Free newspaper and greeting card - a savings post (CVS)

I headed to CVS this morning because I had a $2.99 ECB expiring this week. There was nothing particularly exciting in the CVS sales flyer (and nothing we needed). The AJC's double paper* is $3, and while I've lately been buying the paper from the-guy-who-stands-near-Kroger for $1 (so two papers for $2, best deal I've found), I figured I'd spend the $2.99 on the double paper to make my life easier.

When I walked in, an AJC rep was standing right there, and he gave me a free paper. He thought it was amusing that I was almost disappointed by this - it threw off my entire plan! He also offered me some sort of subscription deal (he talked very fast and I'm tired, but it had something to do with a three-month trial and some free CVS gift cards if I signed up RIGHT THERE RIGHT NOW). I laughingly explained that buying the paper with ECBs is a better deal than any subscription, and that I was simply taking advantage of a different offer. (But for the record, the offer did seem pretty good, and if I wasn't such a crazy couponer I might have gone for it.)

I hate figuring out deals like this on the fly, but I did my best. I could've just continued with my plan to buy the double paper, but yesterday I got the SmartSource coupon flyer in the mail for the first time (a smaller set of coupons than is in the paper, but still, free and pretty comprehensive - I hope this continues to happen!) and I hate all the excess paper that I wind up having in my house that I wind up recycling (for the record, I do read the print edition of the newspaper before I recycle it).

So in the end I bought another single paper ($2) and a greeting card (99 cents). I paid 21 cents out of pocket. The manager rang me up - he knows me, I've been going regularly to that CVS for almost two years, but this time he said he wasn't sure if I could use ECBs on the newspaper, something I've also been doing regularly for years. I read the "you cannot use this on that" list aloud to him and he said it was fine. Not sure why today of all days he was concerned about this, but it worked out just fine.

*You can click the link to learn more about the double paper, but basically it's a bundle of the early and late editions of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) for a lower price than buying two papers. It definitely is targeted toward those of us who buy the paper for the coupons inside.