It’s late in the week, and the “star of the show” this week is the $3 instant savings anyway! Rather than go through the ad, I’ll just list coupon matchups for those items! Remember, this deal is “mix & match”, so as long as you are buying $10 in participating product, the instant savings should come off (so you can get, for instance, 1 item from the 3 for $10 deal, 2 from the 4 for $10 and 2 from the 10 for $10 and your $3 instant savings will come off!)
With some clever combinations and with Acme’s new coupon doubling policy, you should be able to walk out of the store not paying more than a few pennies! (bolded items are the coupon matchups I found). Make sure to check out the end of the post for some scenarios!
10 for $10 items
Homelife Napkins
Hershey’s Baking Cups
Acme Polar Burst Ice Cream Novelities
Snapple Antioxidant water
Daisy Sour Cream $.50/1 from the 8/24 SS
Nursery Fluoridated Drinking Water: $.55/2 from the September Parents magazine and from here
Balance Nutrition Bars
Duncan Hines Cake Mix
Zatarain’s Rice Mix: $1.25/3 from the 9/7 RP (some areas were lucky enough to get $.75/2)
Coca Cola 2-liters
Campbell’s Cream of Chicken & Cream of Mushroom soup: use the $.40/3 from the 9/7 SS
Cake Mate Decorating Decors
Playtex Disposable Vinyl Gloves
Atkins Advanced Bar: $1 coupons from the 8/17 SS make these free BEFORE they take off the instant savings!
Zone Perfect Nutritional Bars: $1 coupons from the 9/7 SS make these free even before the instant savings (note – unlike most coupons, these say “one per transaction”! There are also coupons to be found here
Blistex Lip Balm
Soft Soap Liquid Hand Soap: $.35/1 from the 9/28 SS make these free after instant savings & doubling
3 for $10 items
Hidden Valley Dressings
Kellogg’s Smart Start Cereal: Buy the Strawberry Oat Bites and use this mail-in rebate to get it free
Sargento Natural Sliced Cheese
Betty Crocker Cupcake Icing
Nivea Men’s Shower Gel: $1/1 from the 7/20 SS
Aleve Pain Reliever: $1 coupon here and from the 7/27 RP
Gorton’s Grilled Fish Fillets
Hillshire Farms Ulta Thin or Hearty Slice Lunchmeat: $.55/1 from the 8/24 RP
Prego Pasta Sauce
5 for $10 Items
Ronzoni Bistro Dinners: $1 coupon in the 9/28 SS and from here
WW Smart Ones Frozen Entrees or Desserts
Campbell’s Select Harvest Soup: use the $.50/2 from the 8/17 & 9/14 SS
Acme Pancake Syrup
Wet Ones Moist Towlettes
Dixie Ultra Plates, Bowls, Cups and Vanity Fair Plates, Bowls and napkins: $1/1 Vanity Fair coupons in the 6/22 RP
homelife Fabric Softener Sheets
Glad Cling Wrap
Palmolive Ultra, Scrub Buster or Oxy Dish Detergent: $.40/1 for the Scrub Buster here
4 for $10 items
Butoni Stuffed Pasta or Pasta Sauce
Swanson Hungry Man Dinners
Acme Hash Browns or Onion Rings
Nestle Halloween Shape Refrigerated Cookie Dough: $1.50/2 from the 9/14 RP and $1 coupons from here and here
Acme Ice Cream or Sherbert
Pepperidge Farm Garlic or Texas Toast
Superpretzel Soft Pretzels or Pretzelfills: $.75/2 for the prezels and $.75/1 for the pretzelfills in the 8/24 RP
Mott’s Apple Juice: $1/2 from the 8/10 SS
Kellogg’s Special K Cereal]
Kellogg’s Special K Bars or Bites
Kellogg’s 12-count Pop Tarts
Kozy Shack Pudding
Gladware Containers, Food Storage Bags or Gladware Press N Seal
homelife Laundry Detergent
Nestle Cookie Dough: $1.50/2 from the 9/14 RP and $1 coupons from here and here
Welch Strawberry Spread
Domino Sugar: $.35/1 from the 8.17 RP
homelife Mighty Absorbant 2 Rolls Towel
Ocean Spray 100% Premium Cran Juice
Eggo Waffles: $1/2 from the 9/21 RP
Sargento Shredded Cheese
Suavitel Fabric Softener
Colgate Toothpaste or Toothbrushes: $.75/2 for the toothbrushes and $.75/1 for the toothpaste in the 9/28 SS
Bird’s Eye Vegetable Blends
V8 Splash Juice Blends: $1/2 from the 8/17 RP (exires 9/30); if the Fusion blends are included, there were $1/1 in the 7/13 SS
Scenarios I plan on doing 9/30 (because of coupon expiration dates):
Transaction #1:
-
2 V8 Splash: $5
-
4 Atkins bars $4
-
1 Zone Perfect $1
-
use $1/2 V8 Splash
-
use 4 Atkins and 1 Zone Perfect
-
Less $3 instant savings
Total OOP: $1
Transaction #2
-
2 V8 Splash: $5
-
2 Daisy Sour Cream: $2
-
1 Zone Perfect Bar: $1
-
1 Vanity Fair Plates: $2
-
Less $1/2 V8 Splash
-
Less 2 $.50 Daisy coupons
-
Less 1 $1 Zone Perfect
-
Less 1 Vanity Fair $1 coupons
-
Less $3 instant savings
Total OOP: $2
Transaction #3
-
3 Ronzoni Bistro Dinners: $6
-
2 Vanity Fair Plates: $4
-
Less 3 $1 Ronzoni Coupons
-
Less 2 $1 Vanity Fair Coupons
-
Less: $3 instant savings
Total OOP: $2.00
Transaction 4
-
2 V8 Splash:
-
1 Zone Perfect Bar
-
2 Vanity Fair Plates
-
Less V8 Splash, Zone Perfect and Vanity Fair coupons and instant savings
Total OOP: $3
I could go on, but I think you get the point.
The thing is, will I use the paper plates? Anyone who knows me kows that I do NOT use paper plates. However, getting them for free as part of the deals allows me to walk out with a whole bunch of food that I WILL use for only $8 (especially the V8 Splash…I also will do these deals with the Mott’s Apple Juice). The paper plates will just get thrown in to my “donate” pile. They didn’t cost me much and they allowed me to save even more money.
Oh yeah – and I’ll use self-checkout so as not to annoy the other customers. These are all pretty straight-forward deals and should not require any assistance from the cashier!
Be careful doing the mix & match thing. I went to the Limerick store yesterday and was using the self check-out. IBefore I started ringing up my purchases I asked the girl there if they had any problem with the $3 coming off and if it came off when you combined deals in one order. She told me that they had problems on Friday and that it was working now. She also said that it should work to take the $3 off multiple times and that if it didn’t then I could take my receipt to customer service afterwards. (I guess she didn’t want to have to deal with it.)
I had broken down my orders into separate transactions (4) and was doing the self-checkout so I wouldn’t hold anyone up. I wanted to do the small orders so I could be sure that the $3 did come off. I bought 2 Hillshire Farm lunchmeat and 4 Zone bars. The $3 came off no problem. I repeated the process with the same brands and the $3 did not come off.
When I asked the self check-out person why it did not come off, she tried to tell me that it was because I was mixing items from different dollar categories. On the ad I showed her the Mix & Match with the arrows pointing in all directions and she told me that they had already had the discussion and that the “Mix and Match” was only in the same dollar categories, ie. only 10/10 items could be mixed or 4/10 items could be mixed, but that you could not mix items from the two categories together to reach $10.
Then I showed her the receipt from my first order and asked why it came off that one then when I purchased combined items, and the same brands as the order that I was doing now (just a different flavor bar & a different kind of lunchmeat). She then took the code off manually.
My 3rd order I made sure that I had 10 Atkins bars and I had 4 lunchmeats (because I wanted to get the free chips and you have to buy the lunchmeats in multiples of two–the coupons were on the shelf w/ the lunchmeat) and only one $3 came off, even though I had met her “requirements” of 10 from the 10/$10 section and 3 from the 3/$10 section. She then had to, once again, take it off manually. That time I don’t know if it was the because of something not being programed right, or if it wasn’t accepting more than one deal at a time.
So just be careful and watch it to make sure that all the $3 come off. And as the ad wording is, you can mix & match from the groups as long as you do it in $10 amounts. It does not state on there that you can only get items from the same group. I am now wondering if anyone else had problems with the mixing.
In the end I ended up getting 8 packs of lunchmeat, 4 packs of 6 snack bags of chips and 18 bars for under $4.00. Not bad at all, and that was my quick run before work. Now I have to figure out the rest of my deals and get them before the ad change this week. Maybe at the Collegeville store then as they don’t seem to give problems.