December 11, 2007

• Tricks for the Bored

  This comes from various “deals” forums. What you need:

  1.  A printer with sufficient black ink
  2.  An internet connection
  3. One of the following:
        a.) A CVS in close vicinity that has an automatic check out lane, or
  
        b.) 3 CVS’s in close vicinity to you, or
        c.) A CVS with cashiers who aren’t very argumentative
  4. One or more CVS extra care accounts

  OK, here’s how it goes:

  Download
  and print from the CVS website the $5.00 off energizer batteries coupon
  (print three copies!). Also print the $4.00 of $20.00 purchase coupon,
  and the $2.00 off $10.00 purchase coupon plus any other coupons you
  want.  Search the web for the $5.00 off $15.00 purchase coupon for cvs
  and print it too. (I will abbreviate these last three coupons as the
  5/4/2 coupons for the remainder of this email) Lastly download and
  print two coupons for free tissues from CVS. They have different codes
  on them. One is on the website now the other you can find in various
  forums.

  First go to a CVS, buy Energizer Max batteries on sale for 
  $5.29. Use coupon on CVS website for $5.00 off energizer batteries
  (they may be labeled incorrectly but the price for all of the ones
  listed on the coupon is $5.29 right now, don’t know how long it will
  last). This part always works. You get batteries for $0.29 + tax, for
  me it was $0.31.  Try to buy the ones that have a little sticker on
  them that say $1.00 off. Remove and SAVE the sticker. Please dispose of
  your batteries properly!

  Now here’s where it gets a little shady. It works, but it feels a little fishy. 

  Do
  the exact same thing again! You can go to a different CVS (what I did)
  or just start a second transaction with a different cashier or if the
  cashier lets you the very same cashier (they might if they want to do
  the very same thing after work, if you’re a good talker you can
  probably convince them). If you have an automatic check out lane just
  do it yourself.  In the latter two cases (if you have a receptive
  cashier or use an automatic check out lane) you can also do this all as
  one transaction so you don’t have to spend any cash at all.

  Now do it a third time! But this time stop and do a little
  more too.  Gather together at least $20 worth of stuff you want to buy
  including the $5.29 worth of the third pack of batteries and two boxes
  of CVS tissues. You should use all the deals you can when picking out
  this $21.00 worth of stuff. There are lots of CVS and manufacturer
  coupons available for various products plus CVS has a lot of regular
  deals this week. 

  Now apply the $4.00 off $20.00 coupon. Then apply the $5.00
  off $15.00 coupon. Then the $2.00 off $10.00 coupon.  Then the $5.00
  battery coupon. Then all 3 of the $1.00 battery coupons you’ve been
  saving.  And apply the two free tissues coupons which are about $1.00
  off each.  Again this part depends a lot on the cashier. They may argue
  with you or not apply them all saying you can only use one of the 4/5/2
  coupons. In that case just use the 5.00 one and get $15.00 worth of
  stuff, it’s still a decent deal. They may only let you get one box of
  tissues too. Automatic check out makes it all go smoothly though.

  End
  result:  4 + 5 + 2 + 5 + 3×1 + 2×1 = 21. So $21.00 worth of stuff for
  basically nothing. In addition since you have $15.00 worth of energizer
  battery purchases you will get $5.00 back in ECB that can be spent at
  CVS. Since you sepnt $0.58 + tax before, your end profit is about $4.42
  + a bunch of junk.

  Now you can if you want repeat the entire process with another
  CVS extra care account from somebody you know (or a fake name/address
  if you want to really go to the dark side). Make $4.42 more. And again
  and again and again….

  And of course if you are clever you can make this more
  abusive. No reason not to make $20.00 worth of purchases for all three
  transactions for every extra care account really and just use ALL of
  those coupons over and over and over again. You might pay a little
  more  (unless you use other coupons) but overall you’d get much more
  junk.  I’ve only used each of the 5/4/2 coupons once on each Extra Care
  account but I would not be surprised if you could use them more than
  once like the batteries coupons. The $5.00 off batteries coupons can
  definitely be reused. But the $5.00 ECB that you get back only happens
  once per Extra Care account, so that’s why you use multiple accounts.

  I didn’t actually do ALL of this personally, partly because
  when I started doing it I wasn’t aware of all of the tricks that were
  available. I just wanted $0.31 batteries for my Wii remotes and xbox360
  controllers. But I did a lot of it and got a lot of junk. After a while
  though it started to feel kinda bad. 

  So here’s my question to all of you. At what point does
  manipulating the offers made by various companies like this become
  immoral? Is doing all of this wrong? Is it right?  What’s your opinion?

  Surely
  CVS should monitor these forums right? And why wouldn’t they program
  their system so that it doesn’t accept ALL of these coupons at once? Is
  that too hard to do? It gets a little silly. Or are they just trying to
  empty out their inventory and don’t care? Is the quantity of people who
  take advantage of a trick like this so small that it really doesn’t
  impact them enough for them to care?

  Do you work at or know someone who works at a company like
  this? Do you
  know what they do to try and prevent things like this? I’m really
  curious. Each time I do one of these deals I’m just amazed that it
  works. It just seems like somebody must not be paying attention.

  Anyways feel free to share this.  Or tattle too if you want. I don’t care. I’ve already got my junk.

  Links to relevant threads with links to coupons:
  http://www.fatwallet.com/t/18/790010
  
  http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?sduid=0&t=682172
  
  http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?sduid=0&t=679854
  http://www.fatwallet.com/t/18/788981
  http://www.fatwallet.com/t/18/788691
  
  http://www.fatwallet.com/t/18/788160
  http://www.fatwallet.com/t/18/790100

  • 2:52 pm
  • 2 Comments