A Comedy of Errors at CVS

We were out and about in the town South of us on Tuesday and I remembered that a new CVS had opened there which we would be passing right by.  So we stopped in after hitting Ollie's.
I had planned to go to CVS on Wednesday to use some expiring ECBs but why not do it Tuesday and be done with that chore, right?
Ha!

I had my scenario all planned out.
Buy a gift card and earn $10 ECB to add to the $5 one that was expiring.
Then buy: 2 Softsoap Body Wash, 2 Dove shampoo, 2 Speed Stick deodorant and 4 Arizona iced tea drinks(for our trip next week).
After Qs and ECBs I'd pay .76¢ plus any tax due.
I'd also get back $5 in new ECBs.

So I went in and scanned my EC card.  The machine made some noise and nothing printed out....so I waited a few minutes because sometimes these machines are very SLOOOOW!
I looked and someone had flipped a homemade sign taped to the machine up onto the top of it.
It said, "Out of Order".
crap.

I needed a $3/2 Dove Q that was suppose to print out at that machine so I couldn't do my scenario but I could buy the gift card and get the $10 ECB.
So I did that much of it but the ECB didn't print.
I showed the cashier(who happened to be a manager of sorts)it didn't print and the ad in my hand showing it was suppose to print.  She worked her magic and made the register print it out for me.

So on Wednesday I had to run errands down the valley so I hit the CVS along that route.
I scanned my EC card at the machine and here's what printed out............

A whole lot of nothing!  I tried again and nothing.  I guess the out of order machine "printed" out my Qs for this week(even though it didn't)so now subsequent machines were not going to actually PRINT my Qs.
Ugh ugh ugh
Not wanting to have a big to-do with the store employees over this(and not knowing if they can print the machine Qs out for me or something because really, I know NOTHING about CVS!)I just decided to punt and make up a new scenario working with what I had(which was very little).

Here is what I decided to get.......

I got the 2 Speed Stick dodorants and the 2 Softsoap Body Washes as planned.  According to my calculations I needed to "spend" another $6.14 to use my $15 in ECBs fully.
I hunted around and tried different combinations and finally hit on these Ajax dish soap bottles as they were 50% off so .74¢ each.
I grabbed a bag of generic CVS brand Cheetos(good for the car ride next week)for $1.29 to round it out.

2 x Softsoap BW BOGO50%=$7.78
2 x Speed Stick deos=$4.98
7 x Ajax dish soap=$5.18
1 x Cheetos=$1.29
SubTotal.......$19.23

Qs Used
1 x .50/1 Softsoap AppQ=.50¢
1 x $2/$6 body wash CRTQ=$2.00
1 x .50/1 Speed Stick AppQ=.50¢
1 x $1/2 Speed Stick ManuQ=$1.00
Q Total.........$4.00

$19.23-$4.00=$15.23=$15 ECBs=.23¢ OOP(plus any tax)

But that's not exactly what happened since 2 x .50/1 Speed Stick APPQs came off so discounts were $4.50 making my total $14.73.
This meant I paid ZERO OOP and lost .27¢ on my ECBs value.
If I had known that Q would come off twice I could have gotten 8 bottles of dish soap and paid .47¢ OOP in the end.
No worries...I am not fretting over losing .27¢ worth of chit.

I did earn the expected $5 in new ECBs back though. ;-)

Moral of story......no matter how much you plan out your scenarios life and the unexpected will throw you curve balls some of the time so you need to have back up plans and roll with it and be happy if it all comes out well in the end.  8-)))



Sluggy