Kroger: Coffee-mate MM!

[NatPatBen]

At Kroger yesterday, a cat printed out alerting me to this deal:

"Buy Nestle Coffee-Mate Liquid Creamer, 16oz or larger Between 1/24/11 and 2/20/11 and SAVE up to $3.00 On a future order with coupon

Buy 2 & get $1 or
Buy 3 & get $2 or
Buy 4 or mroe & get $3
coupon off your next shopping order"

PLUS, while the good flavors were $1.99, the original flavor was on sale for $1!

Today, you can print 2 $1 coupons for Coffee-Mate from Facebook. I have 2 computers, so I got 4 and will do this deal:

2 x Original = $2 - $2 = 0 (use 2 $1 off coupons)
2 x White something something = $4 - $2 = $2

So I will pay $2 and get back $3!

Assuming they let me use all 4 coupons. This Kroger thinks that they only take up to 3 like coupons.

[NatPatBen]

I just ran to Kroger and things did not go as planned. Things changed between 7am yesterday and 7pm today.

First, the entire display of creamers 10/$10 was replaced by something else. There were no creamers on sale for $1. BUT The caramel apple flavor was on manager's special for $0.75. I bought one of those, 2 White Chocolate Caramel Latte, and one Belgian Toffee. I expected to pay $6.72 (1.99x3 + .75) minus the $4 in coupons for a total of $2.72. I expected to get back a $3 cat for buying 4 bottles of creamer.

I only got back a $2 cat. I examined each bottle and realized that the one with the manager's special sticker had a special barcode on the sticker. That, of course, would be why it didn't count toward the deal. That means I got the 4 bottles for $0.72 instead of profiting $0.28. I debated contacting the Catalina company about it, because I DID meet the terms of the promotion, but I will probably let it go.