In the last installment of CVS Deals 101, I posted my game plan for CVS Black Friday Sale, which actually started today (Thanksgiving Day). I went out and was at my location for their opening at 8am. Things went mostly according to plan, with a few exceptions:
1. The Jergens lotion listed in the spreadsheet wasn’t actually on sale. Apparently this piece of information from SlickDeals was bad.
2. My location did not have the Tylenol vials that were free after the ECBs. They also only had one 2-liter of Diet Coke, so I just got that one and a regular.
3. I had to get a pack of C-size batteries. My wife bought a new toy for the twins that takes that size, and that’s the one size we don’t already have.
4. Somehow my total after coupons came up negative, so I grabbed a couple of cans of CVS nuts to get back to a positive total.
My pre-coupon total was $71.33. I used $28.00 in CVS coupons along with $11.00 in manufacturer coupons, bringing my total down to $33.33. I paid using a $29.99 ECB, bringing my out of pocket for the transaction to $2.33. The transaction resulted in $49.79 in new ECBs to spend later, meaning I had a profit of $16.46 in addition to all the stuff I got this morning.
Observations
1. A few of my coupons I really shouldn’t have been able to use. The Colgate CVS coupons was for the 6 oz. tubes and not the 4.6 oz. tubes that were on sale, but the cashier let me use them anyway. Also, my pre-coupon total should have been at least $75 to use all of the $ off coupons I had, but again the cashier let me use all of them. The cashier didn’t say a single word to me during the entire transaction, so I think he just preferred to put everything through than argue any of them.
2. While it is good to plan out your transactions, you must always be flexible. In this instance, two of the things that were actually on sale that I wanted they either didn’t have or didn’t have sufficient stock of.
3. This is still a pretty sweet deal, even excluding the coupons I shouldn’t have been able to use.
I still have my wife’s card that doesn’t have any accumulated ECBs, so I’ll have another challenge trying to do those transactions to minimize my out of pocket.
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