Next week, CVS shoppers once again can get $3 extrabucks rewards on any Revlon nail polish and $4 extrabucks rewards on Revlon Super Lustrous and ColorBurst lip products. This type of sale is the one time you should buy Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick from CVS, and this sale coincides with a topic I had planned to talk about in a post.
There was a post on the CVS Facebook page that claimed that CVS overcharges it customers on products and then gives customers the overcharge back in extrabucks rewards. While I didn't get a chance to read the article that was included with the post, I decided to do some price comparisons at Walmart with products I buy on a regular basis to see if there was any validity to the claim. I expected the everyday Walmart prices to be lower than everyday prices at CVS, but since I generally buy items when they are on sale at CVS, I could live with regular prices at Walmart being roughly the same as sale prices at CVS. On most of the products I looked at, I found that to be the case.
But when I compared the Walmart and CVS prices of Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick, I was stunned. The regular price of Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick at my local CVS is $8.99, but it sells for only $4.97 at my local Walmart. Even if you purchased two lipsticks this week at CVS with the Buy 1, Get 1 50 percent off deal on all Revlon makeup this week, each tube of Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick would still come out to be roughly $6.75 per tube ($8.99 + $4.50 = $13.49 / 2 = $6.745). It would be a worse deal to buy two tubes of Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick at CVS with a Buy $10, Get $4 extrabucks rewards deal that CVS runs regularly on Revlon cosmetics ($8.99 x 2 = $17.98 - $4.00 = $13.98 / 2 = $6.99).
So even with the $4 extrabucks rewards on Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick priced at $6.99 next week, you're actually saving only $1.98 over the everyday $4.97 price at Walmart ($4.97 - $2.99 = $1.98.
To be fair, I didn't figure in the 10 percent that CVS Beauty Club members would recoup from this week's sale price (Buy $50, Get $5 extrabucks rewards) or the 2 percent that CVS shoppers get on all of their purchases. I'm not sure if this would be accurate, but I took 12 percent of $6.99 and got roughly 84 cents (.8388). And added to the $1.98, you would save $2.82 over the $4.97 price on a tube of Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick at Walmart. Additionally, with the higher prices paid with the Buy 1, Get 1 50 percent off and Buy $10, Get $4 extraubucks rewards deals, the 10 percent and 2 percent figures would be higher with those deals.
The good news is that there you can get the $4 extrabucks rewards deal on Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick or Revlon ColorBurst six times. If you got a $4 off of $20 of beauty purchases coupon this week for being a CVS Beauty Club member and use the coupon before it expires on the 17th, you could use it toward three tubes of Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick to meet the $20 purchase requirement for the coupon.
There are some significant differences between the prices of Revlon nail polish at Walmart and CVS, but all of the math I did concerning the Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick is making my head spin, so I will coment on that at a later time. Will come back refreshed with another post (or posts) some time this weekend.
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