Shopping Walgreens

Walgreen & Register Rewards Explained

For Walgreens Coupon Policy go HERE. I recommend printing it and keep it in your coupon binder.

Here are a few things you need to understand about register rewards and to have successful WAGS shopping trips:

Register Rewards are manufacturer coupons that can then be used to purchase anything in any Walgreens store except for a few items such as lotto, alcohol, cigarettes and a few other items. So, if you are purchasing an item for $5 and you are using a $3 RR to pay for it, it will then only be $2 that you pay out of pocket. They expire in about two weeks after they are issued, so make sure to keep an eye on those expiration dates.

Your total has to be over the amount of the RR. So, you cannot use a $3 RR to buy three times that are .99 each, because your total would go negative. In this case, your RR would beep at the register and the cashier will not accept it. A good solution to this is to purchase a filler item. Filler items are very inexpensive items (.01-.25) that can be used to make sure your total doesn’t go negative. Make sure to check out the clearance section for fillers and the seasonal section for things like pencils. Another good cheap filler is small candy items. My WAGS always has taffy for .10 or tootsie rolls for .05. So now, you could by your three .99 items, plus one .05 filler and pay for all these with a $3RR and your total will be .02 plus tax.

You can only earn one of the same RR in a transaction. So, you cannot purchase five packs of Huggies and expect to get five RRs back. You will only get one. To get around this, you can do five separate transactions. Make sure to be courteous and go to the end of the line for each transaction.

You cannot use a Register Reward earned from an item to purchase that same item and expect to get another RR unless in rare circustances that it is actually what we call Rolling but this is rare. For example, if you had already done the Huggies transaction once, you cannot use the $3 RR you earned to pay for your next transaction. If you were to do that, your new $3 RR would not print. You can however, use a RR from another product to purchase a different product that will produce a RR. So, for example this week Dove Men’s Body Wash is $5.99 with a $6 RR making it FREE after the RR. You could purchase the Huggies first, and then purchase the Dove and use the Huggies RR to pay for the dove, so your out of pocket cost for the Dove would only be $2.99 before any other coupons and tax, and you would earn a $6 RR back. This concept is called rolling Register Rewards.

You can use multiple RRs in one transaction. For example, if you are buying a $25 item, you could purchase that with five $5 RRs as long as you added four filler items to satisfy the coupon to item ratio which I discuss below.

If your manufacturer’s coupon is worth more than the price of an item, Walgreens coupon policy says they are suppose to adjust it down. You will have to let the cashier know to adjust the coupon value down to ensure that it is accepted. Many cashiers do not know they can do this or that it is stated in the WAGS policy that they are suppose to.

To be sure that you get all the savings from all your coupons, present the manufacturer’s coupons before the Walgreen’s store coupons (the ones found in their circular and monthly catalog). Do this at the end of transaction.

Coupon to Item Ratio – This is the most imprtant part of WAGS Shopping

At Walgreens you cannot have more manufacturer coupons than you have items. Keep in mind that RRs are manufacturer coupons so they count towards this ratio. Walgreens store coupons (IVCs) are not manufacturer coupons, so they do not count towards this ratio. Again use filler items to satisfy this coupon to item ratio. For the example that I used in #4 above, if you did the Huggies transaction first and then you wanted to use the Huggies RR to pay for the Dove (which you are also using a manufacturer coupon on), you would need to add a filler item, because right now you would have one product (the Dove) and two coupons (the $3RR and the $1 MQ). Add one small filler item, and you will be good to go!

Comments

susan rumble says:
October 16, 2011 at 9:14 am
thank you for making sense of how RR work. cause i didn’t get it at first. i’ll have to shop there this week thanks again.
Hayley says:
December 17, 2011 at 8:22 am
Thank you so much for explaining this. I shopped at Walgreens yesterday and got alot of rewards, but wasn’t sure what to do with them. I should be able to get alot of stuff for free next week now that I know how to do it. Hayley