If you’ve ever shopped at Walgreens, chances are you’ve noticed the big yellow tags on certain items saying how many rewards points they’re worth. Or maybe you wondered why the cashier ringing you up asked for your phone number, or saw a big stack of Walgreens deals by the door when you were walking out… you’ve probably thought to yourself: How do Walgreens points work?
Learning how to coupon at Walgreens and save money is easy with their rewards programs. Walgreens has two rewards programs, but one is newer, more popular, and is a better way to earn and save—it’s a points-based system that gives you rewards you can use in-store as cash. This guide explains all the details you should know about the Walgreens rewards system, including how to earn and redeem points, so you can start saving today.
There are two rewards programs at Walgreens: Register Rewards and Balance Rewards. Register Rewards is a manufacturer coupon that’s printed out and handed to you with your receipt. It doesn’t require you to enroll ahead of time to be eligible, but your register rewards coupon expires 14 days from when you get it and doesn’t offer any other ways to save.
The Walgreens Balance Rewards Program, on the other hand, does the heavy lifting of the two—here’s how it works:
At Walgreens, you can easily earn thousands of points in a single shopping trip. Those bright yellow tags with sales and rewards make it easy to keep track of how many you’ll be earning with each purchase, given they list the amount in points and dollars, but here’s what you need to know—every 1,000 points is equal to $1 in rewards.
Figuring out how to earn Walgreens points is a lot simpler than you’d think—just about everything you buy and do regularly will earn you points. From cosmetics and household goods, to drink and snacks, to medications and healthy lifestyle choices, Walgreens makes it easy to rack up points.
There are four major parts to the Balance Rewards program: Everyday Points, prescriptions, signing up to be a Beauty Enthusiast, and taking part in Balance Rewards for Healthy Choices.
While you’ll earn more points for specific items, you’ll still earn 10 points (1 cent) for every dollar you spend at Walgreens, no matter what you buy. If you download the Walgreens mobile app and use it to digitally clip coupons to your account, you can also sometimes find “coupons” that will multiply your Everyday Points during your next shopping trip.
You can attach coupons from the weekly ads and monthly Walgreens coupon booklets digitally, and opt-in to Everyday Point multipliers, directly to your Balance Rewards account number.
Here’s how to do it:
These coupons will stay on your account until they expire, so that you can use them an unlimited amount of times—Everyday Point multipliers can only be used once, however, so shop accordingly.
Picking up prescriptions from the Walgreens pharmacy is a great way to earn points without having to buy or do anything out of the ordinary. Every time you fill a prescription, you earn 100 points (10 cents), but there are some restrictions.
You won’t earn points from the pharmacy for the following reasons:
Within the Walgreens Balance Rewards program is another program that focuses on beauty. If you’re looking for how to earn Walgreens points quickly, and you like to stock up on personal care items, becoming a Beauty Enthusiast is the answer.
Here’s how the Beauty Enthusiast program works:
You’ll also have access to additional “Recommended for You” coupons, and will receive emails about the Beauty Enthusiast sample bags when they hit stores. When they do, you’ll be able to get an entire bag full of beauty products as a free gift with any $20 beauty purchase.
With Balance Rewards for Healthy Choices, you’ll earn even more points for doing things that are not only completely free, but good for your health and well-being.
Some of the things you’ll earn points for include:
Here’s how you can take part:
Balance Rewards for Healthy Choices is a way to reward yourself for positive physical and mental changes with what’s essentially tiny Walgreens gift cards—but since you can enroll in more than one challenge at a time, those tiny gift cards will add up. Plus, you’ll be rewarded in other ways, like losing weight, sticking to your medications, and bettering your mental health.
Walgreens lets you use points and earn points in the same transaction, but there are some limitations—you can only use and earn points on unit offers, not threshold offers.
Here’s an example of a unit offer where you could use and earn points all at once:
This is an example of a spend threshold, where you couldn’t pay with points and earn points in the same transaction:
While Everyday Points aren’t a huge contributor to Balance Rewards points, it’s worth mentioning that you won't earn Everyday Points on the portion of the transaction that was paid for using points.
As long as you enter your phone number on the pin-pad every time you make a purchase at Walgreens, you’ll see your total account balance at the bottom of every receipt. You can also check your total points at any time online or through the Walgreens mobile app.
If you’ve made it through the couponing and shopping stages, you’ve probably racked up your rewards and are wondering how to redeem Walgreens points.
Whether you’re starting the Balance Rewards program for the first time or have recently used a reward and are back to a zero-point balance, your first $5 worth of points are always redeemable in increments of 1,000—here’s what that looks like:
Beyond 5,000 points, you won’t be able to redeem in increments of 1,000—these are the remaining point levels you can redeem and how much money they’re worth:
Balance Rewards points rollover, so you don’t have to use all your available points at one time, but you can if you want to. The maximum number of points you can redeem is 50,000 per transaction ($50) and 100,000 per day ($100), splitting your purchase into two separate transactions.
You can use your Walgreens rewards to purchase anything online or in-store, except the following:
If you keep your account active and purchase something at least once every six months, Walgreens points won’t expire until one year from when they were earned.
Walgreens will let you use two coupons per item as long as you’re using one Walgreens store coupon and one manufacturer coupon—either Register Rewards or manufacturer coupon. Stacking coupons is a great way to save money while you work towards getting more Balance Rewards points.
With RebateKey, you’ll get access to tons of manufacturer coupons to use on your next shopping trip, and automatic cash back from Walgreens every time you make a purchase. Even with one of the best rewards programs, Walgreens points are no match to getting a check in the mail. All you have to do is sign up and shop, so join RebateKey today and start getting the most out of your rewards programs.
Sources:
Walgreens. How the Program Works. https://www.walgreens.com/topic/help/balance-rewards.jsp
Walgreens. Become a Beauty Enthusiast. https://www.walgreens.com/balancerewards/beauty.jsp
Walgreens. Balance Rewards for Healthy Choices. https://www.walgreens.com/steps/brhc-loggedout.jsp
Business Wire. Walgreens Balance Rewards for Healthy Choices Participants Losing Weight, More Adherent to Medications, Studies Show. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150611005786/en/Walgreens-Balance-Rewards-healthy-choices-Participants-Losing
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