Deals at Ultra are like gambling in Vegas:  sometimes you win, but mostly you lose.  They didn’t build those casinos on people’s winnings you know.  Remember those never-in-stock Hefty one-zips that were on sale last month for .88?  Which would have paired so nicely with the $1 coupons in the Dominicks game day playbook…well I got two rain checks for 12 boxes.  A friend drives by there regularly so I give her Marcal coupons and she picks up a roll or two at a time.  I handed over the rain checks and Hefty coupons and lo and behold they had some stock – only gallon size, but still.  Even weirder was that they all had .15 peelies, which the cashier insisted on putting through.  Luckily my friend had some 2/$5 OJ with her because the Heftys were .88 and Ultra used $1.15 in coupons on each box… so by buying Hefty zips, she paid zip.

I just realized why they limit the sale of Marcal tp:  to give your ass time to heal…

Got a call about the great deal on the Simply Asia noodle bowls on sale this week for .88.  The Lombard Ultra had tons on display with $1 peelies attached.  woot!  Drove up to freaky-deaky land for that and the one-zip rain checks (’cause we all know Ultra never has stock during a sale).  Yes, they had tons of the noodle bowls, both on an endcap display and on the shelf.  Loaded up the cart with them, salmon and some fruit (for the overage).  It was not to be, however.

Cashier says she can’t scan the coupons because they’re for $1 and the noodles are .88 each.  Well, they’ve done it plenty of times in the past, but the overage is not that important to me so I take off the fruit and fish.  Half way through the sale, the phone rings and someone asks her about the check out.  Fatboy comes over and says that I can’t purchase all these.  When I point out that there is no limit in the ad or on the display and it’s the last afternoon of the sale, he shows me the ad where it says they reserve the right to limit quantities.  So my limit is apparently 12.  O k a y, then, pay for the 12 with the coupons, make sure that they subtract a nickel for my bag (goes into tax – fuck ’em) and leave the cart for Fatboy to reshelf.

I’m not really upset or surprised.  In the first place, these suckers are nasty-high in sodium (56% mdr) and secondly, the reason I call this Ultra freaky-deaky land is because so many of the shoppers wear those black shrouds that cover them from head to toe.  What’s going on in there, anyway?  The creep-factor to me is enormous.   Let’s just say that I’m deeply suspicious of any religion whose God dictates that says men can wear whatever they damned well please, but women have to follow the Cousin Itt approach to fashion…

Wanted to use up the last of my CPK coupons before tomorrow end of sale.  I have a rain check for 12 more, but the original cat alert read that it ended on 11/28.  There’s a new alert that printed for 12/3 to 12/26 for the same buy 4 get $3 OYNO.

The kicker here is that Ultra no longer takes mfr coupons with other stores’ logos on them.  Well, hell’s bells, do they think I’d shop there otherwise?  Puhleez!  This is a new one for me – they’re turning into the Dominicks of the discount grocery stores…  Only ran 5 transactions of four each; each one was $1.06 after coupons and cats.

The only thing appealing about Ultra this week (for me) is the CPK puny pizzas for $1.98.  And only because there are coupons out there and a $3 mfr cat.  I have a few of the $2, $1.50 but mostly the $1 coupons from the 9/26 S and the 11/14R1 inserts.  I paid a buck for the first set of four and got a $3 cat, and rolled it for the next set.   If you have only the $1 coupons, the first transaction will set you back $4.06 (tax) and then each subsequent transaction will be less the $3, or $1.06.

Quality?  Well, for microwave pizza…

Ultra’s running a 3-page .88 sale (one of the items is Progresso soup – dontcha just love it!).  Some items look pretty decent, although I wouldn’t go running over just for them:  Fisher peanut butter (limit 2 – 6/20 s); Progresso soup (limit 6 – $1/4 9/12 & 10/3 GM inserts); Aunt Millie’s deluxe (read:  mushy) bread or hamburger/hot dog buns; large eggs (limit 2); Dutch Farms Chicken Kiev (seems odd to me that chicken Kiev is sold under the Dutch Farms label).

So, my take on this week at Ultra?  psbbbbb (insert spittle here)!  I’ll probably head over at some point to pick up more of my rain check Smart Balance milks and get a couple of packs of hot dog buns and two dozen eggs.  Used up the peanut butter coupons during their last sale (when they didn’t have these silly limits).

The rest?  Wait it out.  Everything else in their ad was part of a cat deal at Jewel in the past couple of weeks.  While .88 Progresso soup is nice, it’s even nicer when you can get 13 for free!

Note:  I just did the new math for the Progresso at Jewel:  .50/can (after 3 $1 coupons and cat) vs .71/can (after $1 coupon) at Ultra.  Still the champ!

FINALLY!  I have a ton of these Smart Balance rain checks with the coupons set to expire the 27th.  I know, I know, Ultra accepts expireds up to 30 days, but my family needs milk and I don’t like spending money.

Got 6 milks and one carton of eggs.  Strangely enough, they had medium, extra large and jumbo:  no large!  Since I had a raincheck, I had to use a cashier, which worked out well.  Coupons scanned as $2, giving me .06 overage. OOP was $1.36.

Figured I’d make one more trip to Ultra, since this is the last day for the Aquapod catalinas and I had a number of .88 rainchecks for them.  Was also running low on milk, so thought I’d pick up some Smart Balance with other rain checks.

The milk was not to be.  My rain checks are all for 6, but they only had 3 in the cooler and one started leaking at the register.  Down to two.  (CS issued another rain check for 4)  I did get 6 pounds for .38/lb, for cheap Chiquitas.  At least the water deal worked.  Ran four transactions of 3 packs each, since I didn’t have any more of the coupons and you only need 3 to trigger the $3 cat.  Ended up spending $1.92 on the first transaction (milk, bananas, water) since I used a $3 cat from a prior water purchase.  The next three were pretty straight forward:  $2.69, get back $3 cat.  Total OOP was $9.99, but I got back $12, so I’m still ahead of the game.