CVS ECB's confusion

[dionada]

Colgate toothpaste is on sale for 3.99 and you get 2.99 in ECB's wyb 1 tube.
If a person has a coupon for 1.00 off the toothpaste, they will say that the got that for free. However, when they go to use their ECB's on their next purchase of a toothbrush that costs 2.99, they will say that they got that purchase for free too.
I'm confused because in my opinion you aren't getting the first product for free. You're spending 2.99 on toothpaste and then you are getting your toothbrush for free with the ECB's you generated. So for 2.99 you are getting toothpaste and a toothbrush.

So when people report their savings, why do they account their ECB's into their first purchase? If someone could clear this up I would appreciate it!!!

In your toothpaste example, I'd consider it free because I'm going to be replacing the ECBs I used to pay for it with the ECBs it generated. I would only consider the toothbrush in your example "free" if it also generated ECBs. Technically it would also be free since I didn't lay out my own money for it, but I'd also be out that 2.99 ECB.

I wondered the same thing when I was reading about CVSing before actually doing it. If you don't already have any ECBs, it's not really free, more like an instant rebate. (Which is why I think the "It's like getting it FREE after Extra Bucks!" advertising is a bit disingenuous. Most of the people they're advertising to aren't going to have a stash of ECBs already, so they will have to pay something out of pocket.)

But there are different ways of thinking of it.

PS: Welcome to the Wonderful World of CVS

[Emoo]

It's "rolling" your ecb's. Spend some, get some back with minimal OOP.

What sweetens the deals even more are purchase based coupons. ($4 off $20 purchase). Which are used once you hit $20 in shelf/sales prices BEFRORE your other coupons. I NEVER buy anything at CVS without one of these coupons.

How to you manage to get so many purchase based coupons? I rarely see them at CVS.

[MCLindsay]

I prefer to focus on what I call the "Net Cost" of any given transaction.
I figure it this way:

Out of pocket cost + ECB's used to pay - ECB's earned = Net Cost

So for the first toothpaste transaction:
Out of pocket cost = $3.99 less $1 coupon = $2.99
We'll assume no ECB's to start with, and your lucky enough to live in a no-sales-tax area. The Net Cost looks like this:

OOP + ECB paid - ECB earned = Net Cost
2.99 + 0 - 2.99 = 0

So I would consider this toothpaste FREE.

Now, say you turn around and buy another toothpaste and paid with those ECB's you just earned, and let's assume you had another $1 coupon and the limit on the deal was 1 so you would not receive any more ECB's...

OOP + ECB paid - ECB earned = Net Cost
0 + 2.99 - 0 = 2.99

OOP is zero because you use the ECB from the first transaction to pay. It may seem confusing because you might think that we're counting the ECB's paid with twice, but the main purpose of adding the ECB's paid and subtracting the ECBs earned is to find out whether you gained or lost ECBs in the transaction. When you lose ECBs, then that increases your Net Cost, while gaining ECB's lowers your Net Cost.

Now after having said all that... I use a spreadsheet (most of the time) to figure my transactions and my net cost, so I don't have to think about it too much, the formulas are already in place and I just plug in my numbers. The main reason I like to do it this way is because we have to pay sales tax of 8.5% on almost everything. My OOP includes the tax, so the formula most accurately reflects my true Net Cost.

For me, the first transaction would have looked like this with tax:
3.33 + 0 - 2.99 = 0.34, which isn't truly free for me.

Whenever I go to use a rare $4/$20 or $5/$30 coupon, I can expect to pay nearly $2 or more in tax, which makes it difficult to get things truly for free.