CVS - A weird one

CVS today was just weird. I got off to a late start when my neighbors had a moving truck in front of their house that made it so I couldn't back out of my driveway....

First, I bought the paper with my other card, used a $2.49 ECB, paid a penny. (I'd held onto this specific ECB for this reason.) Fine.

Then I grabbed the Venus razor and the Gillette shampoo and wandered the aisles for a bit. I saw that the Fruitopia shampoo (apparently this is CVS's competition with Herbal Essences) was on sale for $1.99 and I had a $1 CRT for it. OK, 99 cents to try new shampoo isn't bad. So I quickly did my math and came up with a pre-tax total of $10.98. Great!

So first I bought:
Venus Spa razor - $7.99
Gillette shampoo - $5.99
Fruitopia shampoo - $1.99

I handed over my ECBs first - $10.99 worth. And then my coupons - a CRT for $1/shampoo, a CRT for $1/Fruitopia, $2/Venus, $2/Gillette. And as my favorite cashier gets to the $2/Gillette coupon she looks at me and says "You don't owe $2, you owe $1." And I am suddenly frantic, trying to figure out where I went wrong. In the car on the way home it clicked - in my math, I'd forgotten about the $1/shampoo CRT! So I was in fact $1 off and had handed over $1 more in ECBs than I needed to - the perils of doing it that way. But I still had money to spend, so I was like "OK, the Energy Shots are a different deal this week from the monthly..." and I got one.

Then the cashier rang up the last $2/Gillette coupon first and then the $4 ECB (for the Energy Shots). Oh, I said, if you'd done it the other way around, I would've owed less and you wouldn't have to adjust the bucks! So she voids it and redoes it. 25 cents. She goes "NO! If I do it my way, you will owe zero!" and so I say fine, let's see how that works. And she redoes it and (as I suspected) I now owe 28 cents. And she laughs...and then the system won't let her undo/redo again. *sigh* So I laugh and say "Um, yeah, 3 cents. No big." But I did learn that the order really does matter.

And I'm not done! So my bucks print...and nothing prints for the Energy Shot, which I didn't even want. Hindsight #2: M&Ms were on sale for 88 cents or so (75% off Valentine's Day type) and I'd put them back - they would've made a great filler for my mistake instead. But anyway, so we determine that the monthly deal and this week's deal for the Energy Shot ARE NOT DIFFERENT DEALS. And so the cashier was going to force the bucks and then decided (since I didn't really want them anyway) to do a return. So I wound up with a money card with $5.34 on it, and there's my extra $1 in there somewhere...or something.

Basically, I had overage of $1 from the Gillette, and I used it toward, let's say, getting free Fruitopia shampoo (it was $1.99, used the $1 CRT...) and then "spent" $2 on the Venus razor (which I wanted - that was my plan all along). But it was weird and confusing and ugh. Anyway, in the end I spent 28 cents OOP (plus a penny on the other card) so I really don't know why I'm complaining. ;)

BUT. Somehow I am down $2.65 in bucks, where I expected to be down closer to $2. So if you can look over all this mess and figure out where the extra pennies went (hee hee), do comment!



Total OOP: $7.45 ($5.25 tax)
Total merchandise: 5 double Sunday papers, 4 boxes Throat Coolers, 1 Garnier 2-in-1 shampoo/conditioner, 6 packs of Stayfree maxi pads, 1 box of sheer Band Aids, 4 boxes of Soy Joy bars, 1 pack of Nutra Trim gum, 2 bottles Dawn, 1 travel pack of tissues, 7 greeting cards, 2 boxes 5 ct. allergy meds, 2 3-packs of CVS brand paper towels, 1 box of CVS cold medicine (Dayquil-ish), 1 Gillette shampoo, 1 Gillette conditioner, 1 Gillette shampoo+conditioner, 1 box of 30 Breathe Right strips, 4 Gillette Gamer razors, 2 L'Oreal towelettes, 1 KY product, 1 CVS toilet paper, 1 10-count Excedrin, 1 chewable aspirin, 2 Johnson's Buddies soaps, 1 20 oz. Dr. Pepper, 1 small CVS mouthwash, 8 25-count CVS cotton rounds, 4 small boxes of Wheat Thins, 1 Boost Kid Essentials, 2 Cascade Action Pacs, 1 bag of Halls cough drops, 2 Energy Shots 2 pack, 4 Colgate toothpastes, 1 small box Breathe Right strips, 3 bottles Suave body wash, 1 bottle Herbal Essences shampoo, 1 bottle Herbal Essences conditioner, 1 Snickers heart candy, 2 bottles Mylanta Mint, 1 Fruitopia shampoo, 1 Venus Spa Breeze razor.

Current ECB status: $26.32 ($5.34 of it on a money card)