Why Shop Where

So, I've been doing this for about a month, along with my dear friend from work, Courtney. We don't have as many stores as some of the people on the show, Extreme Couponing, but here is a little breakdown of the positives (and negatives) of our stores in the area.

Farmer's Foods
Locations: South Boston (Hupps Mill Plaza) None in Danville

They will accept manufacturer coupons and they will double up to a dollar. So, a fifty cents coupon will become a dollar, and a seventy five cent coupon also becomes a dollar. I don't believe they have any limit on the number of coupons you can use.

Many of their prices are higher than Walmart, but they do have sales every week, and their sale prices are pretty close to Walmart's regular price. Depending on the coupon, it would be worth going to Farmer's even if their price is a little more than Walmart, because the coupon will double.

In addition, I have been there twice when they were running special promotions where you spend 25 dollars in certain products, and get ten dollars off coupon for next time.

They are very nice and friendly, and there is a Redbox in the store if you need to pick up or drop off a movie.

Walmart
Location: Danville and South Boston

Walmart's prices on "coupon items:" medicine, toilettries, food, are pretty steady. Sometimes there are rollbacks, or you can catch something on clearance. And they don't double coupons. However, you can count on Walmart to be a good place to use your coupons, since you know their prices are close to anyone's sale. In addition, Walmart is one of the few places that will give you cash back for coupon overage. For example, if a coupon is for three dollars off, and the item is only two dollars (becase it is on clearance, or just really cheap), Walmart will either you give the difference of the dollar, or allow you to use the dollar towards other purchases. This works, because I have done it several times.

Both the Danville and the South Boston Walmart have Redboxes, as well.

Food Lion
Does not double coupons, but they are a bigger grocery store and may have more flavors or types of food availabe, as opposed to Farmer's. They do have decent sales sometimes.

Target
Location: Danville

Target does not double coupons, but you can stack coupons. Target puts out its own coupons on its website http://www.target.com/. You can use one Target coupon and one manufacturer coupon on an item, which can really save you money. Target has decent sales, some of which rival Walmart's regular prices. Plus, Target has great clearance if you walk around the store and check out each department.

Kmart
Location: Danville
Doesn't have the greatest sales, and usually isn't my favorite store. However, they are doubling coupons this month if you are a Shop Your Rewards member (if you aren't, just fill out a form). They double a coupon up to the face value of .99. So if you have a coupon for .99 off, it will double to 1.98. Funny thing, I don't have any .99 coupons. They are all 1.00. But, this does mean that a .75 cent coupon will double to 1.50. Combine this with a sale, and that would be a good deal.

CVS
Locations: Two in South Boston, several in Danville.
CVS has great deals with the ECBs (Extra Care Bucks). Certain items will often be on sale, and then when you purchase them, you get ECBs, which are like gift cards to use on your next purchase. You can also split transactions to get your ECBs immediately and apply them to the rest of your purchase, making your out of pocket expense (OOP) much lower. You do have to have a CVS card to get these deals, but again, it's a form. The ECB deals are tied to your CVS card, so you cannot repeat the deals to get more and more money back, which you can (sort of) do at Walgreens. The good news is that because of this, CVS doesn't seem to run out of stock as quickly as Walgreens.

CVS also has the Magic Coupon Machine, where you scan your CVS card as soon as you come in, and get bonus coupons. Quarterly, you get ECBs back based on how much money you spent. That's free money!

For my SoBoVa people, the CVS over near Italian Delight has very nice employees.

Walgreens
Walgreens also has money back deals, called Register Rewards (RR). Anyone can use RR, as there is no card for Walgreens. However, if you use a RR to purchase the same deal, a new RR won't print.

So, if I buy Colgate toothpaste, and pay five dollars out of pocket and get five dollars in RR, I essentially got the toothpaste for free. I can use the RR to buy two more tubes of toothpaste, and not pay anything of out pocket for that toothpaste, but I won't get another RR.

If I used the RR to buy candy, and got a RR for the candy, I could then use the candy RR to buy more toothpaste, and get more RR.

A bit confusing, I know.

Also nice about Walgreens is that they have a coupon book in the store for each month, and you can use a Walgreens coupon with a manufacturer coupon to save even more money.

There is no Walgreens in Danville, but the nice people in SoBo tell me they are going to build one there soon.

Downside of Walgreens is that because you can replicate RR, and there isn't really a limit, they sell out FAST. We went on Monday afternoon, and the sale started Sunday, and they were out of pretty much all of the items that gave out RR.


Family Dollar and Dollar General will take manufacturer coupons, and there may be a sale there that is a good deal, so you can check those coupons.

Piggly Wiggly in Danville does not double coupons, but they do accept coupons. They also have good deals on meat.

Petsmart and Petco in Danville sometimes have really good deals. They also have savings booklets of coupons in the front of the store, loyalty cards, and tearpad coupons throughout the store. I will have to get back to you on whether either of them will let you stack a PetSmart coupon with a manufacturer coupon.