Q & A

A couple of good questions answered for your Thursday.


1) Can I use store coupons with manufacturers coupons?
YES, this is a very smart thing to do. It is called STACKING and can score you some free or very cheap things. Store coupons are usually found in the weekly ads for the store. They have the store logo on them and do not say "manufacturers". If is says manufacturers coupon, even if it came in the "store" ad, it is still a manufacturers coupon and cannot be stacked with another coupon. Some stores such as Walgreens and Fred Meyer have their own coupon books, just check at customer service. On thing that took me awhile to figure out, catalinas are manufacturers coupons and not store coupons, which leads to question number two...



2) How do I get a catalina machine to trigger a certain coupon?
Catalinas took a long time for me to figure out. First off any piece of paper that comes out of that machine is referred to as a catalina or cat, even if it is just telling you of a new product. Sometimes you can get it to trigger a certain coupon based on what you buy, but it is not always reliable. For instance, I have gotten baby formula coupons buy buying one brand and got one for another brand. However, when I tried to repeat this transaction, the catalina did not print, so there is no way to trigger catalinas to print a certain coupon....BUT


If you are going for a promotion, like spend $25 get $10 on your next purchase (like the ones that are frequently run at Albertsons), you should trigger your $10 coupon. If you don't, you need to tell the cashier or go to customer service to get it. These catalinas (or register rewards at Walgreens) are WONDERFUL, because they can be used the same as cash on (almost) anything in the store! Sometimes they even roll, meaning you use the $10 you just earned, to pay for another promotion transaction and earn the $10 catalina again. Still confused about catalina, try reading this again. Once you do some shopping and really start paying attention to these catalinas, you will understand how they work better.