Last week, we looked at the MyWalgreens reward program and demonstrated how their rules often force customers to pay additional money out of their own pocket despite having enough Walgreens funny money in their rewards account.
This week, it is CVS’ turn.
| CVS – ExtraBucks |
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We’ve all gotten the CVS ExtraBucks slips that pop out of the register after making a purchase of a product that promises a particular bonus. For example, they may advertise “Buy brand X shampoo, and get $2 in ExtraBucks.” In a sense, it is a nasty tactic because you are not getting dollars off the item you are actually buying, but rather those dollars can only be applied to a subsequent purchase. And they expire rather quickly — usually in about three weeks.
Let’s say that you have several individual ExtraBucks coupons in your possession — one for $1, one for $2, and one for $10. Now you want to buy a $7 item. While you can pay with the $10 coupon, you will lose $3 because the system does not give back change. On the other hand, if you use just the $1 and $2 coupon on that $7 item, you will still owe $4 in real money.
So even though you have a total of $13 in ExtraBucks, it is not like an account you can draw against to pay in full for anything you want up to your total balance.
We think that CVS should allow you to bank your ExtraBucks and simply let you drawn down your balance and apply whatever amount you like to your purchases.
When we posed this idea to CVS, the company said, “Unfortunately, we won’t be able to comment.”
Here’s an even better idea for CVS. How about dropping ExtraBucks entirely and simply reduce the sale price of the advertised item by the amount of the ExtraBucks that would otherwise be provided upon its purchase? Fat chance that will happen.
Feel free to talk about your experiences with CVS ExtraBucks in the comments.
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