RITE AID 101
All of us hardcore couponers seem to particularly love three stores: CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid. Why, you may ask? FREE STUFF!

Rite Aid’s programs are pretty simple and straight forward. They have a program called Single Check Rebates. SCR’s are Rite Aid’s way of giving you free stuff and saving you lots of money. Log on to www.RiteAid.com to sign up for the SCR program. Each week you can look in their circulars to see what their offerings are. Go purchase said goodies and then come home, log on to their website with your receipts in hand, and report your purchases. Once each month, they will calculate your individual rebates and put them all in one nice and tidy check for you! Pretty simple! One caution though; make sure to submit your rebates ONLY once a month. SINGLE Rebate check means SINGLE! If you submit all your purchases the first week of them month, you can’t do it again until the next month. So log on and enter your purchases each week, just don’t SUBMIT them until you have finished your shopping for the month. They also occasionally have other goodies and rebates that you can find in the list of SCRs that are posted on their site. For instance, running this month (July 2009) they have a list of personal items you can buy. If you purchase $20 worth of the listed items, you will receive a free tote bag filled with coupons and samples valued at $40.

So, how will you maximize your savings? Well, silly, with coupons of course! Just as you have learned previously, stacking coupons, especially with rebates, will make your purchases (or list of free things) go that much farther. Rite Aid has a program called My Rite Aid that you can also sign up for through their website, that gives you access to some pretty valuable coupons, mostly for their store brands. From time to time, you can also find coupons for up to $50 in gift cards when you transfer your prescriptions over to them. And, they’re pretty generous about publishing coupons that give you $5 off a $25 purchase.

So, let’s look at a scenario. A few weeks ago, they had a deal like this:

Crest Pro-Health Enamel Shield Toothpaste 4.2 oz $2.69 get $2.69 SCR #100
-$.50 Crest Toothpaste or Liquid Gel 4.2 oz P&G 6/7/09

Now remembering back to all the abbreviations you learned in our couponer’s crash course, this deal basically becomes a money maker. It tells us that if we buy a tube of Crest Pro Health toothpaste for $2.69, then we can submit the SCR (#100 on their SCR list) and get back the full purchase price. AND…if we use a coupon for .50 off that was in the Proctor and Gamble Sunday newspaper circular on June 7th, this deal becomes a money maker. With the coupon, we’ll only pay $2.19 at the register for the toothpaste, but we’ll still get back $2.69 on our rebate.

Now, to make this deal even sweeter, if you are lucky enough to go shopping when one of Rite Aid’s super cool $5 off a $25 purchase coupons are floating around, you can combine that coupon with other SCR deals and come out even better! Just make sure you have at least $25 in purchases as you go to the register. Hand them the $5 off $25 coupon first, then the rest of your coupons.

Also, be on the lookout for multiple deals when searching for SCRs. Sometimes they will allow you to do more than one rebate on a deal. So if you find a really awesome deal and are armed with some killer coupons, keep an eye on the rebate limits; often you’ll see “limit 2!”

Now…it’s time for the free stuff! Rite Aid’s SCRs usually run monthly (within a few days of the beginning and end of each month.) At the beginning of a new month, if you log on to their site and see a deal you want to take advantage of, it might be worth your while to wait and see if the item you want will go on a weekly sale. Most of them usually do at some point through the month. When it does, buy your limit. Once their monthly SCRs are over, you usually have three to four weeks to submit your purchases online, for your check. So, let’s say I’m a new Rite Aid shopper. I’ll start shopping in July, and submit all my rebates in August. I’ll continue to shop in August and submit those rebates in September. By then, I should have my big fat rebate check for July, so I can use that money to make all of my September purchases, and so on, for the August/October purchases! After your initial cash layout (which will be less because of all the great coupons you come armed with) you should be able to use your rebate money to continue getting great stuff for free! A great tip for those checks…use them to purchase and refill your Rite Aid card, so you don’t have to keep up with the cash!

Oh, there’s just a little extra perk Rite Aid has going right now for people who use ZYRTEC. It’s called the Rite Aid-Zyrtec Rewards Program and it runs through February 27, 2010. Sign up at https://riteaid.rebateplus.com/zyrtec/default.asp?jse=yes and for every $50 you purchase in Zyrtec products, you will receive a$10 in Rite Aid certificates. Combine this with coupons and other deals, and you may be able to get an unbeatable deal on something you would have to buy anyway.

Have fun Rite Aid-ing!