Walgreens reviews and complaints 1
View all 1819 complaintsWalgreens - misrepresentation & misleading advertisements
Date of incident: March 2, 2008 @ 8:12AM
I am writing to express my frustration and disappointment regarding Walgreen's Register Rewards Program. It is misleading consumers, and I was one of them!
I went to my local Walgreens to take advantage of their register rewards program.
This week's ad (Mar 2-8, 2008) states:
Buy Select P& G products and get Register Rewards, use like cash on next purchase.
Buy 3 items for $10 - Get $4 cash register rewards good on next purchase
Buy 6 items for $20 - Get $12 cash register rewards good on next purchase
I decided to buy 6 items to get the $12 cash register rewards.
Unfortunately, when I was paying for the items, the register did not print out the reward coupon because I did not spend the actual $20. With the purchase, I used various manufacturer's coupons totaling to $16.00.
I read the fine print prior to proceeding to purchase the items at Walgreens and it does not say their promotion does NOT accept manufacturer's coupon.
The cashier's name is Jessica who was not so welcoming, nor apologetic. Then came the manager, who was also non-apologetic.
Bottom line, I expressed my disappointment and frustration to both cashier and manager of the store. They should indicate in the ad the restrictions of their promotion because it is misleading consumers such as myself. Wasted time, energy and gas!
The striking comment that I got from the insensitive manager when I told her that in the past, Walgreens would accept my manufacturer's coupon, at the same time take advantage of their cash rewards program. This was her reply:
'They must've changed the rules and becoming stricter on their policies due to people abusing the promotion'.
ABUSE? You call people with coupons, ABUSING the store's promotion? That is ridiculous. If Walgreens does not intend for people to ABUSE their promotions, then don't put out MISLEADING ads.
My use of manufacturer's coupons should not affect the cash reward coupon, which is their supposedly"on-going" promotion. If they have restrictions, put it up-front in fine print, PERIOD.
I am never an Abuser, I am a WISE buyer who would not buy full priced items, rather take advantage of good honest deals through promotions.
Walgreens ad is VERY MISLEADING, so consumers out there, WATCH OUT.
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I find that Walgreens is VERY coupon UNFRIENDLY! And their Register Rewards I think borders on false advertisement. They print a list of all their "Register Rewards" items on the FRONT PAGE of their ad. This week there are many items that are "free after rewards." So I went to Walgreens to take advantage of their promotion. Unfortunately, at the store in my town in Michigan, they only stock one or two of the items that are on sale. They don't issue rainchecks for register rewards, so you are just out of luck. One example -- the Venus Razors on sale this week are $8.99 and you get a Register Reward back for the purchase price. I went in on the first day of the sale and they had none. They told me they had two in stock in the morning and that was it and they aren't ordering any more. So why advertise a sale if you are not going to carry the product? Out of the seven items they had listed as "free after register rewards, " this store had ONE of the seven in stock.
And, yes, coupons are a form of tender! The store gets fully reimbursed for the coupons, in addition to a handling fee.
The Register Rewards program is a manufacturer-based program. P&G sets the rules on how their promotion is run, and when a coupon will print out. If you are using manufacturer coupons, then P&G is already taking a hit from those, and will not print out a coupon when you have already used one of their coupons.
I apologize if the Walgreens staff did not fully explain this to you, but as another poster put it: if you are not spending $20 on P&G products, then you do not receive the Register Reward.
I agree with Steve and Aaron.. Whenever you have an in-store coupon use it right there and then instead of trying to get things for free common sense should tell you that if you use a manufactures coupon the register reward isn't gonna come out because you already took money off by using that and you will not get the register reward its like your trying to get double off the sale price. Stop being greedy and reading is fundamental...
I've already responded to something like this in another complaint but I'll repeat myself (and others) here:
Coupons are not a form of currency, they are a manufacturer approved discount. The company is reimbersed for these coupons later on, but the coupons have no inherent monetary value and as such are not a substitution for cash.
You are a ### if you think otherwise.
Kim, with respect you are quite wrong. Coupons apply an agreed upon discount under certain agreed upon conditions. In this instance Walgreens has the right to not consider a coupon as a form of payment, and this isn't the only situation where a coupon isn't considered currency.
At Walgreens you cannot be given cash change if the total value of your coupons is greater than the value of the merchandise. In addition to this a retailer has the right to refuse manufacturer's coupons for any reason. Ergo, coupons are not currency.
Also, it's a bit LAME to quote one line from a random webpage to justify your backwards logic. I'd also like to point out that you quoted the first line of the document...did you even read the whole article? The article itself is about managing coupons not that coupons are a form of currency.
That's like saying that a store should take postage stamps as a form of currency because they technically have a monetary value.
"For every retailer who accepts a manufacturer’s coupon, a small piece of paper quickly becomes a form of cash tender."
http://marketingsolutions.valassis.com/story.aspx?url=2006/2006q1_cbrown.aspx
Y'all are wrong. Coupons are not a discount-they are a FORM OF PAYMENT. The store gets reimbursed for the manufacturer's coupons, thereby making the purchase still 20.00 in their pockets. Plus the 8 cent handling fee.
Bottom line:
Walgreens sucks.
While I can sympahtize with your situation Walgreens is bombarded by customers who seem to go out of their way to try to get as much as they can for as little as possible, even if that means breaking the rules to do so.
The ad said that you had to spend $20...that does not include MFG coupons because MFG coupons aren't money. I'm sorry if that wasn't made abundantly clear in the ad (which can at times be misleading), and I'm sorry that the employees weren't more sympathetic, but you need to put yourself in their shoes.
The only thing the manager could have done was give you a Walgreens card and he probably would have gotten in trouble for that. We get our marching orders from corprate and every day we have to balance taking care of the needs of the customer with meeting the requirements of our job, and those two don't always match.
Personally, I think they should do away with the Register Rewards system; it's usually way too complicated for a relatively small amount of money.
Hello! Be smart about it. If it says you have to spend $20 you have to spend $20. If your purchase would have been $20 AFTER coupons, it would have been fine. Suck it up, and play by the rules.
I am upset with them as well. Those Register Rewards are a scam. Even though I didn’t use the coupon, I didn’t receive a register reward for the Venus Razor I bought 2 weeks ago.
Then I bought another one and it printed. Plus they say use them like cash, and since its a coupon, they expire in 2 weeks. They shouldn’t have expire date on them if they want to advertise it as spend like cash. So if you don’t shop or don’t have those rewards on u, they expire in 2 weeks and then they are nothing but trash.
Never shopping anything that deals with register rewards unless I need it at that time.