The Great 'Boots Bargains' Hunt

Boots is a treasure trove for active MoneySavers, there's rarely a need to pay full price. Having used a selection of techniques myself the other day, I thought I'd knock up this quick note about what to do.

Please help out by posting your own Boots bargain spots in reply too.

The Boots Bonus Machine. (My name for it, not theirs)

In most Boots you'll find a machine that looks like a cash machine, to put your Boots Advantage card in. Most people just ignore it.

This is a mistake. It isn't just to check-up of how many Boots’ points you've got. It actually gives you a selection of discount vouchers, which you can choose to print out in store. Do this tactically and you'll save a fortune.

E.g. The other day I wanted to buy an ultrasound pain reliever (to help my RSI - I'm currently speech dictating this, so please ignore bizarre errors) that costs around £80. I checked through the vouchers that were available to me at the machine and one was a 10% off when you spend over £50 voucher.

I used this (in conjunction with another voucher mentioned later) and it meant £8 off my purchase, simply by checking the Boots Bonus Machine first.

So the next time you are in Boots, check out what vouchers are available to you. There's no need to use them there and then, but its good to know what's on offer to plan future spending.

Boots Advantage Card.

This is a no-brainer option. The Boots Advantage Card returns four points per pound spent. This means it is effectively a discount of 4% if the user card when in Boots. (See the Loyalty Checker for a full list of all schemes).

E.g. On my spend the other day, I earned £3.20 worth of Boots advantage points to spend another day.

This doesn't however mean you should always shop at boots as Boots is often more than 4% more expensive than its competitors. So if a bottle of shampoo cost £2 in Boots, and you use the card, it's really only costing you £1.92. However, if the same shampoo is available for £1.80 at the Savers centre down the road, then even with the advantage points it isn't good a good buy.

(If you've never checked out a Savers centre, it's worth doing, very good prices. The idea is it buys in 'known brands' that are currently cheap and flogs them on, this means its product range isn't consistent but its prices are always low).

Boots Personal Targeted Voucher Offers.

Recently, Boots have started sending a series of targeted vouchers through the post to get us to spend more. These can be used in conjunction with the Boots Bonus Machine vouchers. So they can get you further discounts (for my spending last night, my vouchers took roughly a further £10 off).

Again it is important to make sure you use the right vouchers at the right time. E.g if you get a 20% off all spending voucher, don't use it to buy a pack of Ibuprofen (ps see my cheapest prescriptions and medications article), wait until you've a big shop to do before you spend it.

Double Points Weekends

Always watch out the TV adverts, telling you when a Boots ‘double points weekend’ is happening. If you need to buy something from Boots anyway then this is the time to do it (in conjunction with the offers above).

Double points = extra 4% discount off all shopping
Treble points = extra 8% discount off all shopping

These weekends are always noted by Chat Forum users, so checking this forum is a good way to find them.

Boots Points Pricing Errors Equals Freebies

The massive administration of distributing Boots’ points can often lead to pricing errors which MoneySavers can take real advantage of.

What often happens is that they say “100 extra points if you buy anything from the XXXXXXXXXXXX collection”.

Yet keen eyed consumers can often find things in that collection which cost less than a pound. This means that in effect Boots is paying you to take the product; if it costs 80p but they give you one pound worth of points, then you've made a profit.

The best example was the Great Toe Separator Hunt, which worked exactly this way. Many MoneySavers were snatching up any toe separator they could find a making a huge profit out of it. It was roughly 50p profit per seperator (or 10p per toe ) from memory, so buy 100 and you were £50 up.

Always keep your eyes open during the special points Bonanza offers as you may just find Boots paying you to buy a toothbrush.

And always remember to haggle

For bigger puchases, why not seek out a section manager and try and haggle the price down - it can work.

I hope you save some money

Martin


NOW ON WITH THE GREAT HUNT!!!!

What other current ways to save at Boots, or Boots Bargains can you spot. Click reply to tell us all (there is already a long specific discussion about 'points bonanza' here)