I saw this deal earlier in the week as I check out the weekly circulars for many drug stores every Sunday. While I love a good travel deal, I also love a good deal on household items! I was hesitant to initially write about it as there are many caveats to the deal, the legal terms are not clear, and it might result in fighting hard for your given free nights. With that being said, I’ve seen this deal (which I will write about in a second) on many other points, miles, and travel related blog and decided that you can make your own decision on whether or not this deal is worth it for you.
The deal: Spend $250 at RiteAid on specific items and get 2 free nights at a Hyatt Hotel. You also have the option of a free 7-night timeshare room at an RCI property, or a two-nights stay at a camping/cabin rental.
- For every $50 you spend on participating products (by using your wellness+ card) you’ll receive 1 reward code. Earn 5 reward code and you can receive one of those mentioned travel rewards. You can read more about it here.
- Once you spend $50 you will receive a Unique Reward Code on your receipt. The $50 does NOT need to be in the same transaction. Go to riteaid.com/youyear to enter your Reward Code and ultimately select your reward.
- There are 6,390 participating products! You can view on the products here.
- You must make your purchase by January 24, 2015.
Maximizing on the deal: Most likely you will be overpaying for your items since drugstores are typically more expensive than Amazon.com or Costco, for example. However, using manufacturer coupons can be a great way to reduce your cost! Based on the FAQs, one of the questions asks: “Will the dollar amount for manufacturer and Rite Aid coupons that I use to pay for my qualifying items be deducted from my total purchase amount?” and the answer is: “No. Any coupon you use will not be deducted from your total purchase amount. Your coupons are simply your form of payment.” So let’s say you purchase 9 tubs of baby formula at $29 each. If you have a coupon for $5 off 1 and have enough for all 9 items, then that will save you $40. As long as you spend $250 pre-coupons it will print you out the required rewards code even though you actually spent less.
There are a bunch of websites where you can find manufacturer coupons aside from the Sunday paper. They include: coupons.com, iheartriteaid.com, refundcents.com, riteaid.com savings. I also just suggest Googling the product you are looking to buy and including “coupon” in the search. For example, “gerber good start coupon”.
Limitations on the free nights: The free nights from Hyatt come with many limitations. First off, not all Hyatt’s are eligible. They are pulled from the “Premier” certificates that Hyatt used to sell (I wrote about them here awhile ago). You can check all eligible properties here. Note that most of these hotels are around a category 4 (or less). So this will by no means get you a free night at the Park Hyatt Beaver Creek or in the Maldives, for example. Most likely, you can get these hotels for around $125/night (maybe slightly more or less). So really purchasing $250 worth of items to get a $250 value is NOT worth it. So you want to make sure you are purchasing items you actually need and would purchase anyways.
Once you redeem your 5 reward codes, you can go ahead and redeem for the travel reward of your choice. If you want the Hyatt award, select the “2 Night Hotel Stay” option. You will then receive a registration form that you must submit by March 3, 2015. The company you are sending the registration form will go ahead and make the reservation for you. Which leads me to the next limitation. You must include three preferred participating properties and dates for your stay. Since these are pulled from the Premier stay certificates that you can book yourself anyways, you can check on availability by entering code HSPRN2 in the “Special Offer Field” when searching for hotel availability. This will help you determine which hotels have and do not have availability. This can also help you include two hotels that you absolutely do not want (by searching for dates with no availability) and one hotel that you absolutely do want.
For the RCI Timeshare award, you also must include three timeshare participating timeshare properties and dates of interest. You can search for resorts here. At that site you can search availability and anything in blue requires an “upgrade certificate” so my assumption is those months/properties won’t work. For example, Aspen only has availability in October and it requires an upgrade. Some timeshare resorts can also be a hit or miss.
Overall… I am really not sure how this deal will play out. Over at One Mile at a Time they write about a similar deal about 8 years ago with Dockers pants. Ultimately, the fulfillment company (which they speculate might be the same fulfillment company in this promotion) never ponied up. Ultimately, to get your free flight per the terms of that promotion you had to go through the Better Business Bureau.
This deal has the possibility to be extremely lucrative if: 1) You find good coupons to use, 2) You have purchases you’d be making anyways; 3) You have the desire to stay at one of the participating properties. But… there is always that chance that the free night payout doesn’t go as plan.
I am still on the fence with this one. I personally do not have any need to stay at any of the participating Hyatt properties and none of the timeshare properties seem desirable during a “non-upgrade” month. With all of that being said, I do love couponing, so I am sure I can get the $250 down to about half and will purchase items I actually needs. A 19-month old does go through lots of diapers!
What about you? Will you be taking part in this promotion?
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Out of curiosity, where do you see that the 2 free nights are limited to only US properties? I’ve copied the first term and condition below:
The complimentary 2 Night Stay at a participating Hyatt location (“Reward”) entitles the bearer to one (1) free two (2) night stay at a participating Hyatt location worldwide.
@Dave Westhed – I just re-looked at the terms and looks like I misread the term “This offer is valid in the United States (excluding U.S. territories) only.” It was part of the restrictions for the two-night reward FAQ and I quickly interpreted it as US properties only, but now re-reading it looks like that just means that folks in the US can only participate in this promotion overall.