Shopping Hints - Part 1: CVS

Here are some helpful hints for shopping at CVS. This will be very good advice for NEW couponers.

Be sure to sign up for a CVS Extra Care card. This can be done right at the store. They will issue you a card on the spot. This card needs to be kept in a SAFE place and kept WITH you when you shop (if you forgot your card, the system can "look it up" by your phone number). You can get CVS store coupons by scanning your card at the "Magic Coupon Machine" (the price scanner at the front of the store)(scan the card a few times until the machine tells you to try again tomorrow). Be sure to register your Extra Care card at CVS.com (to get a sneak peek of the weekly ad) and Upromise.com (for college savings).

Buy a Green Bag Tag at your CVS store for 99c and have the cashier scan it during checkout when you use your own reusable shopping bags (or reuse some plastic grocery sacks). A friend of mine glued her CVS card to the back of her Green Bag Tag to keep them together. All Green Bag Tags have the same scan number, so you can share if shopping with a friend and one of you forgot yours.

Be sure to join the CVS Beauty Club. It rewards you with $5 in Extra Care Bucks for every $50 in qualifying Beauty supply purchases. These purchases are counted pre-coupon. In other words if the total before coupons is $20 and your coupons lowers it to $10, you still get credit for the $20. These totals are tallied up and kept track of on your CVS Extra Care account. You can view the balance on the bottom of your receipt or at CVS.com (after logging on).

Every quarter (seasonally by summer, fall, winter, and spring) the actual dollar amount spent at CVS using your Extra Care card during purchase, you will receive a reward of 2% reward back. All you have to do is scan your Extra Care card at the "Magic Coupon Machine" and it will print out for you. Or it will print at the bottom of your receipt on the first transaction after January 1st, April 1st, July 1st, and October 1st.

If you lose one of your Extra Care Bucks or want to print a Beauty Club or quarterly reward before going to the store, you can print them from your CVS.com account (after logging on).

When you register your email address with CVS.com, you will get a coupon emailed to you toward your next purchase at CVS (watch the expiration dates). Then periodically you will receive discount coupons in your email inbox (usually on a Thursday and expire on Sunday so they can be used on either week's ad).

When a sale in the weekly ad states that you must purchase a certain dollar amount to receive an Extra Care Bucks reward (ECB), it is common that you don't have to get exactly to the dollar amount to receive the reward. For example: If the ad states that you have to purchase $20 to receive a $10ECB, you could purchase 2 qualifying items at $9.99 (totaling $19.98) and still receive the $10ECB.

If you get to the store and an item is out of stock (OOS), you can always get a rain check. CVS is great about rain checks because they honor the ECB reward at a later date. It is a good practice to keep the ad page with the rain check for reference in case it is a few weeks before you are able to redeem the deal. That way there is little or no question about what the ad/deal stated.

These are a few of the most used couponer's tips for CVS. I hope you have found this information helpful.