how? I have two theories:

Scenario #1: Free coupon overage is like any overage. If you have a coupon for, say, $3 off any chex mix, and you find chex mix on sale for $1.50, you can use that coupon to receive $1.50 in overage to pay for other items in your order. As I understand it, this is pretty much universally accepted, although some stores will not allow any overage, even when you are still paying out of pocket for your order. Why, I’m not sure. So, my theory is that maybe when a free coupon rings at more than the sale price of the item, it’s like getting overage from using a higher value coupon on a lower sale price. Except if this is the case, why does the wording say “Free up to“? Why not just make a $4.99 off coupon? Which leads me to my second theory:

Scenario #2: The cashier was mistaken. Perhaps she was ill-informed, and should have voided the coupons off and entered them in manually at the sale price. But why does the coupon take off $4.99 automatically if the manufacturer knows it will go on sale? Is it a mistake in the coding? Did the register process it wrong?

So I’m calling on my coupon-savvy readers to let me know what the scoop is here. I strive to redeem my coupons legally and honestly, and I want my blog to be an example of a success story in redeeming coupons legitimately. I don’t want to give my readers bad or dishonest deals. Nor do I want to cheat the corporations who make these products, or the stores I buy them at. So once I get to the bottom of this, I will report back with my findings.

PHEW! So after all that, here’s what I got:

11 scented oil plug-ins
4 Halloween cards
2 packs of TP
3 cup-o-noodles

After this, I stopped by Ross and picked up some clothes:

The psychedelic pink dress was $4.49, the black dress was $6.99, and the super cute white gown was $8.49 – so I spent a total of $20.47. Not quite as good a deal as all the $2 dresses I got last month, but I was still pleased!

On my way back, I stopped at Walgreens once again, to use the $10 register reward. I don’t know when I’ll be back next, and it makes no sense to waste time and gas driving there just to redeem a coupon.

Total spent: .04 cents
Total before coupons: $12.04
View receipt

It was getting late and I was hungry, so the first three items were snacks – hence the half-eaten wrappers in the photo!

1 lunchables
1 drinkable yoghurt
1 bag of chips – I got these because they were “Yoghurt and Green Onion” flavored, and I wanted to try it because it was so odd! These were actually really good. I’m from England, and over there we have Cheese and Onion flavored chips/crisps, and this was the closest thing that I’ve found to them stateside – exp-pats take note!
1 tupperware box
4 bottles of Coffee-Mate – this should stave off my Coffee-Mate emergencies for, oh, at least a week.
1 pack of TP
1 clearanced packet of popcorn – perfect filler item!

But I couldn’t leave town without getting some free yoghurt from Fred Meyer first!

Total: Zero!
Total before coupons: $3.00
View Receipt

If you have a Fred Meyer nearby, watch for this deal – there were coupons in the 7/13 inserts for $1/2 Darigold yoghurts. Fred Meyer usually has them on sale 2 for $1! We just finished off all the free yoghurt I got there last month, so this was perfect timing.

I had one last stop to make, once I got back into town. I checked my local Safeway to see if they had restocked the Glade yet, since I still had a few coupons left. And guess what – they did!

Total spent: .01 cent
Total before coupons: $56.47
And I earned $20 in ONYOs!
View receipt

And I got:

10 plug-ins
4 Halloween cards
1 12-pack of TP
1 gallon of milk
1 cheesetick
1 package of paper plates (for the boyfriend)

So this time, when I handed over my “Buy one, get one free” coupons, the first one prompted the cashier to enter the price. So he checked the sale price of the item – $3.99 – and entered that. So you would assume that, since I was redeeming several of the same coupon (one for each item), that each one would give the same prompt. Wrong! The subsequent coupons didn’t prompt or beep, and this time they deducted $5.79 each. Huh?!?! I don’t get it. The cashier knew the sale price – $3.99 – but looked at the $5.79 and went, “Oh.” He shrugged and kept on scanning them. Two cashiers at two different Safeways said it was OK. Are they mistaken, or is there something I’m just not getting?

Naturally, this pushed me into the red again. A supervisor was helping the cashier key my coupons in, and her overage policy is that if my total goes negative for some reason, she just balances it out to zero, and I get my groceries free. That’s what all the weird “GROCERY” items on the top of the receipt are – it was a dollar something over, so she added $1.03, but with my 10% discount, the total keeps adjusting and taking the 10% off. So she’d put in a dollar, and it would still show a few cents negative. She kept adding until finally it came out to me owing 1 penny, and we called that good!

And as you’ll also see on my receipt, the power pump rewards totally flipped out. On my last Safeway visit, I was at 13 fuel rewards, and had accumulated $46.81 towards my next one. You earn .10 cents for every $100 (pre-coupons) that you spend. So, this purchase should have earned me one reward, with about 3 or 4 dollars towards my next one. But instead, it showed me earning TWO rewards, bringing me to 15, with $84.80 towards my next one!! Um….what? I cannot fathom how it came to that conclusion. However, I’m glad, because there have been several big purchases that I’ve made during this reward period that I did not get credit for. Sometimes the system will get a hiccup and it won’t count my purchases – so beware, if it doesn’t show your running total at the bottom of your receipt, it won’t be counted. Many people have reported a problem with this, and you can call customer service to have it manually credited – which I know now, but didn’t bother doing before. So, maybe they’re retroactively crediting me for all the rewards I should have gotten? I have no idea. Safeway’s registers are just whacked.

So here’s the final numbers breakdown (not including the clothes I bought):

I purchased a total of $206.21 worth of groceries.
Spent: $29.46
Profit: $73.60!! This is in ONYOs, rebates, and for now I’m counting the $7.29 overage – I will update this total as needed, depending on what I find out about the legitimacy of it. Also, I’m just counting the ONYOs that I have left in my wallet – not the ones that I spent on this trip.

And thus concludes this very lengthy edition of Super Savings Saturday!