Don't Waste Your Money: Rewards cards limit sale prices - ToledoNewsNow.com: News, Weather & Sports for Toledo, OH

Remember when the only loyalty card you needed was a card for your favorite supermarket? Now gas stations, convenience stores, and drugstores want everyone to sign up for rewards cards. However, even with the cards, sale prices can be tougher to get.

Remember when you could walk into a drugstore, and find a sale on Tylenol or some other product, even if you weren't a regular customer? Not anymore. Now you usually need to be a member of a rewards program and even that doesn't guarantee an instant markdown.

Sales Prices Now For Card Holders

Chain drugstores are now like supermarkets. In many cases, you have to join their rewards card program to get a discount.

Mouseprint says Walgreens is now operating like CVS and Rite Aid in giving most sale prices only to loyalty card members. It means you need to join its program and carry another card in your wallet, because if not, you'll be paying some very high prices.

Doesn't That Stink?

But from the "doesn't that stink" file comes why some drugstore discounts are still hard to get, even if you have a loyalty card.

Mouseprint says the newest trend at some drugstores is to give you a discount on your next purchase, not this transaction.

So you'll get a discount on M&M's, for instance, the next time you buy M&M's, not in the current transaction.

Customers are unhappy because it's easy to forget having the coupon, and you have to make a second trip to the store to save money.

Ways Around It

Buy the second item a few minutes after you buy the first one, so you get the discount on your "next purchase."
    
Or, if you don't like the idea of another loyalty card, shop at Target or Walmart. Neither store has rewards cards, plus they often have everyday low prices on pharmacy products.

As always, don't waste your money.

Copyright 2013 Toledo News Now. All rights reserved.