Not every couponing trip is a good one. Last week, I had a few major bummers that I am hoping to make up for this week. First, I was so excited about a deal that Walgreens had. A new product, Starbucks Refreshers energy drinks were on sale for 99c and produced a 99c Register Reward, making them totally free! But here’s the best part: there were coupons out for a free Starbucks Refreshers, making this deal a money maker.
Here’s how. You purchase a Starbucks Refreshers from Walgreens and use the free coupon to pay for it, costing you nothing out of pocket. You are then given a 99c Register Reward with your purchase. You walk out of the store with the drink AND an extra dollar store credit for your time!
As you might imagine, I was quite excited about this deal. So, I needed to get my hands on as many free coupons as I could. I turned to eBay, and purchased 20 coupons for a total of $9, including shipping. Yes, that is expensive, but, all it would take was finding 20 drinks and I would end up with a $11 profit, paying for my gas getting around to the stores.
I have employed this strategy in the past, successfully, more times than I can count. This time, however, it didn’t go so well. Unbeknown to me, Pepsi (the vendor for the Starbucks Refreshers) had a major shortage and did not give ANY Starbucks Refreshers to ANY Walgreens in a hundred mile radius!
I kid you not, I went to over 15 stores looking for them. I found one store that had 3. By Friday, I had completely given up on finding them at Walgreens in order to make this deal a money maker, and decided to find the energy drinks anywhere I could because the free coupons expired on Saturday. I went to grocery stores, CVS, Walmart. Nada. I ended up with 17 unused free coupons, and 3 bad-tasting orange flavored energy drinks. I lost $6 on the cost of the coupons. That sucks.
While I was at all the Walgreens, however, I did end up with 12 boxes of NatuRelief herbal pain medications, which I had never seen before, and really like! I used a few this week and am happy I have a small stockpile; they will replace Tylenol and Advil in my home for a while. They were on sale at Walgreens for $5.99 with a $5 RR. There was a $1 coupon out, so they were totally free.
The 28 Gain dish soaps you see cost me 50c each. I rarely find freebies on dish soap, so stock up when I get a decent price. We were literally completely out of dishsoap, so it was a timely deal. They were on sale for $1 each at CVS and I had a coupon for $1 off 2. The only bad part was that I bought all the green ones at one CVS, then found larger purple ones at another CVS. Figures with the week I was having.
The scalp shampoos you see were at one of the grocery stores we went into while looking for the energy drinks. There was a sample lady there and I think she wanted to close up so she gave each of us two nice-sized samples. We walked out with 8 shampoos perfect for travel kits.
All in all, though it wasn’t the absolute best couponing week, it didn’t end too bad and we did get some great deals. This week I’m going after tampons. Tell you all about it Monday.
In the meantime, here are some new printable grocery store coupons:
$0.50 off FRENCH’S HONEY MUSTARD DIPPING SAUCE
$0.50 off FRENCH’S Dijon Mustard
$1.00 off (4) LEAN CUISINE Varieties, 5-16 oz
$2.00 off on any (1) New Schick Xtreme3 Eco 4ct
$1.50 off 3 12 oz. SPAM products
$0.70 off ONE Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut Cereal
$2.00 off Nabisco & Coca Cola products at Publix
$1.50 off one PULL-UPS Training Pants
$2.00 off Alka-Seltzer Plus Allergy Product
$1.00 off Any Three Good ‘n Natural Bars