CVS How To
Posted 10-06-2009 at 04:40:02 PM by GracieCappello
Just a quick note: I am not good at explaining things. They make sense to me and so I suppose they do so to others. If there is anything that is not clear or that you have a question about please ask. If you see something I did not make clear please bring it to my attention so I can clarify. THANK YOU!! 
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I think the easiest way to explain CVS' system, is to show you one of my recent trips there, and explain the details.
First of all, you will need an Extra Care card. You can sign up for this online and receive it in 1-2 weeks, or you can sign up in store and have your CVS card to use that minute.
Once you have your card you will be able to take part in the awesome sale and extra care deals that come around every week.
One week recently, CVS was having several awesome sales. One was buy $25 worth of P&G products and receive $10 in ECB (Extra Care bucks). Now extra care bucks are linked to your extra care card, and are essentially CVS money. Every week there will be advertised items that generate these bucks when you buy that product; these ECB print off at the end of your store receipt.
Quite frequently there will be free after ECB items advertised for that week. So you will buy a Glade candle for $4.99 and receive $4.99 back, making the item in a sense free.
Now I am going to detail my trip. When you check out, always have them scan your card before they ring up your items, so you will get the sale price on your purchase and receive the ECB.
Here is what I did. Frequently I will do more than one transaction, so I can “roll” my ECB (more on this later), but I only did one that day.
I bought the following:
2 Tide Laundry Detergent - $12 for both
2 Bounce Dryer Bars - $8 for both
1 Tide Stain Release - $4
1 Dawn Dishwashing Liquid - $1
Fruitopia Shampoo - $1.99
Violoige Shampoo - $1.99
Now my total before coupons and tax was to be: $29.98 Then I used my coupons.
I had a $5/25 CVS coupon that I received for taking a quiz on CVS.com, so I used that first. CVS occasionally offers printable online coupons like this one. These are wonderful because they can be used before all other coupons and ECB and really cut down what you have to pay.
After that coupon I used the following manufacturer coupons.
2 $1/1 Tide coupons
2 $1/1 Bounce Dryer bar coupon
1 $1.50/1 Tide Stain Release coupon
1 0.25/1 Dawn coupon
1 $2/1 Fruitopia coupon
1 $2/1 Violoige coupon
Now my total was bought down to $15.23, but I had $13.48 in ECB and 0.56 on a money card so I only paid oop (out of pocket) $1.48 plus I received $10 back in ECB. That is the best thing about ECB, you can roll them. What I mean by that is this. You use the ECB which you earned for buying, say, the Glade candle to pay for the $5 shampoo on sale that also generates ECBs. So all you will have to pay out of pocket is 0.01 plus tax because you used your $4.99 ECB to pay, and you will also receive say $3 ECB for buy that item. Doing this you will pay very little oop and get merchandise for free or very inexpensively.
I also did this when I bought the Vaseline lotion – It was $7.99 and you received $7 in ECB when for purchasing it. I also had a $1/1 coupon and $6.99 ECB. So I got this product for nothing out oop except $0.52 in tax and received $7 ECB for next time.
Oftentimes when you combine an extra care buck deal with coupons, you can store things for free or very cheap. For example, CVS also had Gillette Fusion Razors on sale for $9.29. They generated $5 in ECB. That made the razors $4.29 which believe it or not is not a really good price, but that Sunday’s paper had a $4/1 Gillette Razor coupon, so when you used the coupon the razor was only 0.29 after ECB. This is pretty good for a $9+ razor!
Sometime an item will be free or almost free after ECB and you will have a coupon for it. You can use the $3/1 Glade candle coupon on the $4.99 candle, pay only $1.99 oop or less if you can roll some extra care bucks and receive $4.99 ECB back, making in a way a profit.
One other thing about CVS – most stores have a price scanning machine, whenever you come to the store you will want to scan your Extra Care Card there for it often spits out valuable coupons. Some of these are $2, $1 etc off a specific product. The neat thing about these is that since they are CVS coupons you can combine them with manufacturer coupon and so get even more off of an item.
Another kind of coupon that you will sometimes get from this machine is a $4/20, $3/15 coupon or others like it. These are essentially coupons for a certain amount of money off of purchases over a specified amount. Like I said previously, the $3/15 coupon can be handed over first and taken off before all other coupons and extra care bucks allowing you to spend even less oop.
Also if you sign up for CVS emails they will send you these kinds and other CVS coupons in your inbox.
**********
I think the easiest way to explain CVS' system, is to show you one of my recent trips there, and explain the details.
First of all, you will need an Extra Care card. You can sign up for this online and receive it in 1-2 weeks, or you can sign up in store and have your CVS card to use that minute.
Once you have your card you will be able to take part in the awesome sale and extra care deals that come around every week.
One week recently, CVS was having several awesome sales. One was buy $25 worth of P&G products and receive $10 in ECB (Extra Care bucks). Now extra care bucks are linked to your extra care card, and are essentially CVS money. Every week there will be advertised items that generate these bucks when you buy that product; these ECB print off at the end of your store receipt.
Quite frequently there will be free after ECB items advertised for that week. So you will buy a Glade candle for $4.99 and receive $4.99 back, making the item in a sense free.
Now I am going to detail my trip. When you check out, always have them scan your card before they ring up your items, so you will get the sale price on your purchase and receive the ECB.
Here is what I did. Frequently I will do more than one transaction, so I can “roll” my ECB (more on this later), but I only did one that day.
I bought the following:
2 Tide Laundry Detergent - $12 for both
2 Bounce Dryer Bars - $8 for both
1 Tide Stain Release - $4
1 Dawn Dishwashing Liquid - $1
Fruitopia Shampoo - $1.99
Violoige Shampoo - $1.99
Now my total before coupons and tax was to be: $29.98 Then I used my coupons.
I had a $5/25 CVS coupon that I received for taking a quiz on CVS.com, so I used that first. CVS occasionally offers printable online coupons like this one. These are wonderful because they can be used before all other coupons and ECB and really cut down what you have to pay.
After that coupon I used the following manufacturer coupons.
2 $1/1 Tide coupons
2 $1/1 Bounce Dryer bar coupon
1 $1.50/1 Tide Stain Release coupon
1 0.25/1 Dawn coupon
1 $2/1 Fruitopia coupon
1 $2/1 Violoige coupon
Now my total was bought down to $15.23, but I had $13.48 in ECB and 0.56 on a money card so I only paid oop (out of pocket) $1.48 plus I received $10 back in ECB. That is the best thing about ECB, you can roll them. What I mean by that is this. You use the ECB which you earned for buying, say, the Glade candle to pay for the $5 shampoo on sale that also generates ECBs. So all you will have to pay out of pocket is 0.01 plus tax because you used your $4.99 ECB to pay, and you will also receive say $3 ECB for buy that item. Doing this you will pay very little oop and get merchandise for free or very inexpensively.
I also did this when I bought the Vaseline lotion – It was $7.99 and you received $7 in ECB when for purchasing it. I also had a $1/1 coupon and $6.99 ECB. So I got this product for nothing out oop except $0.52 in tax and received $7 ECB for next time.
Oftentimes when you combine an extra care buck deal with coupons, you can store things for free or very cheap. For example, CVS also had Gillette Fusion Razors on sale for $9.29. They generated $5 in ECB. That made the razors $4.29 which believe it or not is not a really good price, but that Sunday’s paper had a $4/1 Gillette Razor coupon, so when you used the coupon the razor was only 0.29 after ECB. This is pretty good for a $9+ razor!
Sometime an item will be free or almost free after ECB and you will have a coupon for it. You can use the $3/1 Glade candle coupon on the $4.99 candle, pay only $1.99 oop or less if you can roll some extra care bucks and receive $4.99 ECB back, making in a way a profit.
One other thing about CVS – most stores have a price scanning machine, whenever you come to the store you will want to scan your Extra Care Card there for it often spits out valuable coupons. Some of these are $2, $1 etc off a specific product. The neat thing about these is that since they are CVS coupons you can combine them with manufacturer coupon and so get even more off of an item.
Another kind of coupon that you will sometimes get from this machine is a $4/20, $3/15 coupon or others like it. These are essentially coupons for a certain amount of money off of purchases over a specified amount. Like I said previously, the $3/15 coupon can be handed over first and taken off before all other coupons and extra care bucks allowing you to spend even less oop.
Also if you sign up for CVS emails they will send you these kinds and other CVS coupons in your inbox.
Total Comments 1
Comments
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Great job explaining for those who are new to CVS!Posted 10-09-2009 at 08:41:46 PM by BringontheWonder
