Most Drug Stores and Grocery Chains now ask us to use Shopper Reward Cards in order to receive their great deals.  Of course we want to sign up at the stores that we shop at regularly and get those discounts, but look out stockpilers because changes are happening right now!

If you shop at Rite Aid, you probably are familiar with the Wellness Plus Rewards Card.  This card is now the store’s avenue to place limits on your awesome Rite Aid deals.  Many deals become stockpile worthy due to the +UP reward coupon that is printed when you purchase the item, (like store credit with an expiration date).

Example: Shampoo is 2.99 and you get a +UP Reward for 2.99 when you buy one, & this is a money maker because you have a coupon giving you 1.00 off the shampoo.

Until recently, you could receive this deal on as many bottles of shampoo as you wanted as long as you bought each bottle in a separate transaction.  Great!  You could stock up on shampoo and return with-in the next couple of weeks and use this store coupon credit to buy things you had on your list for the week anyway, or use them to make the next weeks’ great deals even sweeter!

Not anymore!  Now when you scan your Wellness Plus card the computer will allow you to receive only one +UP reward coupon.  If you do a separate transaction another coupon will NOT print because the new limit is one +UP reward coupon per item per customer.  There is no way around this either, you need the card to get the deal at all, but the card now limits the quantity to one!  If your Rite Aid hasn’t implemented this yet, it will.  It is happening right now chain-wide.

One plus side to this system may be that you are at least able to get that bottle of shampoo.  Many times we go into the store for that awesome deal, only to find the shelf empty.

Some Walgreens stores are also starting to use this store reward card system.  My Walgreens doesn’t have this yet, but a cashier told me that it is coming and she’ll have to go through training soon.  She said all of the Register Rewards coupons will be in the computer/on your card, and no longer print out.  I don’t have any details at all about this, but I won’t be surprised if Walgreens also uses the store cards to limit rewards on purchases.

(All store cards are not created Equal.  I love my Giant Eagle rewards card!  They don’t limit your rewards, just give you the sale price when you use your card AND all of your purchases add up to gas discounts at their stations AND all of the gas you pump there adds up to discounts on your future grocery purchases!)