CVS is the favorite of the three major drugstore chains for many people, and it’s pretty easy to see why.  They offer some truly fantastic deals on a regular basis! I think I’d be more into CVS if it wasn’t so darned far away, but I still go about once a week.

Extra Care Card

The first thing you need is a CVS loyalty card, called an Extra Care Card.  You can apply for one at the store–it’s just a simple form that you fill out.  You can also apply for one online, though you have to remember that it will take a while for it to arrive–if you want to start immediately, you’re better off waiting until you go in to the store.  When you purchase items, hand over your card first thing and they’ll scan it.  If you don’t have a card, you won’t get the sale prices and you won’t get any ECBs.  If you ever forget to bring your card, they can access your account if you tell them your phone number, so don’t lie on this one. ;)  Not that I would ever do that…

Weekly Ads / Extra Care Books

The items in the weekly ad are sometimes cheaper than you’ll find them elsewhere, but sometimes not. In other words–you can’t assume that it’s a good price because it’s “on sale”. The drugstores mark up their prices so much that you can never be sure.  The weekly ad also shows some of the best ECB deals available for the week.  Sometimes the sale prices are really good, though, so you want to keep an eye on things even if they aren’t free.

My Sunday paper never carries the CVS ad, but never fear! You can check it out on the CVS website. It’s also posted in advance (sometimes weeks or even months!) on various deal-seeking forums. Try the Hot Coupon World CVS forum and the Slickdeals drugstore forum (check for the CVS thread for the appropriate week–this thread is helpful for that.)

There is also another booklet located at the front of the store.  In times past, it was the Extra Care book with monthly ECB deals.  They seem to have moved to a “clipless coupon” book of late, but it’s still worth a look to see if there are any deals in there for you.

For help putting together your shopping list, try the above links, or use the lists at Southern Savers (she always has good lists!) or The Grocery Gathering at becentsable.net.

Extra Care Bucks

At CVS, the “rebate” is in the form of Extra Care Bucks. Extra Care Bucks (or ECBs) print right on the bottom of your receipt, along with CVS store coupons.  Treat them just like cash, because that’s what they are! I have heard of people throwing them away because they didn’t know what they were for.  DON’T DO THAT!  They’re triggered by specific products that you purchased, and you can turn around and use them on anything in the store except for prescriptions, alcohol, gift cards, lottery, money orders, postage, pre-paid cards and tobacco.

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When I first got started, I really wanted to know exactly what one of these “Extra Care Bucks” would look like, so I took a picture of the ones in my wallet right now.  My wallet, incidentally, has a divider in the middle of the cash section, and I put cash in one and ECBs and RRs in the other.  I don’t want to take a chance on losing them in a coupon folder.  Note that it has my name at the top, and a description of what you purchased to cause the ECB to print.

There are a few things you need to know about ECBs.

  • ECBs are only valid for the card they were printed for.
  • They expire in one month from the date of issuance. Many stores accept expired ECBs in some manner. Don’t throw yours away until you find out, and it’s worth calling around to ask other stores. You will have better luck if they’re very recently expired, though.
  • There are limits on each deal. The limits are usually listed in the ad or posted in the store. Sometimes the listed limit does not correspond with reality. At the bottom of your receipt, there’s a section titled “This Week’s Extra Buck Offers”.  It will list a summary of the terms (ex. Band Aid, Buy 1 Get 2 ECB”), and the number of items you purchased. If you have reached your limit, it will say “* Offer Limit Reached.”  If you have not reached your limit, it will list the quantity toward this reward, and the quantity needed to earn the reward.  You can’t know by looking at the receipt how many more you can buy–you just have to try it and find out, basically.
  • You may use an ECB from a particular deal to pay for the same deal (unlike Register Rewards at Walgreens.)  As a matter of fact, if an item is free after ECBs and the limit is greater than one, it’s a good method of “rolling” your ECBs–pay for the second item in a new transaction, using the exact amount from your first transaction.
  • You will not receive cash back from using an ECB, so make sure your order comes to a little more than the value of the ECBs you plan on using.
  • ECBs do not pay for tax.
  • You can use as many ECBs as you want, as long as they don’t go over your order total, of course.  If you have one really expensive item, you can use twenty ECBs to pay for it, if you want to.  (This is also unlike the RR system at Walgreens, where you need one item for every coupon you use.)
  • If you purchase multiple items for a particular deal in one transaction, only one ECB will print for that deal.  In the Band Aid ECB pictured above, I purchased two Band Aids that gave $2 ECB each.  It automatically added the two ECBs together to produce one larger one.  That’s good in that it’s one less piece of paper to keep up with, but rememeber that the larger ones will be harder to use!  You’ll have to buy something that costs enough to use it.  That’s another reason one might want to break their order into multiple transactions–to lower the value of the ECBs they receive.

The key to working CVS is to keep your out-of-pocket (OOP) costs as low as possible–under a dollar or so if you can.  You can actually “grow” your ECBs until you have more than you paid in the beginning, and then you can keep using them to pay for more things that give ECBs, and all of this without really affecting your personal finances that much.  You won’t actually make a profit in that they will hand over cash at the end of the transaction, but you can have more ECBs than you paid out in cash, and remember that you can use ECBs (almost) like cash! That’s the basic premise of rolling your ECBs.  You want to use them up before they expire, and you also want to purchase items that give back more ECBs so you can keep playing the game.

Here’s an example.  You purchase an item that is free after ECBs.  It costs $3.99, and you have a $1 coupon.  You pay $2.99 out of pocket, and you will receive a $3.99 ECB.  Then, you turn around and buy another item which costs $7 and gives back $5 ECB, and you also have a $2.50  coupon. $7 – $5 – $2.50 = -$0.51–effective profit!  You can now use that $3.99 ECB when paying for the second transaction.  Your total will be $7 – $2.50 coupon = $4.50, and then you will pay with a $3.99 ECB, or $0.49. You’ve now spent a total of $2.99 + $0.49 = $3.48 out of pocket, and you still have $5 ECB to play with.

General Shopping Tips and Coupon Policy

CVS is generally pretty coupon-friendly.  They accept manufacturer’s coupons and CVS store coupons. Some stores accept competitor’s  coupons and expired coupons, I have heard–ask first at your own store before you assume that to be true. (It isn’t at my own store.)  Some stores have a scanning machine at the front of the store.  You can scan your card when you go in and it will spit out some CVS coupons for you.  These are really nice because you can combine them with manufacturer’s coupons and get really good deals.  They also sometimes print purchase-based coupons, such as  off $5 off $30.  These are tied to your card and cannot be transferred.

Try to keep your transactions small when you’re first starting out.   It’s easier to figure out the system when you aren’t buying everything in the store.

CVS is fun because you can walk out of there saying, I bought all this stuff and only paid $0.26, and they gave me $22 back!  You can show your receipt to anyone and they will be impressed.  (You don’t have to tell them that you spent $18 worth of ECBs unless you just want to… ;)  It’s well worth the time it takes to figure out their system. I was pretty intimidated by CVS at first, but it’s not that hard once you get started.

That should be enough to get started.  If there’s anything else you want to know about CVS, please let me know and I’ll try to answer.  Or, if you have any success stories about your CVS experiences, I’d like to hear those too. :)