Good News on P&G Catalina Deal: There Is a Spread

I just stopped into Jewel-Osco to do a little recon on the Proctor & Gamble Catalina offer. (What's a Catalina deal? It's all explained in this Wise Bread Catalina intro.) Also, I got two 16 oz. boxes of Mrs. T's pierogies for 75 cents each by combining the BOGO sale with the $1/1 coupons from the new Dominick's booklet. Will be trying those tomorrow to see if I wanna go back and get lots more.

About the P&G deal, which is "spend $30, get a $10 coupon": I thought there would not be much opportunity to "play the spread" because many of the items might be Osco items, which don't have Preferred Card prices. OK, if you didn't go to that link above, you'll want to know what "playing the spread" means. It means that at Jewel, when the deal says you have to spend $30, they really mean you have to buy stuff that would cost $30 before scanning your Preferred Card.

So, good news. Many of the items in the deal -- the Bounty paper towels, Tide detergent, Puffs tissue -- actually did have Preferred prices shown in the store. So if I were doing this deal I'd try to buy $30 worth using those. And here they are:

Tide 100 oz. liquid Pre-card price is $14.99, Preferred $9.99

Tide 141 oz. powder pre-card $16.99, Preferred $9.99

Puffs 3-pack pre-card "sale" price $7.19, Preferred $4.99

Puffs 4-pack pre-card price $7.49, Preferred $4.99

Bounty 8-count pre-card price $14.99, Preferred $9.99

FYI: The Tide unscented variety liquid had the same pre-card and Preferred price, but in my store it was not tagged with the Catalina deal. All the other things I just listed were tagged.

Deal idea:

Buy 2 Tide 100 oz. for $29.98 pre-card price, $19.98 Preferred

Buy 1 Pringles for $1.50

Use two $2/1 Tide coupons from various parenting or women's magazines (I got one from  Parenting I think)

Pay $17.48 + tax, receive the $10 coupon back for a final cost of $7.48 -- about $3.75 each for huge bottles of detergent! Or, if you don't mind using powder detergent, get one powder and one liquid and you won't have to buy the Pringles as a filler. However, my $2/1 Q says only liquid, so you'd have to use the $1/1 from today's P&G insert instead.

Deal idea 2:

You could do the same as above with 2 packs of Bounty instead of detergents, but the coupon for Bounty in today's P&G insert is only $.25/1, so you'd pay more.

Deal idea 3:

Buy 4 Puffs 4-packs for $29.96 pre-card, $19.96 Preferred. Throw in the Pringles again for the $1.50 filler.

Use four $.25/1 coupons from the 9/26 P&G insert

Pay $18.96, or $8.96 for 16 boxes tissues after you get the $10 coupon. That's 56 cents a box.

P.S. The good folks on Couponers Wanted have been doing this deal with similar transactions and "the spread" is working just fine for them.