Buying Walgreens diapers for fun and profit!

I mentioned in my last post how I was getting totally bored with CVS and their deals. Well, thankfully Walgreens is picking up the slack on their deals, and today and tomorrow (7/25-26) they have an absolutely incredible deal going on Walgreens brand diapers. It is a little YMMV (your mileage may vary), however my experience with it today is that it worked in 11 of 13 instances. Anyway, here’s the deal…Each month Walgreens has their Easy Saver Catalog with their rebates for the month and a bunch of store coupons. The dates on the ones for July and August overlap (Friday and Saturday). Both have a coupon for $5 off 2 packs of the Walgreens diapers and training pants. There is also a coupon for $2 off 1 pack in a brochure you can get from the pharmacy for asking about their prescription savings club. The diapers and training pants are on sale for $5.99 for the jumbo pack, and you can use all three coupons on the diapers and the coupon will give the discount off of each pack you buy. They are also running a deal this month where you get a $5 coupon for purchase three packs of the diapers good for a future visit. You can buy more than three in a transaction, but you’ll only get the $5 once. Anyway, since the coupon is for multiples of 2 I’ll give the example of buying 4 packs at a time. If you buy four packs here is the breakdown:$23.96 (4 x $5.99)

-10.00 (July coupon for $5 off 2)

-10.00 (August coupon for $5 off 2)

-8.00 (Pharmacy coupon for $2 off 1)

= -$4.04 (they won’t refund so find something else to buy to get to a positive total)

On top of that, you’ll get the $5 coupon for buying three, although you can’t use the coupon in the transaction if you do this deal again.

The two $5/2 coupons are printable from their website in the online copies of the EasySaver catalogs. The $2/1 coupon is available at the pharmacy counter for asking about their pharmacy discount plan. The cashiers don’t have to keep the store coupons they scan, so you’ll probably be able to reuse the same coupon over and over. Just don’t cut it out of the book and innocently ask “do you need me to tear these out of the booklet?” Most of the time they’ll just scan it out of the book and give it back to you or ask for the last four numbers of the coupon to type in, however if they do keep the coupon you can just go to the pharmacy counter and ask for another at the next store.

As I have twins, I worked the heck out of this deal. Based on my calculations, I spent a little over 5 hours going to 13 different stores, traveling a total of about 33 miles. Of my 13 stops, I was only denied at two, and at each stop I bought between 6 and 10 packs of diapers. Here is my final tally of merchandise, out of pocket expense, and rewards and rebates:

• The Loot
  • 54 packs of Premium diapers and 33 packs of Premium training pants, relatively evenly divided between diaper sizes 3 to 6 and training pant sizes 2T/3T and 3T/4T.
  • 28 bars of Dove dark chocolate (my wife loves the stuff)
  • 2 Walgreens water filter cartridges (August EasySaver Rebate item)
  • 3 Vacuum storage bags (August EasySaver Rebate item)
  • 1 pack of Crayola Markers (July EasySaver Rebate item)
  • 1 pack of G2 pens (July EasySaver Rebate item)
  • 1 bottle Pert Plus (August EasySaver Rebate item)
  • 1 pack of Walgreens light bulbs (August EasySaver Rebate item)
  • 12 folders, 6 highlighters, and 2 mini composition books (5cent items used as fillers)
  • 1 2-liter of Diet Coke
• The rewards
  • $48.01 in EasySaver rebates (between two accounts and including the 10% bonus for requesting a gift card), plus three movie tickets through the August Mars EasySaver rebate offer
  • $55.00 in Register rewards
• Out of pocket expense
  • $1.18 total, paid using gift cards from previous Walgreens rebates

A few observations:

• Although the August rebate was effective starting today, none of the stores I visited had the August booklets out. I printed several of the August diaper coupons at home, however I didn’t print the Dove chocolate coupon in the August booklet, which would have allowed me to get even more free chocolate.
• I somehow lost two packs of diapers along the way. Not really sure where or how, but 2 out of 89 is not a tragic loss.
• At most of the stores I went to it seemed like there was at least one size of the diapers that were cleaned out (probably by another SlickDeals user), but there was usually one size that had a good level of stock in the premium items. There were also plenty of the regular packs of diapers (non-premium) at all of the stores I went to, however I don’t trust store brand diapers enough to get anything but the premium product.
• Before anyone accuses me of going overboard, I will say that I have nine month old twins and my brother-in-law and his wife are expecting a little girl any day now, so rest assured the diapers will be used!