Buyer Beware! (Catilina Marketing Insider Info)

So I had another botched trip to Walgreens yesterday. I read on MSM in the comments section that the belief that using coupons voids out RR (otherwise known as Catilinas) is false and that they will in fact work, so I decided to try an experiment. I was on my last day of one of my RR from the Robutussin deal and figured that I would add it to my $10 of other items and the Dimetapp deal and see what happens. Worst case I have 3 bottles of cough syrup for my kids (and who doesn't need that) for a whopping 9 bucks! Best case I have proven a theory and I can go on my merry shopping way with another piece of knowledge to use on the front line.

Well it didn't go so well. I went to a different Walgreens, because I didn't have time to hassle with the manager of my local one, who tends to be there whenever I go. The experience was much better and might be worth the extra few minutes. I bought exactly $10 worth of items plus 3 Dimetapp boxes, used my $10 RR, 3 of the printable Dimetapp $2/1 coupons, paid roughly $12 in cash and got...NO RR!! But I was prepared for this, as proven from countless other blogs and comments, arguing about a Catilina not printing out at the store is pointless, especially at Walgreens (more about why later) so I left without a word.

The next morning (because I missed the open hours for Catilina Marketing by 5 min!) I called and spoke to a very friendly guy in their customer service department. He checked my receipt information and to my surprise I was supposed to get the Catilina after all! But that information was not easy to come by for me or him. The reason? Walgreens has a "Weird" set of rules they use, different from any other store that uses these machines!

Turns out that Walgreens has what the guy called a "Buy none get none" there are no official specific over all rules but basically the guideline is this: "I want you to buy my product and I will pay you to do it, BUT I don't want you to use my coupons to do it". The problem with this policy is that it is inconsistent. For instance: You might think, for example that you can use a Kraft RR to buy a Kellogg's product that spits out another RR and vice versa, but in the case of my experiment it turns out that both Robitussin and Dimetapp are both Wyeth products and so (you'd think) should NOT spit out a RR using one to pay for the other, but as proven by my phone call, it does.

So what's a poor couponer to do? I talked to the customer service guy and he told me that not even they have a clear list of what RR items do and do not allow you to use a coupon, and BTW this is not limited to RR coupons, he gave me an example of the Crest Pro Health RR deal floating around out there. In their department they don't have an actual name or description of coupons allowed or not, but what they DO have is a UPC number and based on that they tell me that (if I understood correctly) while a RR should work, if you use the .75/1 Crest coupon it won't spit out a RR!

The following number (also in the MSM comments above) 1-888-322-3814 belongs to Catilina Marketing. Memorize this number people, put it in your contacts list, Rolodex whatever just make sure you don't lose it. This could be the most important piece of information you could ever have for running these Catalina deals at ANY store. While the guy was not able to tell me a base rule for knowing what things will and won't work with what coupons he did tell me that the best thing is to call the company ahead of time, tell them the deal you are looking at and they will tell you if it should work or not! How cool is that? No more botched Catilina deals, because there was a trick that nobody knew about.

I went ahead and asked the guy if he minded me passing along this information and he said there was no problem with it. So go ahead and call people...they've been forewarned.

Edit: Well I talked to MSM and she says that people have been getting the Crest deal to go through using the coupon...guess there still aren't any complete answers. I for one will still be calling ahead of time, at least that way I can still have an idea if I may run into some problems.