As a busy mom and freelance writer/editor, I like anything that saves me time. And if it saves me money, that's even better. I signed up for the Walgreens Balance Rewards customer loyalty card right away with no hesitation. The reason why I did was because I don't have to carry the card around – not even on my keychain. I have the Walgreens app on my iPhone and the Walgreens store clerk can scan it from there.
I figured at the time it couldn't hurt. You can rack up points by getting prescriptions filled, getting immunizations, and buying certain sales items. The points then turn into money back from Walgreens. After doing it for a few months, I earned my first $5.00 back. I could have either let it ride until I saved up more, or cashed it out on the merchandise and prescriptions I was buying that day. I decided to go with the latter.
We're a family of four, and both my husband and myself are on maintenance-type prescriptions. Each time we get a prescription filled, it's more points. Additionally, you can earn points with other services and by buying items on sale. I earned 3000 points for buying two bottles of a favorite hairspray.
To use the Balance Rewards, if you aren't carrying the plastic card with you, the clerks can scan your “card” off your smartphone. On the iPhone it's stored both in Passbook and the Walgreens app. Sometimes the clerks have a hard time scanning my phone, but a clerk tipped me off last time, saying that if I made the display brighter, it would scan better. He was right. All my purchases at Walgreens are now recorded in the Walgreens app.
Additionally, the Walgreens app has several other features. I can order prescriptions directly from the app either by scanning the label or inputting the number. It has a record of all my prescriptions and a handy pill reminder. I hate taking pills, so I need this. I can shop for merchandise by scanning in bar codes as well. There are also coupons that can be scanned on your iPhone.
A particular handy feature is ordering photos. You can order them from your photo album of your phone or directly from your Facebook account. One note on this process: the pictures need to be a standard size or sizable to a standard size. I had some photos printed that my daughter had taken with her digital camera and uploaded to Facebook, and these were taken outside of a standard size, and Walgreens apparently has this process automated, as they just cropped off both sides, when they could have made some different adjustments to make it fit. For standard size photos it works great, though.
The Walgreens app just works. They used to have a different savings system with a loyalty card, and I used to earn back $5 to $10 a month by doing rebates. They got rid of that a few years ago, and I've been missing it. The Balance Rewards isn't going to save me quite that amount, but along with racking up what it does save me, it comes with that handy app to help me do everything I need to at Walgreens. It's a must-have for Walgreens shoppers.