What do you do when sale items are out and they are part of the plan?

[nefarmgirl]

I had a great plan for Wags and when I got there a lot of the sales items were out or there was just one --same at CVS too. So in a hurry I tried to rethink the game plan and ended up spending more than I wanted at Wags. CVS was easy since I didn't need that much. I figured that since the sale just started on Sunday that if I was there before noon on Sunday they would still have the sale items. Do you have two plans in case the first one doesn't work out? I have rainchecks for the things I wanted to get but it is a pain trying to get my hands on those things since everyone else has rainchecks for the same things--one of the workers at wags said they may get only 1 or 2 things on the truck at a time and they put them out and they may be out within 30 minutes.

[Lauzoka]

That is tough. Were you not able to do ANY of your deal because of the missing items?

I have 2 Wags which aren't too far from each other and so if the 1st doesn't have what I want then I can the plan and head to the 2nd. If I'm out of luck there too I will try to at least do some of my deal and then I'd do as you did (get the rain checks) and hope they are re-stocked before the sale runs out. I don't spend too much time looking around for another deal (except for clearanced items) because I agree that you end-up spending more than you had originally planned.

The worst part is the rain check - I don't want to have to go there every day checking if they have re-stocked and so I usually just call before I bother to head out that way again.

[oldie-but-newbie]

I was in the same boat last night. I couldn't go 'til late because of the kids. I spent way more than I had planned on.
The cashier was impressed by my printout of the deals I was going to do, but I told her it was pretty much useless because they were out of things.
She said "Well if you want anything, you have to get here early." I told her they never have all the things they advertise in stock.

Not only were they out of things, their computers were not ringing up any of the sale prices. They said they were waiting on someone to come and fix their computers (I bet they had a heck of a day having to price adjust all the sale items today - payback for the lousy customer service I get there I guess).

On another note, I had problems with coupons last night on top of everthing else. I was buying the Campbells soups with a $.30/3 coupon.
I had the same amount of coupons as I did items (7 items - 7 coupons), but it wouldn't take the last two RR's.
The assistant manager told me it was because the one coupon for the Campbells counts for the 3 cans, so I could only use 5 coupons.
I had a hard time understanding this because it is ONE coupon.
He was right though, I added 2 fillers and the RR's took.

Just wanted to give a heads up on this since it was such a pain.

[Lauzoka]

I was in the same boat last night. I couldn't go 'til late because of the kids. I spent way more than I had planned on.
The cashier was impressed by my printout of the deals I was going to do, but I told her it was pretty much useless because they were out of things.
She said "Well if you want anything, you have to get here early." I told her they never have all the things they advertise in stock.

Not only were they out of things, their computers were not ringing up any of the sale prices. They said they were waiting on someone to come and fix their computers (I bet they had a heck of a day having to price adjust all the sale items today - payback for the lousy customer service I get there I guess).

On another note, I had problems with coupons last night on top of everthing else. I was buying the Campbells soups with a $.30/3 coupon.
I had the same amount of coupons as I did items (7 items - 7 coupons), but it wouldn't take the last two RR's.
The assistant manager told me it was because the one coupon for the Campbells counts for the 3 cans, so I could only use 5 coupons.
I had a hard time understanding this because it is ONE coupon.
He was right though, I added 2 fillers and the RR's took.

Just wanted to give a heads up on this since it was such a pain.

Interesting - but somehow that doesn't make sense. It would seem to me that it is more likely that your RRs were valued at more than the remaining tax left to pay on your order, which would also have been resolved by adding fillers.

You can't use RRs to pay towards tax....

[nefarmgirl]

We wanted to do the gel insole inserts, shower cleaner, Rembrant toothpaste, the Nivea shower gel. I was able to do a couple but it was more oop then anticipated. I also agree with watching the register--prices are never right it seems. We also had a hard time with the number of coupons we had we had exactly 5 items and 5 coupons but it kept beeping and they did not have cheap filler anywhere (no single pencils, pens or candy) so that didn't help either. The stores are spread so far apart it isn't worth the time or gas to try to make the deals work either.

[Wisesong]

I run into the exact same scenario (stores being out of products) all the time, so making up a game plan rarely works for me. I'll go from store to store trying to get the items from my list, but I do it while I'm driving by that store anyway. Yes, it definitely makes it very hard to spend less OOP at one stop because I'll find I cannot use a particular RR if the item I was planning to use it on is not in stock.

[CherryPicker]

Seriously....I'll save my money and go home.

[we5campers]

When I went to Walgreens yesterday I asked the person in the makeup dept. if they had more Nivea and she asked someone to get more. That woman said that people were lined up at the door in the morning before they were open. They have cleaned out the shelves every time she fills them. I think when it is a great deal they have more in the back and only bring out what the shelves hold.

[CherryPicker]

In my area....the only available stock is what is on the shelf.

[Lauzoka]

We wanted to do the gel insole inserts, shower cleaner, Rembrant toothpaste, the Nivea shower gel. I was able to do a couple but it was more oop then anticipated. I also agree with watching the register--prices are never right it seems. We also had a hard time with the number of coupons we had we had exactly 5 items and 5 coupons but it kept beeping and they did not have cheap filler anywhere (no single pencils, pens or candy) so that didn't help either. The stores are spread so far apart it isn't worth the time or gas to try to make the deals work either.

Now, from your comments, I'm positive the "beeping" problem is tax related. You can't always have perfectly matched Qs to items. More accurately, MQs to items is not the problem, it is items matched to RRs that cause issues.

Everything depends on the value of the RRs you are using. It is very likely that you can have 5 items but only use 4 RRs because using a 5th RR might be too high a value.

Example: 5 items and 5 RRs. If after you have used 4 RRs you have $1.50 left to pay and you try to use a $1 RR as your 5th, this will not work if the $1.50 remaining is the tax for your 5 items. All tax must be paid OOP.

I can't roll RRs at my stores and so I always pay by using RRs. What I try to do is to figure out which RR is as close as possible to the item's retail value so that I can use it without beeping, since tax isn't being figured. Afterwards, if I still want to use more RRs to bring the OOP down even more and I know my items are pricey but don't have tax on them I have found that buying 4 Raman noodles at 4/$1 is a good filler because this allows me to use 4 more RRs.

Not sure if I'm being clear but you really need to calculate the price of your items before you start applying RRs to your order and you only use as many RRs as needed to pay down the OOP - before tax.

Hope that helps!
Kathy